<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="2"><B>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – April 20, 2007<BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="2"><B>HOOPA VALLEY TRIBE APPEALS DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR<BR>
DECISION ON THE HOOPA-YUROK SETTLEMENT FUND<BR>
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</B></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="2"> Media Contacts: Clifford Lyle Marshall (530) 625-4211<BR>
Tom Schlosser (206) 386-5200<BR>
Tod Bedrosian (916) 421-5121<BR>
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Hoopa, Calif. – In what the Hoopa Valley Tribe called a, “reprehensible and lawless,” action the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) today handed $90 million of trust fund monies that originally came from Hoopa timber sales to the Yurok Tribe. “This is reminiscent of faithless federal actions in the 19th Century when Indian agents would give the property of one tribe to another and hide from their responsibilities,” said Hoopa Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall. He was reacting to a letters sent to him today from Ross Swimmer, DOI Special Trustee who released the funds, and a second letter from DOI Deputy Solicitor Lawrence Jensen informing the Hoopa Valley Tribe that Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne would not refer the distribution decision to the Department of Interior Board of Indian Appeals.<BR>
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Marshall said the Hoopa Valley Tribe is considering its legal options including forcing the U.S. Treasury to pay damages for the loss of tribal trust monies. This is a result the Hoopa Valley Tribe has been trying to avoid. It is unclear how or whether the funds will be made available to the Yurok Tribe. If and when money is withdrawn from the trust account a damages claim will follow.<BR>
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The original monies in the HYSA Trust Fund came (98%) from timber sales on the Hoopa Valley Reservation. The tribe agreed to share the timber receipts money with the Yuroks as a condition of the l988 Congressional HYSA act that split the reservations. The Yuroks refused to accept the division of the reservation and the money. Their unsuccessful litigation for more money ended when the U.S. Supreme Court would not hear their case. “The Settlement Act gave the Yurok Tribe until November 1993 to drop its litigation and obtain certain benefits; it refused to do so,” said Chairman Marshall. “Now that they lost in the courts they have used lobbying tactics at the Department of Interior to reverse the last decade of legal and administrative decisions saying they could not access this money.”<BR>
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The Hoopa Valley Tribe had asked Congress to intervene and resolve this final fiscal chapter of the HYSA. Marshall said, “Congress could have resolved this issue equitably for both tribes, but the Interior Department has chosen to amend the statute by itself.”<BR>
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