<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2">News from the Hoopa Valley Reservation pasted and attached. <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="5"><B>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- FEB. 1, 2008<BR>
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<P ALIGN="CENTER"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="2">HOOPA VALLEY TRIBE SUES GOVERNMENT OVER DISBURSEMENT OF 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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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="2"><B>Hoopa, CA</B></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="2"> – The Hoopa Valley Tribe of northern California filed an $80 million lawsuit against the federal government today (Feb. 1, 2008) because the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) has begun disbursing trust fund money from Hoopa timber sales to the neighboring Yurok Tribe. The funds came from logging on Hoopa Valley Reservation before it was divided by Congress in 1988. “We are suing because the Department of Interior’s decision to give all the Hoopa timber money to the Yuroks defied federal law and preempted a more equitable solution by Congress,” said Hoopa Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall.<BR>
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The Hoopa lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. was triggered by the DOI’s $15,000 payment to individual members of the Yurok Tribe on Jan. 15.<BR>
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The lawsuit is the aftermath of the DOI’s decision last spring to give all $90 million of the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act (HYSA) funds to the Yuroks. The money was part of a government plan to divide and disburse profits from the Hoopa Reservation timber sales managed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1974-88. When the adjacent Hoopa and Yurok reservations were Congressionally split in l988, Hoopa accepted the agreement and part of the timber receipts. The Yurok Tribe refused the money and sued to negate the division of the Hoopa Valley Reservation into the ancestral lands of the two tribes. <BR>
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Nearly two decades of unsuccessful Yurok litigation followed as the remaining funds grew to $90 million. The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee conducted a hearing on the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act in 2002. The Interior Department recommended new legislation. Following mediation between the Hoopa Tribal Council and the Yurok Tribal Council, the tribes also agreed on proposed legislation, but nothing was enacted. In 2007, high officials in the Interior Department decided the Department’s long-standing position had been wrong and no legislation was necessary. “Interior had other plans. They treated the Settlement Act as a right of first refusal by Congress and they took the law into their own hands when Congress was slow to react,” said Marshall. <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 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 inequitably amend the statute by itself.”<BR>
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