It's taken 123 years, but the federal government is the closest it's ever been to compensating Minnesota's Chippewa bands for tribal land that the U.S. government sold unfairly.
On March 1 a bill that would award millions of dollars to the six bands that make up the tribe and their members, will receive a hearing before a House committee in Washington. The money would settle a dispute over a century-old land deal.
But not all tribal members think the deal is fair.
In 1889, the Congress passed the Nelson Act, which consolidated Minnesota's Chippewa reservations by allocating plots to individual tribal members and selling off the rest of the reservation land. The act aimed to assimilate the tribes, in part by shrinking the size of the reservation. Money raised from the sale was supposed to help the tribe, but the government sold it at prices considerably below market value.
"They were listing it as swamp land, which was probably $2 per acre, as opposed to timber land," said Gary Frazer, executive director of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. "It was really timberland and they were classifying it as swamp lands."
In 1946, the Chippewa tribe filed a lawsuit against the government, seeking full compensation for the land. The tribe argued the money the federal government raised wasn't used appropriately. But an agreement wasn't reached until 1999, when federal officials offered the tribe $20 million. Tribal leaders accepted.
But a disagreement within the tribe over how the money should be distributed stalled the payment. Since then, the money has sat in an account, slowly collecting interest, making the payout now closer to $28 million.