Hoopa appendix supporting summary judgment - Schlosser Law Files

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act. The data provided by Interior Department today supports our
position. To reiterate, the Hoopa Valley Tribe received a 90,000-
acre timbered reservation of which 98 percent is held in tribal
trust. The Yurok Tribe received a 58,000-acre reservation with
3,000 acres in tribal trust, containing little timber. The map we
have provided to you shows this extreme disparity.
We have already noted that the projected income for the tribes
were incorrect. Time has verified that the predictions of a bountiful
or restored Yurok fishery has not happened. It is also a fishery that
we share with the non-Indians as well as Hoopa. Hoopa timber resources
however have produced substantial income exceeding the
1988 predictions as reflected in the Interior Department’s records.
In addition, as this committee is aware from your recent joint hearing
on telecommunications, infrastructure on the Yurok Reservation
is virtually nonexistent.
In our response to Senator Inouye’s letter of October 4, 2001, we
have submitted an outline of an economic development and land
acquisition plan to you and the Department of the Interior. The
plan is based on our settlement negotiations with the Department
in 1996 and 1997. We would like to request from you today the creation
of a committee or a working group composed of tribal administration
and congressional representatives and hopefully, under
your leadership, Senator.
We recommend that the committee’s responsibility be to develop
legislation that would provide a viable self sufficient reservation for
the Yurok people as originally intended by the Settlement Act. As
you can see, our issues are broad based and focus on equity for the
Yurok Tribe. The Department’s report has prompted this hearing
to address access by the Yurok Tribe to the Yurok Trust Fund. The
Interior Department has said that neither tribe has legal entitlement
to the Yurok Trust Fund. Our view is simple.
The financial equities and the actual distributions of timber revenues
from 1974 to 1988 clearly demonstrate that the Yurok Tribe
should receive its share of the settlement fund as the act intended.
Arguments based on where the revenue came from on the joint reservation
are wrong. These revenues belonged as much to the
Yuroks of the Square and the Yuroks of the extension as they did
to the Hoopas of the Square. This is the key point of the cases both
tribes lost in the Claims Court.
The point is that prior to 1988, the Hoopa Valley Reservation
was a single reservation intended for both tribes and whose communal
lands and income were vested in neither tribe. Short also
means that the Department could not favor one tribe above the
other in the distribution of assets. These are pre-1988 moneys. We
should not have to reargue what Yuroks won in the Short cases.
After the final 1974 decision in Short I, the Department ceased
to distribute timber revenues only to the members of the Hoopa
Valley Tribe and began to reserve 70 percent of the timber revenues
for the Yurok plaintiffs. The remaining 30 percent of the revenues
were for Hoopa and were placed in a separate escrow account
which the Department disbursed to the Hoopa Valley Tribe. When
we discussed the 1974–88 timber revenues with the Hoopa Tribal
Council, they asserted that all of the timber revenues should have
been theirs. Legally as the committee knows, that is not what the