Elouise Cobell
| Elouise Pepion Cobell | |
|---|---|
| Yellow Bird Woman, Elouise Pepion | |
| (Blackfoot Confederacy) elder and activist leader | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 5, 1945 |
| Died | October 16, 2011 (aged 65) Great Falls, Montana |
| Spouse(s) | Alvin Cobell |
| Relations | Eight brothers and sisters; great-granddaughter of Mountain Chief |
| Children | Turk Cobell |
| Education | Great Falls Business College, Montana State University |
| Known for | Lead plaintiff in Cobell v. Salazar; banker, Treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe |
Elouise Pepion Cobell, also known as Yellow Bird Woman (November 5, 1945 – October 16, 2011) (Niitsítapi Blackfoot Confederacy) was a tribal elder and activist, banker, rancher, and lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking class-action suit Cobell v. Salazar (2009). This challenged the United States' mismanagement of trust funds belonging to more than 500,000 individual Native Americans. She pursued the suit from 1996, challenging the government to account for fees from resource leases.
In 2010 the government approved a $3.4 billion settlement for the trust case. Major portions of the settlement were to partially compensate individual account holders, and to buy back fractionated land interests, and restore land to reservations. It also provided for a $60 million dollar scholarship fund for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives, named the Cobell Education Scholarship Fund in her honor. The settlement is the largest ever in a class action against the federal government.
Buy-back of lands has continued, restoring acreage to the tribes. As of November 2016, $40 million had been contributed to the scholarship fund by the government, from its purchase of lands. It has paid $900 million to buy back the equivalent of 1.7 million acres in fractionated land interests, restoring the land base of reservations to tribal control.
In November 2016 Cobell's work on behalf of Native Americans was honored by the award of a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama; her son Turk Cobell accepted the award on her behalf.
Elouise Pépion was born in 1945 on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, the middle of nine children of Polite and Catherine Pépion. She was a great-granddaughter of Mountain Chief, one of the legendary leaders of the Blackfeet Nation. She grew up on her parents' cattle ranch on the reservation. Like many reservation families, they did not have electricity or running water. Pépion attended a one-room schoolhouse until high school. She graduated from Great Falls Business College and attended Montana State University. She had to leave before graduation to care for her mother, who was dying of cancer.
After her mother's death, Elouise moved to Seattle, where she met and married Alvin Cobell, another Blackfeet living in Washington at the time. They had one son, Turk Cobell. After returning to the reservation to help her father with the family ranch, Elouise Cobell became treasurer for the Blackfeet Nation.
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