A Pittance for Your Tears

A Federal Court has just ruled on a class action lawsuit brought by a half million Native People asking for 47 billion dollars in recompense for treaty sanctioned land and resource royalties owed them by the government of the United States. The court allocated 455 million dollars in settlement. By doing so the court admitted to the validity of the claim. But rather than the $100,000 per person that the lawsuit requested a mere $1000 per person was deemed adequate. To our Federal government the theft of untold riches compounded by more than 200 years of a genocidal policy of cultural annihilation and internal exile is worth less than the daily cost of the war in Iraq, a mere pittance from our imperial coffers.