The West Old & New Vol. III Issue II February 2014 | Page 4
Yellow Bird
Woman
Elouise Pepion Cobell
Elouise Cobell was a NiitsÃtapi (Blackfoot Confederacy) elder and activist, banker, rancher, a Native American leader, and
lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking litigation Cobell v. Salazar, which challenged the United States' mismanagement of trust funds
belonging to more than 500,000 individual Native Americans. In 2010 the government approved a $3.4 billion settlement for the
trust case, including funds to partially compensate individual account holders, buy back lands and restore them to the Native
American tribes, as well as a 60 million dollar scholarship fund. The settlement is the largest ever in a class action against the federal government.
Elouise Pepion was born in 1945, the middle of nine children, and 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 Blackfeet Reservation. Like many reservation
families, they did not have electricity or running water. Cobell attended a one room schoolhouse until high school. She gradu