Indian Ranchers Battle USDABy Patrick Springer, IN-FORUM, July 20, 2003 Keepseagle, one of 898 American Indian ranchers who filed a class action discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1999, is still waiting for his day in court because Justice Department lawyers and the Bush Administration have delayed the case in the discovery phase. Joe Sellers, a partner with Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, P.L.L.C. and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, is quoted in the article as saying that the government has already conceded that they treated Native American farmers and ranchers differently than they've treated white farmers and ranchers. Excerpt George Keepseagle still hasn't fully recovered from back to-back disasters that decimated his cow herd more than half a dozen years ago. A disease called scours killed about 50 of his cattle in 1995, a loss repeated by the harsh winter of 1996, when a blizzard took another 50 of his Black Angus and Black Simmental cattle. Together, the disasters claimed a third of his 300-cow herd, a loss that forced another calamity: the involuntary sale of 380 acres of pasture. Both years Keepseagle's region was declared a disaster area. But each time, no American Indian ranchers on the Standing Rock Reservation were awarded emergency disaster loans to help them weather the crises. Any rancher in North Dakota is accustomed to having to fight nature in the constant struggle to earn a living running cattle. But Keepseagle and many of his fellow American Indian ranchers grew to regard another force as their adversary: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal agency charged with helping farmers and ranchers. When Keepseagle applied for disaster assistance, he was summarily told he was ineligible, without being told why. Keepseagle contends this is part of an ingrained pattern, a "virus of racism" infecting the agency's treatment of American Indians. Keepseagle is one of 898 American Indian farmers and ranchers who filed a class action discrimination lawsuit against the Agriculture Department in 1999. The class could grow to as many as 19,000, however. Four years later, farmers and ranchers still are waiting for their day in court. Justice Department lawyers in the Bush administration have tied up the case in procedural knots that have barred the plaintiffs from carrying out discovery, the process where parties in a legal dispute must divulge information. "There have been a lot of delays," said Sarah Vogel, a Bismarck lawyer who is helping to represent Keepseagle and other plaintiffs in the Dakotas. She places the blame on government lawyers. "They've been litigating this like it's World War III," said Vogel, a former state agriculture commissioner and veteran in suing the USDA on behalf of farmers. "They've been using every single move to dismiss, delay -- everything," she added. "It is so ironic given the totally disparate treatment that the black farmers received." In that case, filed in 1997, the Clinton administration agreed to a settlement in 1999. To date, more than 60 percent of almost 22,000 eligible claims were decided in favor of black farmers. The government has mailed $50,000 settlement checks to 12,831 black farmers, totaling more than $641 million, and forgiven debts of $18.5 million. But the government's procedural challenges in the suit by American Indian farmers continue despite a series of internal USDA reports, congressional studies, and an earlier lawsuit by black farmers -- all documenting a pervasive pattern of discrimination against minorities. "What's striking is this is a case where the government has already conceded that they treated Native American farmers and ranchers differently than they've treated white farmers and ranchers," said Joseph Sellers, a civil rights lawyer in Washington and lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
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