Background
The Indian Mineral Leasing Act (IMLA) of 1938 was brought to the attention of the Navajo people in 1964 when the Navajo Nation entered into an agreement with a third party to lease a substantial portion of Navajo land for coal mining. The Navajo Nation complained that the United States acted in the interests of a coal mining company, and not in the interests of the Navajo Nation, when negotiating the rate of royalty payments owed on coal mined from Navajo land. The Court of Federal Claims dismissed the complaint, ruling that although the United States had breached its fiduciary obligations to the Navajo Nation, this breach was not actionable because the United States did not have a trust relationship with the Navajo Nation and monetary relief was not available. The court of appeals reversed, holding (1) that a trust relationship existed and exists with the Navajo Nation, and (2) monetary damages are an available remedy for breach of this trust.
Read more about this topic: United States V. Navajo Nation
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)