When thousands gathered in a high school gymnasium in Browning in 2011, they were saying farewell to someone who, just twenty years earlier, had been dismissed as a bothersome petitioner. Elouise Cobell had gone from what she ironically called a “stupid Indian woman” to a “genius.”
An Act of Defiance
As an eighteen-year-old in the 1960s, attempting to check the status of her trust account in the Blackfeet reservation, Cobell was doing something nearly revolutionary. The Bureau of Indian Affairs managed Native American lands and funds like a feudal estate, where peasants were not allowed to ask about balances. Cobell asked anyway. She was told she couldn’t read statements, that she was mistaken, and that she should focus on something else. Perhaps it was this arrogance from officials that shaped her more than anything else?
The story of her uncle ended with his life. He needed money for medical treatment—his own money, held in trust by the government. First, an official refused to meet with him; then, a check was sent weeks late. Her uncle did not survive. How many similar stories remain untold in reservations, where billions of dollars in lease payments flowed for over a century, yet people died in poverty?
The Bank No One Wanted to Open
In the 1980s, the only bank on the Blackfeet reservation closed. No financial institution saw any value in serving a community viewed as unprofitable.
Cobell, by then the tribe’s treasurer, recognized the absurdity: resources left the reservation, but the money never seemed to come back. So she took matters into her own hands and, in 1987, co-founded the Blackfeet National Bank—the first bank in history owned by a tribe.
Ten years later, the MacArthur Foundation awarded her a so-called “genius grant”—$310,000 with no strings attached. The woman routinely told she was incompetent joked that, in her lifetime, she went from “stupid Indian” to “genius.” She donated most of the money to the cause that consumed her last fifteen years.
Thirteen Years in Court
The lawsuit filed in June 1996 was about one simple thing: accountability. For over a century, the Bureau of Indian Affairs managed the accounts of more than five hundred thousand Native Americans, and Cobell, along with the Native American Rights Fund, claimed it was done in a manner bordering on institutional theft. Where was the money from leases? What were the fees? Who collected them? The government couldn’t answer.
The court battle lasted thirteen years, becoming one of the longest cases in American legal history. In December 2009, a settlement was reached: $3.4 billion. The sum included compensation for victims, a land purchase program, and a scholarship fund for youth. The final approval came in June 2011. Four months later, Cobell passed away—cancer didn’t give her time to rest.
The day before her funeral, the local radio played Elvis Presley, her favorite singer, nonstop for twenty-four hours. The funeral procession stopped four times for Blackfeet prayers and songs. On her computer, a sticky note still hung: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” She won. Five years after her death, Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor in the United States.
Margot Cleverly
Margot's journey into women's history began with a box of forgotten letters in a Cambridge archive – suffragettes whose voices had been silenced for over a century. Since then, she's been on a mission to uncover the stories history overlooked.
What she writes about: Queens who ruled from the shadows. Scientists whose male colleagues took credit. Revolutionaries who risked everything. But also ordinary women – those who survived wars, raised families through upheaval, and shaped their communities in ways no one bothered to record.
Margot turns historical figures into real people. She writes with warmth and detail, making centuries-old stories feel surprisingly relevant. Rigorous research meets accessible storytelling – no dusty academic jargon, just compelling narratives backed by solid facts.
When she's not writing, you'll find her in regional archives, collecting oral histories, or visiting sites connected to the women she writes about.