Native Americans get some reparations from US govt.

By a vote of five to four, the high court on Monday ordered the government to repay to the tribes the money they spent on federal programs, including education, homeland security, and environmental protection.

"Consistent with longstanding principles of government contracting law, we hold that the government must pay each tribe's contract support costs in full," wrote Justice Sonya Sotomayor, delivering the court's opinion.

The dispute over money relates to services provided by the tribes themselves under the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975. The act requires the US Department of the Interior to enter contracts with willing tribes under which they will provide public services that the federal government otherwise would provide.

Under the arrangement, the federal government would pay the tribes for the services provided. But from 1994 the government changed the way it paid for the services, no longer paying for each contract in full but handing the tribes a collective lump sum onto which it imposed a ceiling -- thereby withholding from them a portion of the money owed.

The ruling is a victory for the Navajo Nation and several other American Indian tribes that had filed a class action suit complaining that they were being treated unfairly by the Interior Department.

The judgment was a "big victory for the tribes. The government must fulfill its commitments and ensure the tribes get paid," Jonathan Cohn of the Washington-based law firm Sidley Austin, which represented the indigenous nations.