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Introduced February 21, 2025 by Josh Brecheen · Last progress February 21, 2025
The bill delivers a substantial settlement to Quapaw Nation claimants while prioritizing mediation and providing administrative backstops to ensure timely distribution, but it shifts costs to taxpayers and recipients, and can substitute federal allocation authority if mediation fails, which may limit claimant control and increase DOI administrative burdens.
Quapaw Nation members and the named claimants will receive a single $137.5 million settlement held in a Department of the Interior trust account for eventual distribution.
Claimants are required to attempt mediation first, encouraging claimant-led, mutually agreed distribution plans that help preserve tribal self-determination over how funds are split.
The bill provides administrative safeguards — a Secretarial Allocation backstop with timelines plus access to Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service resources — to help ensure disputes are resolved and funds are distributed in a timely way without creating a new federal program.
If mediation fails, the Secretary’s allocation process can impose a federal decisionmaker on how settlement funds are divided, limiting full claimant control over distributions.
Individual claimants will be required to pay mediation-related expenses (mediator and facility costs), imposing direct out-of-pocket costs on recipients.
Taxpayers indirectly fund the $137.5 million payment from Treasury balances, increasing federal outlays.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs a one‑time $137.5M Treasury payment into a DOI trust account for specified claimants and sets mediation and Secretarial Allocation rules for distributing the funds.
Creates a DOI‑administered trust account and directs a one‑time Treasury payment of $137,500,000 to be held for specified claimants arising from a particular settlement. It requires claimants to attempt mediation on a distribution plan within 45 days of enactment and, if mediation fails, sets a Secretarial Allocation process with filing, hearing, briefing, decision, and distribution deadlines (including an 18‑month backstop) and allows DOI to use the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service for support.