HOOPA -- The Hoopa Valley Tribe this week filed an appeal with the U.S. Department of Interior Board of Indian Appeals to try to block the distribution of $91 million from the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act.

The U.S. Interior Department recently decided that the money it held in trust under the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act belongs with the Yuroks. The money comes from timber sales on the Hoopa Reservation, which was split in 1988.

The Yuroks have long held that it should be compensated because its share of the reservation, a narrow swath of mostly privately owned land on either side of the Klamath River below Weitchpec, doesn't give them access to rich timber like that on the Hoopa Reservation.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe maintains the decision was illegal and against the department's own past rulings, calling it “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law.”

Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall said in a press release that the decision violates federal law.

“We have no choice but to appeal the decision,” said Marshall. “When Hoopa accepted Congress' settlement 19 years ago, the Yuroks refused the money and tried to get a better deal by suing the government. They gambled and lost their litigation. Now they have used politics to circumvent the conditions of the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act.”

One of the original conditions to receive the money was waiving the right to sue the government. While the Yuroks did later pursue legal action against the government, the ruling on March 1 said the Yurok Tribe can still submit an unconditional waiver of claims against the government.

Once the tribe does that, the decision said, the money would be released to the tribe.