Battle over oil

But 75 percent of leases weren't recorded properly, according to the lawsuit. Oil money was accumulating in federal accounts, but because federal records weren't clear on who had rights to the money, funds went elsewhere.

The impact has been profound on American Indians, Cobell said.

"We would have had a totally different quality of life," she said. "If this trust was set up properly since 1887, if it had served the beneficiaries that own it, you would have seen a totally different economic condition in Indian communities."

Johnson has been a spokeswoman for the thousands of other American Indians in her circumstances. Johnson remembers a monthly check for $1,200 once, but mostly smaller payouts of $350 or $400 every month. All the while, the oil pumps have been working near her southeastern Utah home.

In 2005, Johnson was in Washington, D.C., with Cobell to testify before Congress about the unfair income she has received for the oil on her land. Last spring she went back to march in support of the lawsuit.

Cobell's efforts drew media attention last week when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blasted a Bush administration official for "incomprehensible" inaction on a settlement to the case.

McCain, a Republican, and Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, are both on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Weeks ago, the two met with U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and laid out what McCain called a reasonable solution to the lawsuit.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs have said they may be owed as much as $27.5 billion. The Senate bill proposes settling for $8 billion.

In a committee meeting last week, McCain verbally spanked Bush and federal official Carl Artman, who McCain said should have had adequate time to consider the settlement proposal and respond.

Artman is a nominee to be assistant secretary of Indian affairs at the Department of the Interior.

"It's incomprehensible that the administration has not been able to come up with at least a response to what is the product of years of effort on the part of this committee and the interested parties," McCain said.

Administration officials have said they need more time. "I think 11 years is enough time," responded Cobell. "They use any little excuse to stall it out."

The Arizona Republic reported that Artman, a former chief counsel and member of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, said resolution of the case is critical.

"The sooner this litigation ends, the sooner we improve our relationship with tribes, and the sooner we increase for Indians and Alaska natives the benefits of that relationship," Artman said.