HELENA, Mont. (AP) – The Fort Peck tribes have agreed to a $75 million settlement with the U.S. government over the government's mismanagement of their trust funds and trust resources.

The agreement approved by the Tribal Executive Board Monday is separate from the $3.4 billion Cobell settlement over similar claims by individual Native Americans. It comes days after the Confederated Colville Tribes accepted a similar $193 million settlement.

This agreement must still be approved by a federal judge before the tribes' lawsuit against the government is dismissed.

The tribes, located on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana, sued in 2002 in attempt to receive an accounting of the Interior Department's management of the tribes' trust funds and to learn how much had been lost.

Fort Peck Chairman Floyd Azure said in a statement that the agreement was finalized in a Feb. 16 meeting with federal negotiators. The settlement resolves all past tribal claims against the U.S. government over mismanagement of trust funds from land, natural resources and a tribal credit program.

“The case we are resolving today addresses a series of wrongs committed by the federal government in the management of the Tribes' trust assets,” Azure said.

He called the agreement a “treaty” between the tribes and the United States that will serve the tribes' best interests for years to come.

A separate tribal statement says the executive board “is in the process of developing plans for the prudent use of these funds to meet the current and future needs of the Fort Peck people.

This case deals only with tribal trust funds and not individual trust funds, which is addressed in the class-action settlement named after Elouise Cobell, the deceased Blackfeet advocate who sued the government in the mid-1990s over billions of royalties lost from the accounts of individual Indians.