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Joseph Sellers said the USDA's loan program denied Native American farmers about $3 billion in loans from 1918 to 1999, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Local committees made up of mostly of white farmers decide who gets the USDA loans. In rural communities, many of these committee members know white farmers or relatives who are looking for land to buy, the Post said.

"All the agents at the local level are non-Indian, and they all have friends and family who are farmers and ranchers, so when they start denying access to loans to Native Americans that land is lost", said Ron His Horse Is Thunder, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

"As it is, Native Americans have lost more land than anyone in this country", he said.

In April, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said, "I intend to lead the Department in correcting its past errors, learning from its mistakes, and moving forward to a new era of equitable service and access for all",

The discovery process in the decade-old discrimination lawsuit ends this fall, the newspaper said.

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