And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 08:21:03 -0800
From: Tom Schlosser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Nation/World Indians, feds face off over trust fund money
Amole By Kevin McCullen
Blake News Staff Writer
Jensen BOULDER -- Lawyers for American Indians suing the
federal
Johnson government over millions of dollars in mismanaged trust
Massaro money are confident they will win a legal showdown this
Norm! week.
Rivers
Seebach But even if a federal judge finds the Interior and
Treasury
Denver Square departments in contempt of court today, attorneys
for the
Births Boulder-based Native American Rights Fund are uncertain
Weddings when as many as 500,000 Indians might see the money
owed
Obituaries some of them for decades.
Lottery
JonBenet A U.S. district judge in Washington has ordered the two
Legislature departments to turn over statements, checks and other
[Business] financial documents for the five named plantiffs in the
[Sports] Rights Fund's 2-year-old, class-action lawsuit
against the
[Recreation] government.
[Going Out]
[Staying In] But so far, the agencies that managed the individual
[Classified] accounts have produced less than a quarter of the
records
for the plaintiffs, said Robert Peregoy, lead
attorney for
[Local Weather Now!] the Indians. And most of those documents are for
transactions since 1985, when the Treasury
Department and
[Career Network] the Bureau of Indian Affairs began widespread use of
computers, he said.
"They haven't found anything earlier than 1985, when
the
record keeping was done manually," Peregoy said.
The total liability for all the Indians could run
into tens
of billions of dollars, he said.
Federal administrators have admitted many of the trust
documents, including some dating back to 1887, are
lost or
destroyed. There is no accurate estimate of how much
money
might be missing, although the federal government holds
more than $500 million in all the individual accounts.
The lawsuit took a turn late last week when the special
trustee appointed by Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt to
oversee the accounts resigned, saying he was unable to
fulfill his duties because of a reorganization of the
trustee's office. Peregoy said the resignation
bolstered
his clients' case.
The lawsuit, which seeks restitution for account
holders,
involves trusts created to manage lease proceeds and
other
income from lands given to individual Indians by the
federal government under the 1887 Dawes Allotment Act.
The act allowed the government to transfer reservation
lands created by treaties to individual Indians for
use in
agriculture. Heads of families usually received 160
acres
and single people over 18 received 80 acres. The
government
continued the allotments until 1934. The Indians could
lease out the properties or farm it themselves.
Plantiff Eloise Cobell, who helped organize the
Blackfeet
National Bank on the tribe's Montana reservation, still
does not know how much money she is owed.
She has said no one can tell her how much land she
owns or
what kind of income it produces.
"This money is not handouts or government money paid to
people. It's our money," Cobell said at the time the
lawsuit was filed.
There were at least 15,599 accounts with duplicated
numbers
at the end of fiscal 1995, according to the lawsuit.
Frequently, one name had more than one account and
over $46
million was in 54,000 accounts for Indians with no
addresses.
"We're trying our best, within the constraints of our
budgets, to update our accounting procedures," said
Stephanie Hanna, a spokeswoman for the Interior
Department.
"We're trying to fix 80 years of problems, and it is
not
easy."
But Indians such as John Echohawk, executive
director of
the Native American Rights Fund, have lost patience.
"We are really frustrated by the government's
inability to
produce documents they are supposed to have as
trustees.
They've had one lame excuse after another for
years," he
said.
"The government is going to have to be held
accountable. I
trust the court will go with us as far as what is a
reasonable figure and find a reasonable amount that
is owed
these thousands of accounts," Echohawk said.
The Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, shares the Indians' goal of trying to
reconcile the missing money and establish an accurate
accounting system, Hanna said.
Babbitt has said the Clinton administration is serious
about determining a "fair settlement for past
inadequacies."
January 11, 1999
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