And now:Sonja Keohane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Business as usual, it seems, when it comes to Indian Nations and
money owed by governments...local or Federal. Stealing from Indians has
always been and is still ok and the situations are always full of lies and
dirty hands...
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Navajo-Suit.html>
April 8, 1999
Navajos Claim Utah Wasted $100M
Filed at 3:26 a.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- When auditors reviewed Utah's handling of an
oil-and-gas royalty trust set up by Congress to benefit Navajo Indians, one
state lawmaker likened the chronicle of abuses to a cheap novel.
More than $62 million had gone into the trust but only $12 million remained
by 1991. The rest, the auditors found, was lost to lax oversight, payoffs,
bribes and ill-conceived business ventures.
Now, a federal judge has ruled the Navajos can go ahead with their claim
that Utah must make up for abuses dating to the trust's creation in 1933.
Their estimate of the damage -- $100 million.
``The attorney general should be calling any minute now to talk about a
settlement,'' Brian Barnard, a lawyer for the Navajos, said Wednesday.
``I'm not holding my breath.''
The Navajos are Utah's poorest residents. Many reservation areas have no
running water or electricity and unemployment runs up to 50 percent.
The idea of setting aside the state's share of oil and gas royalties for
the Indians surfaced when Congress decided to expand the Navajo Reservation
from New Mexico and Arizona into southeastern Utah, where a number of
Navajo clans had fled when Kit Carson marched the tribe into New Mexico in
1865.
Congress made the idea law in 1933. But it wasn't until oil and gas
companies started drilling in the Aneth extension oil field about 30 years
later that the battle was joined over how the 37.5 percent royalty should
be spent. The remaining 62.5 percent is divided between the tribe,
headquartered at Window Rock, Ariz., and the Bureau of Indian of Affairs,
Barnard said.
In 1991, the year before the Navajos' class-action lawsuit was filed, the
Utah Legislature's auditor general reported suspected self-dealing and
mismanagement by trust fund officials.
Federal criminal indictments followed, alleging bribery, conspiracy, fraud,
money laundering and misuse of tribal funds against seven Navajo Nation
leaders in Arizona.
----end of excerpt----
