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| Thursday March 8, 2007 |
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| NO THANKS, WE’LL TAKE THE ACCOUNTING, INDIAN PLAINTIFFS SAY |
BROWNING, Mont., March 8 – Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the Cobell vs. Kempthorne lawsuit over the government’s mismanagement of the Indian Trust, issued the follow statement today:
On March 1, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sent a letter to Senator Byron Dorgan proposing that Congress spend $7 billion over 10 years on various Indian programs.
Whatever this letter purports to be; it is not a proposal to settle the Cobell case.
The letter, in its plain terms, seeks to terminate the individual Indian Trust and eliminate the rights of Indian beneficiaries to an adequate accounting and monetary relief.
Far from settling the long-running, acrimonious Cobell case, the government proposes that Indian beneficiaries further litigate the Cobell case. At the same time, the government’s letter is an open invitation to more litigation.
Just consider that Interior’s own experts have estimated that the government’s liability in the Cobell case (excluding all other claims) to be at least $10 billion, and that it could exceed $40 billion. Now consider that the Kempthorne-Gonzales letter proposes a $7 billion cap that eliminates “all existing and potential individual and tribal claims for trust accounting, cash and land mismanagement, and other related claims, along with the resolution of other related matters . . . that permit recurrence of . . . litigation.”
The scope is breathtaking, and the injury to Indians everywhere can only be described as catastrophic. The Attorney General himself has said that the tribal accounts alone are valued at $200 billion.
Still, many beneficiaries have asked, “How much of that $7 billion is allotted to the Cobell plaintiffs?” The answer is easy. The Special Trustee, Ross Swimmer, just reminded us – the answer is zero (Fed. Times February 26, 2007). There is no monetary allocation to Cobell claims in the government’s letter because their official line is that no money is missing from the Trust.
The Cobell case has a very limited goal; it seeks, as provided by law, to enforce the government’s trust duty to provide 500,000 individual Indian trust beneficiaries with an adequate accounting of their trust assets and a restatement of the account balances in accordance with the accounting.
Without ever dealing with the core issue in this 10-year old case, Kempthorne and Gonzales outline a hodge-podge of provisions, policies and programs, which have nothing to do with the Cobell case. Among other things, the non-Cobell laundry list includes eliminating the government’s liability as Trustee (past, present and future), barring all asset mismanagement claims, consolidating fractionated land interests, settling all Tribal trust claims and terminating the individual Indian Trust. All this would be settled with the $7 billion.
The Kempthorne-Gonzales letter is a license to steal from Indian people. And, while the Interior Department has a long and notorious history of cheating, swindling and robbing from Indian people, I in all my years have never heard of such a brazen attempt to rob us of our livelihood. In America, every other citizen can sue the government if it unlawfully takes their land or steals their money, but not Indian people if Kempthorne or Gonzales has their way. This is a new low, even for this Administration.
Nobody should be surprised about the nature of the proposals in the Kempthorne-Gonzales letter. The Cobell case was filed because this proposal is precisely how the government has managed this Trust – without accountability for the rampant fraud, corruption and theft that has defined Interior’s reign as trustee. This case has been and continues to be about infusing accountability after more than a century of documented malfeasance.
We’ve already won the most important fight and it has been upheld on appeal - the unconditional right to an accounting of our trust assets by our trustee, the federal government.
The Cobell Plaintiffs have always welcomed the opportunity to reach a fair settlement of our litigation. We still do. However, we have never received a good faith settlement proposal from the government. We hope that will change. If we do receive such a proposal, we will give it prompt and good faith consideration.
In the meantime, no favors are needed from Kempthorne and Gonzales. We’ll take the accounting, thank you.
contact: Bill McAllister 703 385-6996
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