Indian trust fund ; Their long national nightmare
Tulsa World
Opinion
February 14, 2002
When it comes to its treatment of American Indians, the U.S. Department of Interior has some explaining to do.
But talk’s cheap. What American Indians really need is the $10 billion in misappropriated royalties that were lost, stolen or never collected since 1887. And, the Department of Interior needs to fix a system that manages billions of dollars of Indian money.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton will testify this week before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who has ordered Norton to prove the Interior Department did not commit a fraud on the court by concealing the failure of key Indian trust fund accounting systems.
Norton could become the third Cabinet secretary in three years held in contempt of court for continued failures to repair the management of a system of Indian trust funds.
Although much of the alleged wrongdoing occurred during the tenure of her predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, Norton and Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb, an Oklahoman, are on trial as the officials in charge.
Lamberth is frustrated by the Interior Department’s approach, at one point calling Norton’s handling of certain aspects “clearly contemptuous.”
The lawsuit stems from a century of mismanaged mining, grazing and timber royalties from 45 million acres of Indian land held in trust.
The Indians’ attorneys claim the government owes more than 300,000 American Indian account holders $10 billion. They want responsibility for the trust stripped from Interior and assigned to an outside receiver. Norton has proposed creating a bureau within Interior to manage the money.
That does not sound like a good plan since the government admits to mismanaging the trust fund but has done little to correct the problem.
Norton must try to correct this situation. And the first step is to deal forthrightly with the court and other side. The $10 billion is owed to the American Indians and it will be a national disgrace if they don’t get it.
| 
