Indians want special master for trust suit
The Denver Post
By: Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
December 2, 2000
WASHINGTON – Accusing the Interior Department of reneging on its promise to untangle the billions of dollars it has held in trust accounts for American Indians, lawyers Friday asked a federal judge to name a special master to immediately force the government to resolve the problems.
“I’ve just lost all faith with them,” said Elouise P. Cobell, the Montana banker and Blackfeet Indian who is the lead plaintiff in the massive lawsuit that challenges the government’s handling of 300,000 trust accounts for individual American Indians. Congress recently ordered the Interior Department to try to settle the lawsuit. An Interior spokeswoman declined to comment on the Indians’ motion, but Christine Romano, a Justice Department spokeswoman, denounced it as “distorted, inaccurate and inappropriate.”
Romano said that it was an effort to “intimidate the individuals” working on the lawsuit, and she rejected charges that the government is not trying to settle the dispute. “We are actively working to reach a settlement,” she said.
The Indians’ action comes almost a year after Judge Royce C. Lamberth held that the government had breeched its trust agreement with the Indians, saying the mismanagement was “fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form.” But Lamberth then declared he would give the government “one last opportunity” to reform the trust accounts and provide the Indians with a full accounting of their monies.
In a 56-page motion filed with Lamberth, former Denver lawyer Dennis M. Gingold and Keith Harper of the Colorado-based Native American Rights Fund argued that, if anything, relations have worsened between the government and the Indians since that order.
“It is now evident that the glowing descriptions of trust reform efforts supposedly under way which were presented at the trial were gravely misleading,” the motion said. “It is equally clear that no real trust reform is being accomplished.”
Cobell said that Assistant Attorney General Lois J. Schiffer, who has control over the government’s handling of the lawsuit, “blew it up” when she was told that two government departments involved in the suit wanted to end the court fight. “Interior and Treasury were sending the signal that they wanted to settle, but Justice said no,” Cobell said.
“I think they’ve got a real ego problem within the Department of Justice,” she said, accusing Schiffer and other midlevel Justice lawyers of refusing to acknowledge that they lost the first phase of the lawsuit. The department has appealed Lamberth’s ruling, contending that the judge overstepped his authority.
If that question is resolved, the Indian lawyers want to open a second phase of the trial at which they will seek damages from the government for the mishandling of the trust accounts.
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