Government won’t challenge ruling in Indian lawsuit
The Associated Press
By: Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
June 5, 2001
The government won’t appeal a ruling ordering it to reform a mismanaged multibillion-dollar trust fund for Indians, but what changes the government makes and how much money may be paid to Indians still must be determined.
More than 300,000 Indians are included in a class-action suit filed in 1996 over a century’s worth of problems with the system that handles about $500 million a year in proceeds from oil wells and other uses of Indian land. The Indians say they are owed at least $10 billion due to mismanagement.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sided with the Indians in late 1999 and ordered the Interior and Justice departments to reform the fund. The ruling was upheld in February by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.
A deadline for government attorneys to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case passed on Friday.
“Every time they’ve fought, they’ve lost. Every loss has made their position worse. Maybe the message is getting through,” Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff, said in a statement issued Wednesday.
Lamberth has appointed two people to monitor the reform efforts on the court’s behalf and file regular progress reports with the judge.
“We’re comfortable with the arrangement that we have,” Interior spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna said. “We intend to move forward (with trust fund reform) in a serious manner.”
A separate trial to determine how much the Indians lost because of the mismanagement is expected later this year.
The trust accounts came from an 1887 federal law that divided some reservation land into smaller plots for individual Indians. The federal government holds that land in trust for the Indians, meaning it cannot be taxed or sold.
Many of the tracts are leased for grazing, logging, mining or oil drilling. Proceeds are supposed to be deposited in government accounts and then paid to Indian landholders.
Since the beginning, however, those accounts have been mismanaged, the government acknowledges. Records for many were never kept, and documentation for others was lost or destroyed.
Some of the money was stolen or used for other federal programs. Some lease proceeds were never collected. Thousands of the accounts have money but no names attached.
Earlier this month, lawyers for the Indians asked Lamberth to hold Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt of court for failing to stop the destruction of documents related to the case. The Indians hope to use documents in the case to reconstruct how much money is missing from the trust fund accounts.
“They are breaching the trust, they have committed malfeasance and they are continuing to commit malfeasance,” said Dennis Gingold, attorney for the plaintiffs.
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