Bemidiji Pioneer, Bemidji, Minn.
With ongoing needs of three American Indian reservations in our area, and the constant reminder of the federal government’s failure to live up to treaty responsibilities in providing health care, housing, education and social services to Indian peoples living on the reservation, a court decision released Wednesday only confirms what we already know.
But the 165-page ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson involving a 1996 lawsuit by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell into how the U.S. Interior Department has handled trust accounts underscores that failure and admonishes the federal government for doing so. In plain writing, the District of Columbia U.S. Court decision criticizes Interior for mismanaging more than $100 billion in oil, gas, timber and other royalties held in trust from Indian lands dating back to 1887. And the ruling chastises Congress, which by the U.S. Constitution has a nation-to-nation status with Indian tribal governments, for not funding what it pledged in treaties signed more than 120 years ago to account for the trusts.
“This case has been in this courthouse for over 11 years. A long procession of [judges] has come in and gone out during that time. The suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no two lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. It has been on my docket for one year, during which time I have dismissed persons who were still parties in [the suit] without knowing how or why, resolved dozens of motions, enforced an attorneys’ fee award that pre-dated the invasion of Iraq, and studied the case enough to be among the few people alive [who] know what it means,” Judge Robertson wrote.
And, “my conclusion that Interior is unable to perform an adequate accounting of the … trust does not mean that a just resolution of this dispute is hopeless. It does mean that a remedy must be found for the Department’s unrepaired, and irreparable, breach of its fiduciary duty over the last century. And it does mean that the time has come to bring this suit to a close.”
Robertson notes that the case must be governed by Congress in demanding for an accounting of all funds held in trust by the U.S. government for the benefit of individual Indians. “In its refusal to appropriate enough money to pay for such an accounting, Congress has not amended that demand or the common law of accounting. What it has done, instead, is to render a real accounting impossible — or, perhaps, to recognize that such an accounting is impossible, unless it is “nuts” enough to pay more than $3 billion to hunt down perhaps $3 billion of unexplained variances in the government’s accounts,” Robertson wrote.
Oddly, he peppered his conclusion with quotes from Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House,” which tells of a never-ending legal suit. Hopefully, his decision can serve as a catalyst in not only settling this case, but also to spur Congress into structuring a new 21st century system of dealing with the federal government’s 19th century trust responsibilities. Bemidji Pioneer Editorial Board Bemidji Pioneer
Published Thursday, January 31, 2008
With ongoing needs of three American Indian reservations in our area, and the constant reminder of the federal government’s failure to live up to treaty responsibilities in providing health care, housing, education and social services to Indian peoples living on the reservation, a court decision released Wednesday only confirms what we already know.
But the 165-page ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson involving a 1996 lawsuit by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell into how the U.S. Interior Department has handled trust accounts underscores that failure and admonishes the federal government for doing so. In plain writing, the District of Columbia U.S. Court decision criticizes Interior for mismanaging more than $100 billion in oil, gas, timber and other royalties held in trust from Indian lands dating back to 1887. And the ruling chastises Congress, which by the U.S. Constitution has a nation-to-nation status with Indian tribal governments, for not funding what it pledged in treaties signed more than 120 years ago to account for the trusts.
“This case has been in this courthouse for over 11 years. A long procession of [judges] has come in and gone out during that time. The suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no two lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. It has been on my docket for one year, during which time I have dismissed persons who were still parties in [the suit] without knowing how or why, resolved dozens of motions, enforced an attorneys’ fee award that pre-dated the invasion of Iraq, and studied the case enough to be among the few people alive [who] know what it means,” Judge Robertson wrote.
And, “my conclusion that Interior is unable to perform an adequate accounting of the … trust does not mean that a just resolution of this dispute is hopeless. It does mean that a remedy must be found for the Department’s unrepaired, and irreparable, breach of its fiduciary duty over the last century. And it does mean that the time has come to bring this suit to a close.”
Robertson notes that the case must be governed by Congress in demanding for an accounting of all funds held in trust by the U.S. government for the benefit of individual Indians. “In its refusal to appropriate enough money to pay for such an accounting, Congress has not amended that demand or the common law of accounting. What it has done, instead, is to render a real accounting impossible — or, perhaps, to recognize that such an accounting is impossible, unless it is “nuts” enough to pay more than $3 billion to hunt down perhaps $3 billion of unexplained variances in the government’s accounts,” Robertson wrote.
Oddly, he peppered his conclusion with quotes from Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House,” which tells of a never-ending legal suit. Hopefully, his decision can serve as a catalyst in not only settling this case, but also to spur Congress into structuring a new 21st century system of dealing with the federal government’s 19th century trust responsibilities.
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