by Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
The Denver Post
WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Gale Norton
strongly defended her plans Wednesday for revamping her department’s
historic trust responsibility for American Indians but acknowledged that
trust records are “a complete bookkeeping nightmare” and will cost
“hundreds of millions of dollars” to fix.
Whether Congress will accept that price tag from Interior – what one
lawmaker dubbed “the Enron of federal agencies” – is shaping up to be one
of Norton’s biggest challenges. Norton was candid, testifying before the
House Resources Committee, about how serious the trust problems are,
calling it the biggest problem she has encountered.
The responsibility for handling millions of dollars held in trust for more
than 350,000 Indians has been overwhelming the department, Norton said,
adding it has consumed fully 60 percent of her first year in office.
“The department is not well structured to focus on its trust duties,” she
told lawmakers.
Leaders of several tribes, however, denounced her plans for stripping the
long-troubled Bureau of Indian Affairs of its trust responsibility.
Regardless of how bad the BIA is, the Indians told members of the
committee, it is their one direct link to the federal government and they
want it kept intact.
“For Indian people, the BIA is synonymous with trust responsibility,” said
Michael Jandreau, chairman of South Dakota’s Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
None of the Indian leaders was more critical of Norton than Elouise
Cobell, a Montana banker and the lead plaintiff in a massive lawsuit that
has Norton facing possible contempt-of-court charges. Cobell called on the
lawmakers to reject Norton’s plea for more money and to allow a federal
judge to place the trust accounts under a court-appointed receiver.
“Congress has appropriated more than $614 million for trust reform since
1996 and it has gotten virtually nothing in return – no accounting of
individual Indian trust monies, no rehabilitation of the woeful system, no
improvement in information technology,” she complained. “. . . The bottom
line is that the Bush administration is under court order to account for
more than $100 billion in individual Indian trust moneys and has utterly
refused to do so.”
Although Resources Chairman James Hansen, R-Utah, sought to portray the
trust issue as nonpartisan, with “no room for political posturing,” Norton
came under sharp questioning from several Democrats on the panel.
“I don’t think you’ve made the case for a new agency,” said Rep. Frank
Pallone, D-N.J., who called Norton’s proposal “a patronizing approach” to
Indians.
Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., a senior member of the panel, seemed
unmoved by Norton’s appeal. “It’s very, very hard for me to be optimistic
for all the words we’ve heard here today,” he said, adding that it’s
American Indians who have had “to put up with the charade” about trust
reforms for many years.
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