by Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – Elouise Cobell fields about five calls a day from fellow
American Indians who are frustrated, angry and afraid.
They last were paid three months ago for oil and gas drilling on their land.
Many rely on that money and blame Cobell for the hang-up – the computer
shutdown that stopped the payments is a byproduct of her lawsuit against the
federal government.
Cobell explains to them that she went to court to correct a century’s worth
of mismanagement of a system that collects and distributes royalties to
Indians. Cobell and others who have joined the lawsuit estimate 300,000
Indians lost more than $10 billion over the years.
The government acknowledges mismanaging the trust system but disputes the
amount of money lost. Settlement talks have stalled and it could fall to a
judge or Congress to decide what the Indians are owed.
“It’s been broken. It has been totally broken for all that time,” said
Cobell, a banker in Browning, Mont., and member of the Blackfeet Nation.
“Their mentality was they’re working with savages. We were considered to not
be a people having any rights. That mentality carried forward all the way
through to today.”
Cobell sued the Interior Department in 1996 and won a judgment in 1999.
“It would be difficult to find a more historically mismanaged federal
program,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote. “It is fiscal and
governmental irresponsibility in its purest form.”
Lamberth ordered the department in 1999 to fix the system and piece together
what the Indians are owed.
Despite spending $614 million since 1996 to comply with instructions from
both Congress and the court, problems continue: a $40 million accounting
system does not work; records remain scattered and incomplete; computer
security has put Indian money at risk; and the agency has yet to develope a
plan to comply with a court-ordered accounting of the trust funds.
During hearings on Cobell’s lawsuit, Lamberth routinely has criticized
government lawyers for the agency’s failure to correct problems. In 1999 he
held then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert
Rubin in contempt, fining them $600,000 for concealing the destruction of
documents.
He now is considering holding Babbitt’s successor in contempt. Closing
arguments in Gale Norton’s contempt trial were held last week, and Lamberth
said he had been “duped” by department officials into believing reform was
working.
If Norton is found in contempt, it could pave the way for Lamberth to grant
Cobell’s request that the department be stripped of its trust
responsibilities and an independent professional be appointed to manage it.
The history of the trust fund begins in 1887, when Congress took 90 million
acres from Indians and gave them to white homesteaders. The Indians were
left with allotments ranging from 40 acres to 320 acres, with the Interior
Department assigned to manage grazing, timber and oil and gas activities on
the land.
For more than a century, an untold amount of money meant for some of the
nation’s poorest residents was lost, stolen or never collected. The General
Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, first took notice of
the problems in 1928. It took an additional 66 years for Congress to act.
In 1994, the Indian Trust Reform Act was passed. It called for an accounting
of all Indian monies and reform of the collection and distribution system.
Cobell, who had heard complaints about the system since childhood and seen
no progress despite congressional action, sued two years later.
Norton conceded in court on Feb. 13 that a complete accounting of all the
money Indians should have collected would cost hundreds of millions of
dollars and may be impossible because documents have been lost or destroyed.
The documents are piled in trailers or warehouses. Some have been shredded,
burned, or crumbled from exposure to the elements. Some even are
contaminated with deadly hantavirus from rodents scurrying among them.
Other problems have arisen. Last fall, a monitor appointed by Lamberth found
that the Interior Department’s lax computer security may have put $500
million that flows through the system annually at risk from hackers.
Lamberth shut down connections to the system, but the Dec. 5 order had the
unintended consquence of disconnecting other agency computer systems,
including its e-mail and public access to Web sites for national parks,
endangered species and other entities.
The computer shutdown also has left the agency unable to collect and
distribute royalty checks, creating a profound hardship for Indians who rely
on the money.
“Unfortunately many individuals, their credit is ruined basically. I mean,
after 60 days, the debt collectors start coming; after 90 days, the lawyers
start coming,” said Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American
Indians.
Department officials began mailing checks several weeks ago, but many
Indians have yet to get them. Hall said last week neither he nor any of the
6,000 accountholders on his reservation had received payments.
Despite all this, Norton told Lamberth she believes progress has been made
since she took office last year.
Still, her reform efforts have brought problems. She wants to shift
oversight to a new agency called the Bureau of Indian Trust Assets
Management, but Indian leaders were upset because they were not consulted
beforehand. Some in Congress are skeptical that creating another agency is
the right way to go.
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