The Economist
A plaintiff from the Blackfeet may have the courts going her way
IF THE opinion polls are to be believed, most Americans are coming to trust
their government more than they used to. The habit has not yet spread widely
among American Indians, who suspect an organisation which has so often
patronised them, lied to them and defrauded them. But the Indians may soon
win a victory in a legal battle that epitomises those abuses.
Elouise Cobell, a banker who also happens to be a member of the Blackfeet
tribe in Montana, is the leading plaintiff in a massive class-action suit
against the government. At issue is up to $10 billion in trust payments owed
to some 500,000 Indians. The suit was filed by Ms Cobell back in 1996; she
now has more than 300,000 joint plaintiffs from dozens of tribes.
The suit revolves around Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts that are
administered by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Back in the 1880s, the government divided more than 11m acres of tribal land
into parcels of 80 to 160 acres that were assigned to individual Indians.
Because these parcels were rarely occupied by their new owners, the
government assumed responsibility for managing them. As the Indians’
trustee, it leased the land out for grazing, logging, mining and oil
drilling – but it was supposed to distribute the royalties to the Indian
owners.
In fact, officials admit that royalties have been lost or stolen. In some
cases the money was never collected in the first place. Records were
destroyed, and the government lost track of which Indians owned what land.
The plaintiffs say that money is owing to 500,000 Indians, but even the
government accepts a figure of about 300,000.
Ms Cobell and her seven siblings grew up in a one-bedroom house on the
Blackfeet reservation without electricity, telephones or running water. For
years, she heard Indians complain of not getting payment from the government
for the oil-drilling and ranching leases on their land. So, after she had
been to college and become treasurer of the Blackfeet nation in the late
1970s, she asked BIA officials what was going on. They told her she had
misread the numbers. In 1994 she and other tribal leaders successfully
pushed for the creation of a special trustee for the funds. But nothing much
got done. Ms Cobell returned to Washington and, after a brush-off from
government lawyers, filed the suit.
Since then, the courts have gone her way. “I’ve never seen more egregious
misconduct by the federal government,” said Royce Lamberth, a federal
district judge, in 1999, fining the interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, and
the treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, more than $600,000 for failing to
disclose the destruction of documents relating to the case. The same judge
ruled that the government had breached its responsibilities to the Indians,
and said the trust fund would remain under court jurisdiction for at least
five years. An appeal against the ruling was denied last year.
Over to Gale Norton, George Bush’s interior secretary. She was charged with
contempt in November because her department had failed to fix the problem.
In December, Judge Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to shut down all
its computers for ten weeks because trust-fund records were vulnerable to
hackers. The system was partly restored last month and payments to some
Indians, which had been interrupted, resumed. But tens of thousands of
Indians, it seems, are still waiting for their cheques.
Judge Lamberth’s ruling in Ms Norton’s contempt trial is expected soon. If
the judge finds that she wilfully misled him, he could fine her and, in
theory, send her to prison. Later this year the court will tackle the
question of deciding how much money is owed to Indian beneficiaries of the
trust accounts.
And that is not the end of it. Ms Norton has proposed the creation of a new
Bureau of Indian Trust Management, separate from the BIA. Indians are cross
that she suggested this without consulting them. Some want the trust funds
to be placed in receivership, under a neutral supervisor. Others have called
for Congress to establish an independent commission, including Indians, to
draw up a plan for reforming the whole system. A messy injustice may at last
be getting sorted out.
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