by Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department is not certain that 300,000 American Indians are getting accurate payments for the use of their land because management problems that existed in 1997 remain uncorrected, according to a senior official in charge of the funds.
“The major problem is that after five years we do not have a system that can fulfill the fiduciary responsibility now or in the future, much less account for the past,” wrote John Miller, the No. 2 official in the Office of Special Trustee, in a scathing draft memo obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
Congress created the Special Trustee’s office in 1994 to fix the troubled Indian trust fund, which has been mismanaged since 1887.
Miller wrote that “the bleeding would continue” if Interior continues to use its current system because it contains no mechanism to maintain accurate trust records.
Trust data are not secure, and systems are not in place to receive, track or audit the data, he said.
“(Interior) should accept the reality of the situation. Nothing has happened since 1997 that solves the basic problem which is to properly account for the trust account activities of each beneficiary,” he wrote.
Miller’s draft memo marks the most pointed criticism of the Interior Department’s management of the trust from inside the Special Trustee’s office.
“DOI has no awareness of its fiduciary responsibility either on a legal or moral basis,” he wrote. “Decisions are not based on what is best for the beneficiary but what best serves DOI and its decision makers.”
Since 1996, Congress has spent $614 million to fix the fund, which collects about $500 million annually in royalties from oil and gas drilling, timber harvesting and grazing on Indian land, then pays the landowners.
Plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit contend Interior has cost Indian landowners at least $10 billion since the trust fund was established. The government admits money was squandered but says it was much less.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered the Interior Department to overhaul the trust fund’s management and piece together how much the Indians are owed.
Miller said Interior’s efforts to change have been driven by winning the class-action lawsuit filed by the Indian landowners rather than fulfilling its duty to properly account for the money.
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., concurred. He called Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s proposal to create a new bureau to track Indian money a diversion.
“The Interior Department is trying to sell us a bull while assuring us it will produce milk. Its proposed scheme of a new agency to manage the trust responsibility does nothing to address the suffering in Indian Country,” he said in a statement. “In fact it is just a stall tactic while the lawyers focus on winning the lawsuit at all costs.”
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