by Billy House
Republic Washington Bureau
The Arizona Republic
WASHINGTON – Thomas Slonaker, the special trustee for American Indians who has clashed with the Bush administration over fixing the government’s historically mismanaged Indian trust fund system, has resigned.
His resignation, effective Tuesday, comes after a special court monitor declared in a May 5 report that Interior Secretary Gail Norton hasn’t given Slonaker the support he needed to fulfill his fund oversight duties. Slonaker took over the job in the final months of the Clinton administration.
“It has been my pleasure to serve two presidents of the United States as the special trustee for American Indians,” Slonaker, who is from Phoenix, wrote in his resignation letter to President Bush.
“While I have appreciated the opportunity to serve this administration, I am resigning my position to pursue other interests, effective today.”
In a statement released by the Interior Department, Slonaker added, “I have worked diligently to highlight a number of important issues that must be resolved for trust reform to be successful in the long term.”
Norton, in her own prepared statement, thanked Slonaker for his service and wished him well. She also announced that Donna Erwin, the deputy special trustee for projects and operations, is being appointed acting special trustee.
The Interior Department has held American Indian-owned lands in trust since 1887, leasing the properties and managing revenues.
In 1996, a group of Native American beneficiaries filed a class-action lawsuit, contending that shoddy bookkeeping over the decades has caused the government to lose track of billions of dollars owed and to whom.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs continues to hold in trust about 11 million acres. Some valuable oil and gas leases pay thousands of dollars a month.
In 1999, a federal district judge found then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in civil contempt for not producing records and documents on the trusts they initially said they would produce. Many had been lost or destroyed. The judge also ordered the Interior and Treasury departments to begin piecing together how much is owed.
But Slonaker, as the special trustee for the funds, ran afoul of Norton when he refused to vouch for a quarterly progress report on efforts toward fixing the management of the funds. His testimony proved damaging to Norton and other top Interior officials during yet another contempt hearing earlier this year.
Slonaker’s departure from the post created by Congress to provide independent oversight of the Indian money, prompted concern from advocates and admirers.
Keith Harper, a lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund, said, “This is clearly a penalization, a retaliation, for him telling the truth.”
“Mr. Slonaker’s resignation is just one more sign that legislation is clearly necessary to cause reform to the Interior Department’s management of Indian trust funds,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
“It’s shameful that we can work to reform corporate America, yet we cannot resolve a century-old problem of returning Indian money to its beneficiaries.”
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