by Mike Soraghan
Denver Post
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration and congressional Republicans have given Interior Secretary Gale Norton a temporary reprieve from what she has described as the most vexing problem of her tenure – the Indian trust case.
The Senate gave final approval Monday night to a deal, hustled through Congress in a spending bill, delaying for at least a year a judge’s order that the federal government conduct a full accounting of botched records of Indians dating back to 1887. Norton has estimated the accounting will cost between $6 billion and $12 billion.
“This language puts things on hold,” Norton said in an interview with reporters for Western newspapers. “There is now a one-year time frame for the parties to address the problems in this case.”
The deal angered the plaintiffs, who have fought the Interior Department through two presidential administrations. They called it an end-run around a court decision in their favor, but they said that’s exactly why it won’t work.
Attorney Dennis Gingold said constitutional separation of powers prevents Congress from interfering in a lawsuit.
“It’s unconstitutional,” Gingold said. “It has about as much effect as a cup of Starbucks coffee.”
The plaintiffs, led by Blackfoot Indian Elouise Cobell, assert that the government grossly mismanaged some 300,000 trust accounts containing payments due Indians for grazing, timber, oil drilling and other property rights.
In the latest of a series of Indian victories, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in September ordered Interior to conduct an exhaustive accounting of Native American claims – a process that both sides in the case say could take years, and consume hundreds of millions of dollars, before a single award is made.
The one-year suspension imposed by Congress says that that accounting cannot begin during the current fiscal year.
It passed narrowly in the House after House Resources chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., tried to strip it out. Pombo said the measure should have had a thorough airing in his committee rather than being stuck in a spending bill at the last minute.
The suspension nixes the proposal of Senate Indian Affairs Chairman Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the only Indian in the Senate, who’d proposed a voluntary settlement and arbitration process that Native Americans could use to settle their claims.
But Gingold said Campbell, R-Colo., voted for the one-year suspension as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Its odd for the only elected Indian in the Senate to vote against Indians,” Gingold said. “I guess when the White House tells you how to vote, you vote.”
Campbell’s spokesman on Indian matters, Paul Moorehead, did not return calls Monday.
Norton said the Interior Department deliberately kept its distance from the measure, letting the White House staff handle congressional relations on the matter. But she acknowledged that her department wasn’t completely removed.
“We certainly provided information to (Congress) on the impact on our budget,” Norton said.
“If you look at historical accounting, that is money going to accountants, not to Native Americans.”
Gingold, however, said he believes that Norton personally lobbied for the provision, which Interior spokesman Dan DuBray called “absolutely incorrect.”
for more information: click here
|
