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Wednesday April 7, 2004
Indian trust investigator resigns, criticizes Interior
Letter says officials put energy interests ahead of individuals by Deborah Frazier Rocky Mountain News The court-appointed investigator has resigned from the $137 billion Indian trust suit against the Department of Interior, citing the department’s favoritism toward the energy industry.
The 1996 class-action suit alleges the Interior Department has failed since 1887 to account for and pay individual Indian landowners lease fees from oil, gas and coal development and farming and grazing.
Attorney Alan Balaran, appointed special master in the case five years ago, said in his resignation letter that his investigations had found:
“Interior was putting the interests of private energy companies ahead of the interest of individual beneficiaries.”
Balaran said senior Interior officials who have close ties to the energy companies, which could be forced to pay the Indian plaintiffs millions of dollars, have obstructed a fair settlement.
In the resignation letter, Balaran also said he found evidence that the federal agency had failed to monitor oil and gas activity on land owned by individual Indians.
The Interior Department has challenged Balaran’s findings and, in 2003, sought his removal from the case.
Balaran said he was resigning because the case should focus on Interior’s mishandling of funds, not the agency’s efforts to disqualify him.
Interior Department officials and Sen. Ben Nighthorse-Campbell, R-Colo., chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, hadn’t read Balaran’s resignation letter Tuesday and declined to comment.
“Our committee has held hearings on this since 1997, and this is the first I’ve heard about energy companies preventing a settlement,” said Paul Moorehead, Campbell’s spokesman.
Elouise Cobell, the attorney who filed the case, said she regrets Balaran’s resignation, but said it demonstrates how far the Interior Department will go to to avoid a fair settlement.
“We are disturbed that the Bush administration seems determined to remove any court official who is critical of its handling of the individual Indian trust accounts,” she said.
On Monday, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Cobell agreed to have two mediators hold nonbinding settlement negotiations.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who ruled in 1999 that the federal agency had breached its trust responsibility, said he regretfully accepted Balaran’s resignation.
