Enter your email address below to receive Indian Trust updates by email.
Friday June 24, 2005
Trust matters – Money and Indian unity
by ShowSuzan n Harjo Columnist Indian Country Today Washington politicos and pressies followed the Indian money into two D.C. events during the week of June 20.
The first event was a press conference where a coalition of Indian leaders unveiled principles for a proposed congressional settlement of the Indian trust funds lawsuit that is forcing the federal government to account for the billions of dollars of Indian monies it has controlled for over 150 years.
The Indian leaders are engaged in a serious, concerted effort that deserves to succeed.
The second event was a hearing where leaders of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee unmasked dummy corporations and other underhanded techniques used by Washington lobbyists to separate their client tribes from $80 million. Some of that money paid for trips and favorite causes of members of Congress, most prominently House Speaker Tom DeLay, R-Texas, but the House Ethics Committee is dealing with that.
Senate Indian Affairs Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Vice Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., are laying the foundation for a likely Justice Department case against the lobbyists and their cohorts, who deserve everything that’s coming to them.
The lobbyists won’t be punished for one of their worst offenses because it’s not actionable. At the same time that they were luxuriating in tribal millions, they were e-mailing each other and calling the tribal
leaders ”monkeys” and ”troglodytes.” One can only
wonder what they might have called the tribal people outside the constraints of the written word.
Both the press conference and the hearing are about Indians being bilked out of their money, but there’s something else linking them.
Increasingly in recent times, national Indian efforts have been weakened or thwarted by one, two or a dozen tribes striking out on their own for a better deal; not for everyone, but for themselves only.
The backstory to this series of Senate hearings is that certain tribal leaders paid top dollar to bottom feeders to do the dirty work of elevating their tribes by keeping others down. While a few of these tribal leaders are victims, others are just being portrayed as victims in order to get the pit bulls off the streets.
By contrast, the trust funds lawsuit and the settlement principles are united Indian efforts to gain some justice and some cash for Indian people who own property and haven’t seen all or any income from leases and sales handled by the federal government.
Both Interior and Treasury officials have been held in contempt of the federal district court’s attempts to make the government accountable, and the case has the federal departments on the ropes.
Over the course of nine years of litigation, some tribal leaders have joined forces with federal bureaucrats and politicians to try to kill the trust funds case by legislative fiat. They have lobbyists and lawyers on their payroll who will soon start circling the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and other congressional offices with the hope of undermining legislation based on the proposed principles.
The 50 proposed principles were drafted by Indian leaders and lawyers in meetings throughout Indian country. They were announced by a broad-based coalition that includes the lead plaintiff in the trust funds case, Elouise Cobell, who also is a Blackfeet banker; National Congress of American Indians President Tex Hall, who also is chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations; Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association Chairman Jim Gray, who also is Chief of the Osage Nation; Sharon Clahchischilliage, who is executive director of the Navajo Nation’s Washington office; and John Echohawk, Pawnee, who is director of the Native American Rights Fund.
There have been attempts to settle the trust funds case before. NARF attorney and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, Keith Harper, Cherokee, told me in an interview in 2001 that ”Interior and the plaintiffs had an agreement in principle on some very difficult negotiations that lasted for the entire summer of 2000.”
Former Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover, Pawnee, described the outcome of that settlement effort to me in this way: ”Justice put the kibosh on it because they had made a calculation that they were going to win the appeal.”
It turned out that the Justice lawyers miscalculated and lost the appeal they counted on winning. At that point, shots at the lawsuit intensified, especially in the House of Representatives. Another effort to resolve the case was derailed in 2002 when Interior and Justice broke off settlement talks.
This latest effort was initiated by McCain, Dorgan, House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif. and ranking member Nick Rahall, D-W.Va. They asked for guiding principles for a fair legislative resolution of the case.
The Trust Reform and Cobell Settlement Workgroup described their Principles for Legislation as ”the basis for resolving the nine-year court battle in Cobell v. Norton concerning the federal government’s failure to account for trust funds held for American Indians and for reforming the federal government’s system for tribal and individual trust management.”
The principles are grouped in four areas: accounting of individual Indian trust accounts; reforming Indian individual and tribal trust systems; Indian land consolidation; and individual Indian resources mismanagement claims.
The principles proposed by the workgroup are elegant and comprehensive. They’re the best idea so far and there’s not likely to be a better one.
The senators and representatives should close their doors to the tribal leaders and their paid naysayers who don’t like these principles but don’t have any of their own.
It’s too late to do anything for the Indian people who died in poverty and in debt when they should have lived a life of wealth or comfort.
It’s almost too late for many poor Indians who should be rich Indians, or who should at least have indoor plumbing.
Tribal leaders who are considering pouring money into Washington lobbyists’ pockets to fight legislation based on the proposed principles should instead put it in the hands of their tribal people who need it and may not live to see any settlement monies.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C. and a columnist for Indian Country Today.
