by Cindy Yurth
Navajo Times
WINDOW ROCK, August 23, 2007
A leader of federal trust land allottees on the Navajo Nation said Wednesday recent attempts by the Special Trustee for American Indians to locate 70,000 Native Americans who have unclaimed trust accounts amount to little more than face-saving for the feds.
“Every so many years they publish this list of ‘whereabouts unknown’ trustees,” said Ervin Chavez, president of Shi Shi Keyah, an association of Navajos with mineral or right-of-way royalties being held in trust by the federal government.
“If they were serious, they’d hire someone to find these people,” Chavez said. “It’s not that hard.”
Instead, said Chavez, “They send out press releases saying they’re looking for people, sit at their nice desks and wait for people to call.”
In the case of Chavez, whose name once turned up on the “whereabouts unknown” list, they could have looked in the phone book. The San Juan County commissioner is not exactly a recluse.
The simple way to find Natives, Chavez argued, would be to leave it to the local agencies.
“If you know Harry Begay used to live in Crownpoint, you drive out to Crownpoint, find his distant relative, and say, ‘Where is Harry Begay?'” Chavez said. “The relative will say, ‘Oh, Harry Begay. He moved to Salt Lake City.'”
Virginia Moore, one of two fiduciary trust officers at the OST’s Gallup office, said that’s exactly the kind of thing they do.
“We’re constantly on the road trying to find people,” Moore said. “We’ve held meetings at all 110 chapters, we go to all the powwows, we set up a booth at the Navajo Nation Fair.”
Then why the long list of unclaimed accounts?
“We have some very old cases,” she said. “Some people don’t tell us when they move. Some people are aware they have an account, but it’s so small because of fractionation (being divided among many heirs) that they don’t bother to claim it.”
Chavez added that it could also be because even once a Native finds out he’s on the list, it’s not a simple matter to retrieve his money.
“They want you to send in all kinds of documentation to prove you are who you say you are,” Chavez said. “Certificate of Indian blood, birth certificate, baptismal record … If you’re Peter Begay from out in the middle of the rez and you’re owed $100, you might just hang up the phone and say, ‘Forget this. It’s not worth $100.'”
Moore countered that it’s not that difficult, especially if the allottees come in to an OST or BIA office in person. “Just know your census number, have your certificate of Indian blood and a picture ID,” she said.
She added that the feds’ efforts to locate allottees are working – 15,300 Natives with trust accounts were found in fiscal 2006, and, with two months remaining in fiscal 2007, the OST has tracked down some 15,600.
About 6,000 Navajos are on the government’s rolls of allottees, collecting a total of $8 million a year in oil, gas and other royalties. It averages $1,333 per allottee, although some collect as little as a few cents because the mineral rights have been subdivided among so many heirs over the years.
Another 4,000 are on the “whereabouts unknown” list, and have a total of over $2 million coming to them, according to Moore. If you suspect you or someone you know might be on the list, visit www.doi.gov/ost/iim/index.html or call 1-800-678-6836.
You can also stop in the Gallup OST office (room 164 of the federal building), or call the office at 505-863-8238. Any BIA agency office or the Federal Indian Minerals Office in Farmington, 800-238-2839, also has the list of missing allottees.
There are Navajo speakers at the Gallup OST office and at the OST’s toll-free number, Moore said.
In other federal allotment news, Shi Shi Keyah is planning a lawsuit on behalf of several Navajo families whose land includes rights-of-way for which they feel they are being inadequately compensated.
And the massive Cobell v. Kempthorne lawsuit, demanding an accurate accounting of all 500,000 individual Indian trust accounts, is coming up for trial Oct. 10 before U.S. District Judge James Robertson.
By the Interior Department’s own estimates, the federal government owes individual Indian trust account holders between $10 and $40 billion. Some independent estimates are still higher.
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