Indian trust settlement bill criticized

By Jodi Rave, Lee Enterprises | Friday, July 22, 2005

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Long-awaited Indian trust legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate was panned Thursday as "a disaster" for Indian people. The bill has been expected to resolve Indian landowners' nearly decadelong class-action lawsuit against the federal government.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, introduced the Indian Trust Reform Act, SB1439, on Wednesday.

Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Interior Department, was at a late-afternoon meeting in Denver when she received a copy of the legislation.

Cobell has been asked to testify about the reform act during a Senate hearing next week. "I want to say some strong things like: This is a disaster. Let's kill it," she said Thursday. "But it will come back to haunt us."

Dorgan defended the legislation. "Both the court of appeals and the Government Accountability Office have encouraged Congress to try to resolve this matter," he said. "This legislation is about hundreds of thousands of Indians who were denied their rights and the money due to them from their land and their natural resources.

"Sen. McCain and I know there are strong opinions on both sides. The introduction of the bill and the upcoming hearing reflect our commitment to work with all parties toward a resolution of this longstanding matter. It is only a starting point."

Chief Jim Gray of the Osage Nation and chairman of the InterTribal Monitoring Association, a trust-reform monitoring group representing 64 tribes, also spoke in support of the legislation.

"Congress has taken a courageous step," he said. "It's the first step to getting some justice to all the individuals and the tribes."

Gray lauded a provision in the bill that would take settlement payments from a claims judgment fund, rather than from the Interior Department. It's still uncertain how much money is owed to individuals, but estimates place it at billions of dollars.

Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians and Gray of the InterTribal Monitoring Association, as well as Cobell, issued the following statement on Thursday: "We are disappointed that most of the 50 trust principles that Indian Country put forth to the committee are not incorporated in the draft legislation. However, we look forward to working with Chairman McCain and Vice Chairman Dorgan and the members of the Committee on Indian Affairs to implement the trust principles that we submitted in June. Those principles are the views of Indian Country. Any legislation that has a hope of gaining the support of Indian Country has to strongly reflect those views."

Although Gray represents tribes' interests, Cobell said she stands by justice for individuals. She said the legislation in its current form has shaken her faith in McCain, who she trusted to bring integrity to resolving the litigation.

"He didn't deliver," Cobell said. "What was sad is he challenged Indian Country to unite and come up with 50 principles as the basis for the legislation. He basically tossed the vast majority of the principles. He took away the court decisions that were victories for us."

The trust principles submitted in June helped guide the drafting of the bill, Dorgan said. "The current language of the bill is not perfect."

Cobell described the legislation as "Interior's bill — it's everything they ever wanted."

The bill "reminded me of the Baker Massacre at Blackfeet when they gave Heavy Runner this piece of paper," Cobell said. "They said, ‘Hold it up. It will keep you safe.'"

A U.S. Cavalry commander later described the 1870 attack against Chief Heavy Runner's village near the Marias River in Montana as "the greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. troops."

McCain has wanted to introduce trust reform legislation for at least the past three years. All parties involved have been seeking resolution to end the suit that brought contempt rulings upon on three Cabinet members — two Interior secretaries and a Treasury secretary — during the Clinton and second Bush administrations. Additionally, two former assistant secretaries of the Bureau of Indian Affairs also were found in contempt of court.

The Interior Department does not dispute that hundreds of thousands of Individual Indian Money accounts have been historically mismanaged.

Cobell filed suit in 1996 after experiencing years of frustration with the Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs' accounting systems. The department and its bureau have managed royalty and lease money earned by more than a half-million Indian landowners for more than a century.

"We're worse off than when we filed this suit," Cobell said Thursday. She said that one of her biggest disappointments is tied to a reform act provision that would negate one of the suit's most significant court victories.

The McCain-Dorgan legislation calls for the Interior secretary to consider payment to landowners' Individual Indian Money accounts dating to between January 1980 and December 2005.

A U.S. Appeals Court decision, however, has ordered a historical accounting of individual accounts dating to 1887. "That's huge for us," Cobell said. "That's our case."

The Senate bill outlined several reasons for expediting the accounting. Congress has already appropriated tens of millions of dollars to provide a historical accounting.

But a historical accounting might not even be possible because necessary records are missing or have been destroyed — in some cases by the U.S. Treasury. The delays have brought considerable hardship to the beneficiaries.

After a recent nine-month mediation failed to resolve the Cobell litigation, McCain and Dorgan called on tribal organizations to help lead a consultation process to gather Indian Country reform views.

Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 406-523-5299 or jodi.rave@lee.net.