FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 6, 2002
www.indiantrust.com

COBELL CALLS FOR CONGRESSIONAL BACKING
TO PLACE INDIVIDUAL INDIAN TRUST IN RECEIVERSHIP

Court Supervision, Professional Management Are "Only Rational Solution"


WASHINGTON, D.C. - Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in class action 
litigation to force reform of the failed Individual Indian Monies (IIM) 
trust, called on Congress today to support placing the trust in temporary, 
court-supervised receivership until more than a century of government 
mismanagement and neglect can be overhauled.

Testifying before the House Committee on Resources, Cobell, a member of 
the Blackfeet Nation and a Browning, Montana, banker, called receivership 
"the only rational solution" to overcoming the repeated failure of the 
Secretaries of Interior and Treasury to either manage the trust 
professionally or comply with court orders and Congressional urging to 
clean it up.

"Congress has appropriated more than $614 million for trust reform since 
1996," Cobell said, "and it has gotten virtually nothing in return - no 
accounting of Individual Indian Trust monies, no rehabilitation of the 
woeful system, no improvement in information technology.

"The court and the Congress have not even gotten the truth from the 
Interior Secretary, in part because she and her advisors do not know the 
truth and lack the qualifications and skill to learn the truth before they 
inflict more irreparable harm on individual Indian trust beneficiaries."

Norton and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb currently 
are on trial in federal court here on five counts of contempt for ignoring 
a judge's 1999 order to reform the trust, submitting false quarterly 
reports about their supposed progress and failing to safeguard computerized 
trust accounting data.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth is weighing a request by the plaintiffs 
in Cobell v. Norton to take the IIM trust out of Interior's Bureau of 
Indian Affairs and place it temporarily in the hands of a receiver. Cobell 
asked today that Congress, which passed trust reform legislation in 1994, 
express strong support for the move.

"Now is the time for the Congress to send a clear signal that waste, fraud 
and malfeasance are unacceptable and that it wants honorable, fit, 
experienced managers in charge of fixing this badly broken mechanism," said 
Cobell. "This is a chance for all of us to stand up for financial and 
professional accountability.
"I believe strongly that further appropriations for trust reform should be 
fenced in, to be used by a receiver and not the failed programs of the past 
or defense of the indefensible litigation. The Individual Indian Trust 
should be put in the intensive care of a receiver supervised by Judge 
Lamberth until it has been rehabilitated fully and restored to health."

After the IIM trust is restored to a high standard of competence, Cobell 
said,  "it is crucial that [it] remain well-managed in conformity with the 
duties of a true fiduciary and, therefore, is, above all, free of politics a
nd bureaucratic fumbling.. Instead of underwriting nonexistent trust reform, 
a skilled trustee for the Individual Indian Trust - protected from politics 
and funded with permanent and indefinite appropriations - could hire the 
proficient managers desperately needed to ensure prudent management of this 
multi-billion dollar trust.  The goal here is simple: stop playing politics 
with our money and our people."

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