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." For more information, visit www.indiantrust.com. To subscribe to the Indian Trust mailing list, paste the following link into your browser: http://www.indiantrust.com/