300,000 Indians cheated by incompetent feds 

The Seattle Times

August 21, 2001

A shameful tale of greed, incompetence and bureaucratic menace gets 
uglier with each new revelation in court.
 
The U.S. government, through the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian 
Affairs and the Treasury Department, has mishandled epic sums of money 
held in trust for Native Americans. 

The time is ripe for the government to hang its head and start writing 
checks. A prudent withdrawal is the only saving grace for taxpayers. 

As many as 300,000 Indians have been cheated out of lease and royalty 
receipts collected on reservation lands. After the fits and starts of 
a five-year trial, no one seems to disagree. 

Certainly not U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who presides over the 
trial, and at various times has had to horse-whip the federal 
government to cooperate. During the Clinton years, Interior Secretary 
Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were cited for 
contempt of court. 

Indian plaintiffs in a class-action suit estimate the government owes 
as much as $10 billion. Government lawyers say, with a straight face, 
that provable amounts are much less. 

In addition to 100 years of botched record-keeping, the federal 
government was caught destroying 162 boxes of payment records, checks 
and financial documents related to Native-American trust accounts. 

Court records unsealed last week revealed that Treasury Department 
attorneys involved received light punishment, and 2,000 attorneys were 
given retraining in legal ethics and federal court rules. 

Considering the breach of faith, and the stakes, the reaction comes off 
as almost smug and cavalier. No one lost their job. 

No one would have learned of the details if the publishers of the Wall 
Street Journal had not pressed the court. 

The wholesale destruction occurred at a Treasury Department facility 
while Rubin was under a contempt-of-court order because he failed to 
produce documents sought by tribal attorneys. 

This case represents a violation of trust stretching over 100 years. 
Payments are owed and long overdue. Years of stalling and duplicitous 
government behavior only compound the insult and injury. 

Do what it takes to settle a historic wrong driven by what the judge 
described as greed for tribal land holdings and a quest to eradicate 
their culture. This is an opportunity for the Bush administration and 
Interior Secretary Gale Norton to be the new broom that sweeps clean. 

Every penny owed ought to be paid with contrition and humility.