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Cobell v Norton

This is a class action suit against the federal government regarding mismanagement of IIM [Individual Indian Monies] trust accounts.

This Site first became aware of this IMPORTANT lawsuit (for everyone) when an email with the following article arrived the first of March, 2001. See below this article for Updates (from 3/15/2001 through 10/21/2001) regarding this suit since then.

LEAD PLAINTIFF IN INDIAN LAWSUIT SPEAKS
February 15, 2001
Trying to right a wrong

By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian

MISSOULA (AP) - There's a war room deep in the bowels of the U.S. Department of Justice building named for Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe.
When she talks about the dubious honor, Cobell laughs, partly because she knows it's there, but mostly because the government is on the losing side of the battle.
"This isn't about ego, it's about making the government accountable," Cobell said. "Indian people simply don't know what they own - nobody has ever held the U.S. government accountable."
Cobell is lead plaintiff in the largest lawsuit ever filed by American Indians against the federal government.
And so far, she's won the first round of a two-part case, which has resulted in an overhaul of the government'saccounting system that has for 113 years mismanaged billions of dollars in land assets belonging to roughly 500,000 Indians and their heirs.
Now, she and all of the Indian nations are waiting for the trial to begin in which they hope to recover more than $10 billion in land, gas, oil, water and timber leases they believe are theirs and were denied them because of poor accounting practices, and is some case, no accounting.
Cobell gave the seventh annual Native American Lecture at the University of Montana last Thursday. In her talk "Indian Nations: Empowerment and Asset Building in Communities," she discussed the lawsuit but also the lessons she's learned from it.
"When people don't know their assets, don't know what land they own and what's on top and what's underneath they have nothing to leverage," she said. "If you can't take it to the bank, you miss out on an entire quality of life."
Cobell said she is confident that Indians will win back the billions of dollars owed to them, but there is no date set for the trial, and the money may not be handed over any time soon.
"The problem is that nobody in government wants this to be resolved on their watch," she said.
In the meantime, members of the Blackfeet Tribe, like Cobell, are working to lay the foundations for the community's future.
For the first time, the U.S. government will have an accurate Indian land and land assets database, and the Blackfeet will know for the first time what they own and what it is worth.
"We have a new beginning," Cobell said. "From this point on we have accountability."
And because of that, Indians are looking forward to a new world of unfettered possibilities.
"It's such an exciting time for people who are building communities," Cobell said. "On the Blackfeet Reservation we have the ability to really control growth, but healthy growth, I think, because of our location. I see so many opportunities for our young people to come home to. In banking alone, we need bankers and loan officers. We need environmentalists, we need naturalists and people who are experienced in land management."
The bitter pill is knowing that so many tribal members who are now dead had to live in destitution because they were not given what was owed them, Cobell said.
"We should all have been living middle-class lifestyles. There's no reason people on reservations should be living in poverty," she said. "It's going to take time and I don't expect to see visible results in my lifetime, but my grandchildren will."
In coming months and years, Cobell envisions her community as one that begins to reinvent itself with the power of ownership.
"It's freedom," she said. "There are assets everywhere you look and when you get to start from the very beginning it's empowering - you have such pride, you know who you are because you know where you've been."

Found the Original Article in The Missoulian, February 15, 2001

UPDATES
*All Press Releases and Articles have been sent by and are posted at www.indiantrust.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
3/15/2001. DESTRUCTION OF INDIAN TRUST DOCUMENTS REPORTED BY 16 FEDERAL RESERVE BANKS AND BRANCHES. Plaintiffs: Investigation by Court-Appointed Special Master Is "Imperative"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
3/16/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - The BIA's senior official in charge of overhauling individual Indian trust account data management has admitted that the Interior Department's trust reform efforts are "slowly, but surely imploding" and that an implementation plan submitted to a federal judge was based on "wishful thinking and rosy projections." And more. An excellent article.

Panel Criticizes Indian Trust Plan
3/21/2001. Washington Post: House Members Worry U.S. Won't Fully Account for Assets

Norton Hit on Indian Trust Funds
4/11/2001. Washington Post: Motion Alleges Workers Lack Assurances on Whistle-Blowing. TO READ COURT DOCUMENTS: www.indiantrust.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
4/16/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - JUDGE APPOINTS "COURT MONITOR" TO REVIEW TRUST REFORM AT INTERIOR. See also: Article By Robert Gehrke, Associated Press, 4/16/2001.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
4/17/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - SPECIAL MASTER FINDS FEDERAL RESERVE CULPABLE FOR "PROFOUNDLY TROUBLING" DESTRUCTION OF INDIAN TRUST DOCUMENTS.

DENVER POST EDITORIAL
4/19/2001. Indians find powerful ally
Thursday, April 19, 2001 - There's a reason our U.S. Constitution established an independent court system, in which judges make decisions based on the law and not on political convenience. . . . . (read on)

New York Times Editorial
4/30/2001. Redeeming a Historic Trust

Plaintiffs' Motion to File Under Seal
(Copy of the Motion in PDF format. Adobe Reader needed)
5/17/2001. The Cobell plaintiffs have filed court papers outlining serious security concerns at the Office of Information Resources Management in Reston, VA. The plaintiffs have asked the judge to place these sensitive papers under seal. The plaintiffs also asked that Secretary Norton be held in contempt of court for these security lapses.
Just posted at www.indiantrust.com.

Associated Press
5/18/2001. By Robert Gehrke, WASHINGTON (AP) Judge asked to hold Norton in contempt in Indian trust lawsuit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/30/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. INTERIOR AND TREASURY DROP FURTHER APPEAL OF INDIAN TRUST VICTORY
Deadline Passes for Seeking Review by U.S. Supreme Court

DENVER POST EDITORIAL
6/04/2001. Fix Indian trust fund mess
. . . . . . . over the decades, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (which is part of the Interior Department) and the U.S. Treasury badly bungled the job, mingling money from the various accounts and losing track of how much individual Indians were owed. . . . . . (read on)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Philip Smith (202-661-6350)
6/06/2001. SENATE COMMITTEE'S REVIEW OF FEDERAL MISMANAGEMENT RANKS INDIAN TRUST FIASCO ONE OF WASHINGTON'S "TEN WORST"
Interior's Mishandling of Funds Joins Pentagon Waste, Medicare Fraud As Glaring Examples of Need for Reform http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/vol1.pdf

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
6/22/2001. HOUSE APPROPRIATORS, FED UP WITH INTERIOR'S DELAYS, SIGNAL END OF PATIENCE ON TRUST FUND ACCOUNTING
"No Interest" in Funding a Department Plan That Won't Work, Panel Says
Contact: Philip Smith (202-661-6350)

Committee's report - full text
6/22/2001. A clearly irritated House Appropriations Committee says it won't give Interior another dollar for a statistical sampling plan that won't work.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
7/12/2001. COURT MONITOR SAYS INTERIOR IN VIOLATION OF ORDER FOR FULL TRUST ACCOUNTING
Department's Progress Is at "Ground Zero,"Despite Promises to Judge
A federal monitor, appointed to evaluate the truthfulness of Interior Department statements to a U.S. District Court judge, says the department has made no progress . . . . . . . . . .

Indian Trust Press Release
7/27/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - SPECIAL MASTER'S OPINION: INTERIOR HAS ROUTINELY DESTROYED E-MAILS RELATED TO INDIAN TRUST LITIGATION
officials have routinely destroyed e-mails sought by Indian plaintiffs in individual Indian trust litigation . . . . . . . . . a court-appointed official has found.. . . . . . . . . .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
8/06/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - COBELL PLAINTIFFS ASK JUDGE TO SET DATE FOR TRIAL ON TRUST ACCOUNTING
Interior, Treasury Have "Utterly Failed to Even Begin" Restatement of Accounts Ordered by Court in 1999 . . . . . . . . . plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to set Jan. 8, 2002 for a trial to determine the amount owed by the government for more than a century of trust mismanagement . . . . . . . . .

THREE IMPORTANT NEWS ARTICLES
8/10/2001
:
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Babbitt Misled Judge About New System
WASHINGTON POST: Interior Dept. Misled Court On Reforms
INDIANZ.COM: Court report criticizes trust fund software
[Copy of Indianz.com article - text file Here]

THREE MORE IMPORTANT NEWS ARTICLES
8/15/2001
:
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Treasury Department Retrained Lawyers After Rubin Was Cited in Case, Papers Say
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: U.S. agency admits errors in Indian case; Records destroyed on cash payouts
INDIANZ.COM: Light punishment for destroyed trust fund records
[Copy of Indianz.com article - text file Here]

DENVER POST EDITORIAL
8/17/2001. No more delays on trust fund
Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows the U.S. Interior and Treasury departments did not keep proper tabs on the accounts and cannot explain what happened to billions of dollars in mineral royalties, grazing fee payments, etc., due the Indians. . . . . . (read on)

DENVER POST
8/19/2001. A tale of deceit, abuse in D.C.
Report: Interior lied about system tracking Indian trust accounts By Bill McAllister, Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief

THE SEATTLE TIMES
8/21/2001. 300,000 Indians cheated by incompetent feds
A shameful tale of greed, incompetence and bureaucratic menace gets uglier with each new revelation in court.

DENVER POST
8/22/2001. Lawyer urges Interior misconduct probe
By Bill McAllister, Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief - In a stunning reversal, the Interior Department's top lawyer has called for an internal investigation into whether senior Bush and Clinton administration officials have engaged in misconduct in fighting a lawsuit over Indian trust accounts.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
8/27/2001. Plaintiffs press judge to hold Norton, other government officials in contempt
WASHINGTON (AP) _ A judge is being pressed to find Interior Secretary Gale Norton and other officials in contempt for allegedly misrepresenting their efforts to fix a trust fund that squandered royalties from American Indian lands. ROBERT GEHRKE, Associated Press Writer.

PARADE
9/09/2001. The Sunday newspaper magazine Parade featured Eloise Cobell and the IIM [Individual Indian Monies] trust accounts suit. The above link is to HTML pages on this site of the Parade cover story.    www.indiantrust.com had them posted as PDF files on their site and here they are: PARADE: page 1 (3MB),   page 2 (950KB),   page 3 (423KB).

COBELL HEARING
9/11/2001. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has scheduled a hearing for 11 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 13, in the Cobell v. Norton litigation.

WEB ALERT
9/12/2001. Judge Lamberth has cancelled the hearing scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 13, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
We will let you know as soon as the hearing has been rescheduled.
[Note: this is the total text of this Web Alert.]

WEB ALERT
9/13/2001. The Interior Department's top lawyer, Solicitor William G. Myers, has banned two Interior attorneys - Timothy S. Elliott and Edith R. Blackwell - from further involvement with the Cobell litigation and any related individual Indian trust matters . . . . .

WEB ALERT
9/17/2001. We have just posted the Court Monitor's 3rd Report at www.indiantrust.com

COBELL PRESS RELEASE
9/17/2001. COURT MONITOR FINDS BIA TRUST DATA CLEANUP IN "DISARRAY"
Interior's "Dissembling" Quarterly Reports Designed to Mislead Judge Lamberth; Clean-up Completion May Take Decades
To read the Court Monitor's report, go to www.indiantrust.com

WEB ALERT
9/26/2001. The Cobell plaintiffs have asked the Special Master to impose sanctions on Secretary Norton for her intention to disclose the confidential financial data of individual Indian trust beneficiaries, in violation of a Court order.

WEB ALERT
9/28/2001. The Cobell plaintiffs won two legal victories today in Washington, D.C. in rulings issued by the court-appointed Special Master, Alan L. Balaran.

WEB ALERT
10/01/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On Friday (9/28), Judge Lamberth denied a motion by Treasury arguing that it has corrected its behavior.

Associated Press
10/01/2001. By Robert Gehrke, WASHINGTON (AP) Court-appointed investigator recommends judge hold Norton in contempt for not complying with a court order meant to protect whistle-blowers.

WEB ALERT
10/16/2001. We have just posted the court-appointed federal monitor's latest report to Judge Lamberth, made public this morning. You can find it at www.indiantrust.com. The report is severely critical of Secretary Norton.

Press Release
10/16/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - A court-appointed federal monitor charged today that a report on supposed Indian trust reform progress submitted last month by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to a federal judge is "untruthful" and that her department's internal process to verify the accuracy of the report was a "charade."

WEB ALERT
10/19/2001. We have just posted at www.indiantrust.com a Supplemental Report by the Court Monitor to Judge Lamberth, released today.
Based on a recent memo from Special Trustee Tom Slonaker to Court Monitor Joseph S. Kieffer III, Kieffer concludes that lawyers from the Justice and Interior Departments played a key role in the filing of false reports to Judge Lamberth about the alleged progress of trust reform.

Press Release
10/19/2001. WASHINGTON, D.C. - COBELL PLAINTIFFS ASK JUDGE TO TAKE CONTROL OF INDIVIDUAL INDIAN TRUST, SEEK CONTEMPT CHARGES AGAINST 39 AT INTERIOR AND JUSTICE

DENVER POST EDITORIAL
10/21/2001. "Shameful Behavior" by a former Colorado attorney general


Updates Continued FROM 12/10/2001 THRU 2002


YOU CAN HELP

All Press Releases, plaintiffs' motions, Statement of Facts, and newspaper articles are posted at www.indiantrust.com


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