The story gets consistantly buried. The numbers keep changing. Varios Government officials avoid going to jail. The Government is consistantly held in contempt. The records dissapear. The computers are mysteriously shut down. The courts are repeatedly lied to. And one fact remains the same: Many tens of BILLIONS were collected by the Government and never distributed to the rightful owners. This huge amout of money remains unaccounted for. The agencies that had it have no idea where it went, but know it did not go the the people whos money it really was. This stoy is just the tip of a huge criminal taking of a vast sum of money.
Pressure Building to Settle Indian Suit
Jul 30, 9:22 PM (ET)
By ROBERT GEHRKE
(AP) Interior Secretary Gale Norton speaks during a news conference in Washington, June 10, 2003. A…
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Pressure is building to settle a 7-year-old court battle between the Interior Department and American Indians who allege the government squandered proceeds from their land.
“There are actually people dying waiting for their money, so we have to start moving this thing and start cutting checks,” Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said after a hearing Wednesday to explore the issue.
The lawsuit stems from the Interior Department’s management of oil, gas, timber and grazing royalties from Indian lands over the last century. A group of Indians sued in 1996, claiming the department misappropriated and mismanaged billions of dollars owed to the Indian landowners.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the Interior Department had breached its trust responsibility and ordered the government to account for what should have been paid to the Indians. But in more than three years since Lamberth’s ruling, little progress has been made and Lamberth is considering whether the department can meet the task.
In the meantime, the lawsuit has diverted money and attention from social services for Indians, said John Berrey, chairman of the Quapaw Tribe.
“The people who are really suffering from this case are the very people this case is about. My people are suffering,” he said.
Donald Gray, an attorney who helps rehabilitate mismanaged trusts, said the problem is that the Interior Department doesn’t have the expertise to solve the problem, but both the department and Indian tribes have resisted allowing experts in the field to do the work.
“We have a patient who is dying on the table,” he said. “The cures are scattered around the operating room … but nobody will let the doctor in.”
Gray said the Senate should appoint a team of trust experts, forensic accountants and Indian law experts who can make sense of the data available and act as mediators for the Indian claims.
John Echohawk, the executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, which is representing the Indian plaintiffs, said that even though settlement talks have proven fruitless five times, the plaintiffs remain open to the prospect of a mediated settlement.
He said any mediator would have to have political clout and stature to be beyond reproach and be able to keep negotiations on track.
Gray suggested William Cohen, President Clinton’s defense secretary and a former Republican senator who was chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. Campbell said Cohen would be ideal.
The Interior Department has said it will take five years and cost $335 million to account for all the Indian payments. Associate Deputy Secretary James Cason told the committee that, based on limited studies, the department suspects the accounts are off by a few million dollars at the most.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs say $176 billion should have been paid to the Indians, and estimate that their clients could be owed tens of billions of dollars.
“Our ballpark is in the low millions, based on what we know, and the plaintiffs’ ballpark is $176 billion,” Cason said. “It doesn’t seem like we’re in the same realm to begin negotiations.”
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