Billions Owed Indians Debated in Court

Source: Associated Press

Billions Owed Indians Debated in Court
By MARY CLARE JALONICK – 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Interior Department is doing all it can to account for billions of dollars owed to Indian landholders, a department official told a federal court Wednesday in legal arguments over the Indians' 11-year-old lawsuit against the government.

The suit claims the government has mismanaged more than $100 billion in oil, gas, timber and other royalties held in trust from their lands dating back to 1887.

At a hearing in U.S. District Court, James Cason, associate deputy Interior secretary, defended the government's accounting of the Indian trust lands. The department says it has spent more than $127 million on historical accounting of the trust lands since 2003 and is not delaying or trying to limit government liability, as the plaintiffs suggest.

But Cason said the department has a difficult job when Congress is appropriating limited funds for the accounting



Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gROdMVQAH9z-mC2MwbMKM576BOVwD8S6H8401

Slush funds don't grow on trees. Bridges to nowhere and illegal wars cost money, man. Grow up.

11 years, huh? Funny how Congress has been Republican since 1994...

IMO you cannot lay this directly at the feet of the repubs. In 1994 The Dept of Interior Secretary and, I think,the BIA director were appointed by Clinton. That is almost immaterial. This problem has been festering for decades of both Dem and Repub Administrations. It is a travesty of justice regardless of the political party operating the Govt apparatus.

"What, they want their payroll to match the Yankees' just because they beat them?"

Sorry.

I covered this subject for years, and the Interior Department has done all it can to avoid accounting for billions owed to tribes and individual Indians.

During the Clinton Administration, they actually claimed that their records were tainted by the hantavirus, and pretended to ask NASA if they could borrow a space suit to retrieve the documents. I'm not kidding.

But things took a turn for the totally absurd when these gangsters stole the Presidency and inserted the very worst Secretary of the Interior this nation has ever seen in the form of Gale Norton. She repeatedly lied to Congress and to Judge Royce Lamberth on the subject, never met a deadline, never produced anything she was asked to produce, and got away with it thanks to John McCain's chairing of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

My sources on the inside told me that the day Bush took over, all real work on the Indian trust subject ended and the subject fell in the lap of the legal and public relations teams. The Special Trustee, Tom Slonaker, was forced out within a year of their taking over. One of the few Interior employees committed to working on the project, Sharon Blackwell, was kept "in the hole" after September 11th for most of 2002, until she finally resigned.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has rifled through three Assistant Secretaries, but most of the time the leadership post has been vacant because the Bush Administration made it a requirement that the position be filled by someone who has "demonstrated support for the President," in other words donated millions to his campaign. They're hard to find.

There has been not one tangible result in six years in this case. I won't be a bit surprised to learn in thirty years that not one penny was spent on it during the Bush Administration, and that the funds were instead diverted into our various wars.

The B.I.A. was formed for the express purpose of cheating Native Americans out of every last nickle ("Indian Head" no doubt) and protecting the Government and it's agents from any kind of accountability, ever.

I'm Blackfeet. I actually spoke to her at length about it several years ago, and when I was a columnist I wrote a story on it, so yeah, from what little I know from some sources is exactly what you said. Bush took over and all the work ended, not only that, when Norton and Kevin Gover and others were held in contempt Bush tapped the federal government to pay their legal costs. So taxpayers had to pay for these people stonewalling on this. I also know that Hillary wouldn't even set up a meeting with Cobell. She's refused to do it for years. I'm afraid this isn't something that is going to be resolved anytime soon. But yeah I wouldn't be surprised if not one penny was spent either.

not just to first nations folk -- but for the rest of us.

we all need to know what our government does.

Each government since the treaties were made are disgusting the way they are reniging on their agreement. We stole this country from them.