HOUSE APPROVES SETTLEMENT IN NATIVE AMERICAN TRUST FUND CASE

Local representatives split on votes
 

By Miriam Raftery
 

December 4, 2010 (San Diego’s East County)—By a 256-152 vote, the House of Representatives has approved the Claims Settlement Act of 2010, which will provide $3.4 billion to settle a lawsuit which alleged federal mismanagement and loss of billions of dollars in trust funds for Indian tribes and individual Native Americans. Arizona Senator John McCain, former chair of the Senate committee on Indian Affairs, has called the government’s mismanagement “theft from Indian people” and declared that Native Americans are “rightfully owed the money.”

Although the measure had bipartisan support, among San Diego’s Congressional representatives, Republicans Duncan Hunter and Brian Bilbray voted against the settlement. Democrats Susan Davis and Bob Filner voted for it, while Republican Darrell Issa did not vote. 

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill, which would settle what has been called largest and longest lasting financial scandal in the history of the U.S. government.

It is unclear why some San Diego representatives opposed the measure. However a local tribal insider, speaking on background, said he does not believe any local tribal members are included in the settlement, since San Diego tribal lands have not been leased for mineral or timber rights.  Native Americans living in San Diego who belong to other tribes included in the settlement, however, stand to share in the settlement funds.
 

A lawsuit filed in 1996 alleged that Bush administration officials, including Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, engaged in illegal conduct regarding money held in trust accounts managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But the scandal began long before then.
 

“The BIA has spent more than 100 years mismanaging, diverting, and losing money that belongs to Indians,” John Echohawk, director of the Native American Rights Fund, told Congress.
 

Those funds include accounts for over 300,000 individual Native Americans, as well as about 2,000 tribal accounts owned by some 200 tribes. The funds contain monies owned by the Indians including royalties from oil, timber, grazing and other uses of Native American lands.
 

Following numerous complaints and pressure from Congress, the BIA hired Arthur Anderson & Co. to audit tribal accounts as well as a random sample of 17,000 individual Indians’ accounts.
 

The results were shocking. Anderson was unable to reconcile any of the 17,000 individual accounts. Of the tribal accounts, in just one 20 year period (1973-1992), the auditors found that at least $2.4 billion was unaccounted for—and billions more were virtually untraceable. Many of the Indians from whom the funds were taken are among the poorest people in the nation.

In 1996, banker Elouise Cobell filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government. Worn down after 13 years in court, plaintiffs agreed to a settlement far lower than what they believed was just in order to assure some payment to individuals in need, as well as improvements in procedures for the future.
 

The settlement includes a $1.5 billion fund to be distributed to individual class members to compensate them for their lost assets. It also establishes a $1.9 billion fund for voluntary buy-back and consolidation of fractionated lands. Individual Indians will have opportunities to receive cash payment for transfers of divided ownership interests to their tribal governments, where the lands will remain in trust for the benefit of tribal communities. In addition, transfers will trigger government payments into a $60 million Indian scholarship fund. Additionally, a new commission will be set up to devise reforms for managing Native American trust funds in a more transparent manner for the future.

That settlement required ratification by Congress. The Senate first approved the terms (both California Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein voted in favor), before being passed by the House on November 30th.
 

Cobell called the action a monumental step “to remove a stain on our national honor, and create a better future for Indians as our government begins to make some amends for grave past injustices.”
 

Ken Salazar, the current Secretary of the Interior, hailed the settlement as “nothing short of historic for Indian nations.” He said the settlements “honorably and responsibly address long-standing injustices and represent a major step forward in President Obama’s agenda to empower tribal governments, fulfill our trust responsibilities to tribal members and help tribal leaders build safe, stronger, healthier and more prosperous communities.”
 

The President will host the second White House Tribal Nations Conference on December 16 to strengthen commitment for a “nation-to-nation relationship with Indian country,” said David Hayes, a former SDG&E lobbyist who now serves as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. “Native Americans must be full partners in our nation’s economy, thrive in safe communities, and have equal access to quality education and health care.”