Indian trust fund lawsuit
Tip of the iceberg
By Stephanie Hedgecoke
On Jan. 6, lawyers acting on behalf of over 300,000 Native
Americans made a federal court filing of voluminous
documentation showing that the U.S. government has stolen some
$137.2 billion of Indian Trust Fund monies since 1887. Backed
by massive proof, this is the single biggest lawsuit ever filed
against the U.S. government for fiscal wrongdoing.
Elouise Cobell, a Blackfoot woman from Montana, filed the
initial class action lawsuit in 1996. The United States thought
the case would fail due to insufficient documentation. Since
1996, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the
Interior, which oversees the BIA, have systematically destroyed
countless records of evidence. Hundreds more boxes of files
were destroyed even after presiding Judge Royce Lamberth
ordered them preserved.
Lamberth has sharply criticized the interior department's
actions, but his criticisms have not had teeth. Washington is
actively obstructing justice in this lawsuit.
Lamberth has held three Cabinet officers, under both
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in contempt--but no
one has actually been fined or jailed.
The Jan. 7 New York Times reported, "For generations Indians
have complained of the theft of millions of dollars earned on
tribal lands." The government has failed for decades "to offer
detailed accounts of now much money has been raised from oil
and mineral, timber and grazing leases."
The Dept. of the Interior still refuses to give a full
accounting of the Indian Trust Fund. Enron's accounting
shred-fests are small potatoes by comparison.
Native American Rights Fund attorney Keith Harper has said
that the only possibility of fixing the trust is to strip
oversight from the department of the interior and put it into
outside receivership. This is one of the demands of the
lawsuit.
Allotment, assimilation
and genocide
The trust fund was created in the 1887 Dawes Act, which
ripped off almost 100 million acres of land--some two-thirds of
the remaining Indian reservation system holdings.
Sen. Henry Dawes and other so-called "friends of the
Indians" planned to forcibly assimilate Native people with the
idea that private property ownership would "civilize" them.
What Dawes said in 1885 is enlightening in this regard:
"The head chief told us that there was not a family in the
whole Nation [Cherokee] that had not a home of its own. There
was not a pauper in that Nation and the Nation did not owe a
dollar. It built its own capital and it built its own schools
and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was apparent .
. . they own their land in common."
Dawes continued: "There is no selfishness, which is at the
bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give
up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that
each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much
more progress." (Phoenix: The Decline and Rebirth of the Indian
People, William Coffer (aka Koi Hosh))
Allotment of Indian land dissolved many Indigenous-held land
bases. Individual allotments were made so small that there
would be substantial land left over to give to white settlers.
This land theft was even glorified on Broadway in the Rodgers
and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!"
Native families' homes and lands were confiscated by white
swindlers in transactions based on Native people's lack of
understanding of capitalist private property ownership. Trust
fund money slated for education paid for building the infamous
boarding schools, given over to churches to run--and Native
children were kidnapped en masse to distant locations where
their languages and cultures were systematically repressed.
Forced assimilation was a new wave of genocide. By 1900, the
Native population living on reservations within the United
Statets had shrunk to 237,000.
Theft of Indian land still goes on
Some non-Native commentators and government officials have
complained that they do not want their taxpayer dollars spent
to settle this lawsuit. But as President Tex Hall of the
National Congress of American Indians says: "This isn't
taxpayer money. This is our money that the government took, and
they have to give it back."
As large a sum as is documented in this lawsuit, it is only
the tip of the iceberg of what is owed to Native nations by the
U.S. government--for past and ongoing theft of lands and
resources, the continued poverty of Native people, and the
devastation of Native nations.
Ultimately, Native nations need to be able to control their
own lands and resources. Until then, government corruption will
be inevitable.
Reprinted from the Jan. 30, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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