Maybe you’ll find it with whereabouts website
by Clara NiiSka
The Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST), Office of Trust Funds Management (OTFM) recently posted a website, hoping to find current addresses for the account holders of record in the Individual Indian Monies (IIM) system. The names of the account holders are accessible by first letter of the last name at the following website: http://www.ost.doi.gov/whereabouts.html The lists posted by the OFTM include about 61,034 people, from A-nau-des-bah to Steven L. Zyltra.
OST’s use of the internet and its whereabouts website is among the efforts which the office has made to try to resolve some of the BIA money mismanagement problems.
The Special Trustee’s office was established under the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-412). More than 340 employees in three offices—Trust Risk Management, Trust Funds Management, and Trust Fund Records—work for OST, headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, trying to resolve some of the BIA money mismanagement problems.
According to other information posted on its website – the OST had not returned Press/ON’s telephone calls by press time – the OST is headed by Special Trustee Thomas N. Slonaker, a Clinton appointee and former banker. In a March 2000 speech before the Senate Committee hearing his confirmation, Slonaker described the Special Trustee’s position as a “very unique leadership and managerial challenge.” He also said that he saw the massive job of straightening out the BIA’s trust management problems as, “not unlike that which is required to deliver services to clients in a large bank trust department having numerous branch locations often in different states.”
$450 billion dollars
The OST’s recently-posted whereabouts website is a part of a broader – court-ordered and court-supervised – effort to resolve problems with approximately $450 billion dollars in IIM accounts, which are held in “trust” by the United States on behalf of individual Indians. The money in those accounts originates from various sources, much of it from income generated by the lease of grazing, farming, timber and mineral rights on Indian allotments.
Alleging “breach of trust,” the Washington DC law firm Aukamp & Gingold and attorneys for the Native American Rights Fund sued the US government on behalf of IIM account holders. On February 4, 1997, Elouise Pepion Cobell, Earl Old Person, Mildred Cleghorn, Thomas Maulson, James Louis Larose were certified as representatives of a class consisting of all present and former beneficiaries of the IIM accounts—about 300,000 Indian individuals.
In a decision in the case Cobell, et al. v. Babbitt (91 F. Supp. 2d 1) handed down in December 1999, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the U.S. had breached—and was continuing to breach—its trust responsibility to IIM account-holders. The court ordered that the U.S. “rectify the continuing breaches of trust declared today,” and asserted continuing jurisdiction over the IIM accounts. The court also ordered that the defendants—the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of the Treasury—provide quarterly status reports “setting forth and explaining the steps that defendants have taken to rectify the breaches of trust declared today and to bring themselves into compliance with their statutory trust duties embodied in the Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994 and other applicable statutes and regulations governing the IIM trust.”
These “statutory trust duties” include:
(1) Providing adequate systems
for accounting for and reporting trust fund balances.
(2) Providing adequate controls over receipts and disbursements.
(3) Providing periodic, timely reconciliations to assure the accuracy of accounts.
(4) Determining accurate cash balances.
(5) Preparing and supplying account holders with periodic statements of their account performance and with balances of their account which shall be available on a daily basis.
(6) Establishing consistent, written policies and procedures for trust fund management and accounting.
(7) Providing adequate staffing, supervision, and training for trust fund management and accounting.
(8) Appropriately managing the natural resources located within the boundaries of Indian reservations and trust lands.
(2) Providing adequate controls over receipts and disbursements.
(3) Providing periodic, timely reconciliations to assure the accuracy of accounts.
(4) Determining accurate cash balances.
(5) Preparing and supplying account holders with periodic statements of their account performance and with balances of their account which shall be available on a daily basis.
(6) Establishing consistent, written policies and procedures for trust fund management and accounting.
(7) Providing adequate staffing, supervision, and training for trust fund management and accounting.
(8) Appropriately managing the natural resources located within the boundaries of Indian reservations and trust lands.
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Do you have missing money? Check it out at http://www.ost.doi.gov/whereabouts.html |
