|
November 8, 2002
|
Surprise,
Surprise!
Bush Administration Drafts Legislation to
“Extinguish’
IIM Accounts
By Jean Pagano
The Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts were set up by
Congress to pass along trust payments to individual Native peoples
instead of
paying corrupt Indian Agents. If the Bush Administration has its way,
Congress
will, in 2003, extinguish the IIM accounts, thereby wiping away the
governments
100+ year mismanagement of the Department of Interiors trust
responsibility to
Native peoples.
The issue of IIMs, forcefully brought to the fore by Cobell
v. Secretary of the Interior (Cobell),
has illustrated the government’s neglect
and mismanagement of nearly $10 billion in Native peoples’ money, held
in trust
by the U.S Government. Judge Royce Lamberth admonished former Secretary
of
Interior Bruce Babbitt for the Department’s lack of responsiveness to
the
Court’s requests. Judge Lamberth has also held current Secretary of the
Interior Gale Norton in contempt for a number of issues relating to Cobell and the IIMs.
The issue of the
settlement of Cobell v. Secretary
of the Interior comes to Judge
Lamberth’s courtroom early next year. So far, the Department of
Interior has
held back information from the Plaintiffs, missed deadlines, allegedly
sent out
misinformation, and most recently destroyed emails from Assistant
Secretary for
Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb office (recently reported here in Press/ON). Things do not look too good for
Secretary Norton’s Department and a
large number of claims and the billions of dollars to settle these
claims may
be waiting right around the corner.
Yet, instead of
carrying out it trust responsibilities to the Native peoples of this
country
and to the U.S. District Court, the Department, along with the Bush
Administration, is drafting legislation which would derail the
settlement
vehicle animated by Cobell. The
draft seeks to enlist Native peoples to
voluntarily accept a cash settlement of their IIM claims in exchange
for a
waiver of their claims under Cobell. This legislation would allow the
establishment of an ‘administrative process’ to resolve and determine
the
settlement. Additionally, the U.S Government would be released from its
duties
to collect and deposit funds, make investments and disbursements, keep
records
and provide an accounting for the IIMs. In other words, all of the
mismanagement of this and previous Departments of the Interior would be
erased
with the passage and acceptance of this act. Once again, Native peoples
would
be offered a fraction of the true worth of a commodity in lieu of the
proper
management and payment that was promised and legislated.
The proposed act
also invokes the Secretary’s ‘good faith’ in reaching a proposed
settlement.
Claimants and their heirs would waive any right to current and future
claims
against the Department concerning IIMs. The Department of the Interior,
ordered
by the U.S. District Court to undertake an accounting of Interior’s
mismanagement of IIMs, has yet to undertake this endeavour. However
this
proposed legislation states that the settlement proposal ‘shall reflect
the
Secretary’s good faith belief that because of missing, incomplete, and
faulty
documentation and other relevant documentation, the account holder’s
balance is
not readily discernible’ and ‘the Secretary’s good faith belief that
that
account reconciliation will require a greater period of time and more
resources
to undertake than it would to provide a reasonable and timely
settlement
proposal to that account holder.’
Should this
proposed act be made into law, then a total and true accounting of what
really
happened to the monies held in IIMs would never be known. Not only
would the
truth never be known, but also billions of dollars in trust monies,
like
millions of acres of reservation land, would be lost forever.
|
|
|
|
