The cost of betrayal
“Abusing the trust of American Indians” ranked No. 2 in the government’s Top 10 Worst Examples of Mismanagement, compiled by the Senate Committee on Government Affairs.
(No.1 was the “Big Dig,” a highway project in Boston.) The betrayal of trust includes:
· Untold billions in income from the use of Indian-owned land held in trust by the US but “lost” by the Interior and Treasury Departments.
· $31 million in federal litigation costs, which Congress has started to question.
· $625,000 in fines paid by the US government for contempt-of-court citation in 1999.
Elouise Cobell’s class-action suit
The United States of America’s Bureau Of Indian Affairs (BIA) for more than 170 years has told the Native American people Trust us, we have your best interest at heart. As Elouise Cobell stated in an interview with Peter Maas / Parade Magazine 9sep01.
ON THE WALL next to Elouise Cobell’s desk is a blown-up reproduction of a famous Peanuts cartoon strip. After Lucy assures Charlie Brown, “Trust me,” she once again snatches away the football he’s about to kick, and he ends up flat on his back.
“I decided to stop being Charlie Brown,” Cobell told me. For her, “Lucy” is the U.S. government. Now 55, barely 5 feet 4, a wife and mother, Cobell is a member of the Blackfeet Indian tribe sequestered in the northwest corner of Montana. As a result of a lawsuit she filed on behalf of her fellow Native Americans, they finally are about to collect a staggering sum of money-as much as $40 billion-from Washington.
Crossposted at My Left Wing, Village Blue and OurWord
I am including a link to an open letter to the American people that Elouise Cobell wrote on behalf of more than 500,000 Native Americans who have been cheated, swindled, lied to and otherwise manipulated to steal not only their money, but their land.
Open letter to the American people
The money that she is trying to garner from the BIA is not welfare payments, these are monies that the BIA in it’s Trust/Fiduciary duties, developed contracts for grazing, timber, oil, mineral and gas contracts with many of the corporations that are exploiting the rest of America today. These contracts were placed in trust by the BIA, who in its entire 170 year history has managed to mismanage the accounting of Indian money completely for as long as it has been in existence. Here is a link to verify this fact:
The facts of this betrayal are not in dispute, this federal department has long worked to assimilate the tribes into the American mainstream, working to turn them into model citizens, yes sir, we will take all of your land, resources and your culture and give you the right to live on 40 to 320 acres that we will control for you. We will make sure that no one other than the Federal Government will rip you off for anything of value that is found on your land. Yes Siree, trust us, you know we have broken every treaty that has ever been signed by a President of the United States. We know what is good for you and we will make sure that you live in abject poverty, you children will die like flies from diseases that have been eradicated in most third world country’s and you will not have the freedom to use your land, except for what we tell you that it can be used for, you know life allowing Uranium mining to pollute your drinking water. See Navajo Uranium (Google).
Why must Native Americans be held under the thumb of a Federal Government who’s sole desire is to rid itself of its Indian problem. Do I believe that for the entire 170 years of its existence, the BIA was systematically trying to starve and destroy the very culture it was “supposed” to protect. Based on observation, research and having spoken to many tribal elders over the course of my life, in a word, YES. This Department of our Government has worked diligently to reduce the power, influence and ability to live their lives, of the very people it was mandated by law to protect. Many times over the course of its existence, the BIA has created sweetheart deals for farmers, ranchers, oil companies, mineral companies and timber companies. How would you like to be a big rancher with say 100,000 head of cattle, only enough range to really support half that amount, yet cut a deal with the BIA to pay some poor dumb Indian, $0.03 an acre per year, for grazing rights for 99 years. Or if that poor old dumb Indian is lucky enough, he/she gets a good deal, say $150 an acre per year, yet they only see $25 dollars a year from the Trust account.
Is it any wonder that so many Indians live in abject poverty. Has anyone wondered why the live birth rate on reservations is less than many of poorest countries in the world. That hunger is a daily obstacle to be addressed by more than 1/3 of all reservation Indians. As U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth stated in one of his opinions concerning Cobell,
“the entire record in this case tells the dreary story of Interior’s degenerate tenure as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust, a story shot through with bureaucratic blunders, flubs, goofs and foul-ups, and peppered with scandals, deception, dirty tricks and outright villainy, the end of which is nowhere in sight.”
There is in fact some good news coming out of this case and there are Senators who are supporting the Indians in getting the US Government to settle this and begin to do its lawful duty. I can only hope that in the near future, this Interior Department organization will in fact be declared obsolete and dissolved and Indians can begin to live their lives in the ways that other Americans have lived theirs, without having the government dictate how they can live.
Senator John McCain has this to say about the Cobell case.
For more than a century, McCain said, it appears the government “never really even made any serious attempt at keeping track of the revenues” it owed the Indians.
Yet the settlement that the Natives Americans have offered, which in fact could be as little as $0.27 on the dollar owed, according to McCain is just too much. He says that it would be just too difficult to get Congress to pony up $27 Billion for this Settlement. Oh but hey, we can give OIL, GAS, Nuclear and Halliburton more than $100 Billion dollars in subsidies and no bid contracts and these are all companies that have and are now making record profits. Hmmmmmmmmmmm sounds like a case of too little political capital for the Indians. I ask that each of you write a letter to your Senator supporting this settlement agreement and urging them to act fairly in dealing with the criminal behavior of the BIA over the last 170 years.
Personally I believe that every contract should be reviewed and renewed, regardless of length offered in the contract. Hey we all know that a contract is a contract unless it is a UNION contract then it can be broken. So how about breaking some of these contracts that have for years stolen the very assets of our Native American brothers and sisters. I doubt very seriously if that will happen, but one can hope and pray that those who have been cheated, lied to, manipulated, criminally assaulted and relegated to second class citizenship, will have a chance to walk out of the poverty and despair that has permeated its society for more than 150 years.
I have lived on several reservations over the years and I can tell you that I have seen third world countries that had a higher standard of living. Years of oil, gas, mineral exploration has fouled water wells, polluted the land so nothing will grow on it, strip mining in sacred area’s, Indians forcibly removed from their land for ranchers grazing rights. You name it and it has probably occurred at some point in the Indian’s existence.
For those who want to know more concerning the abuses by the BIA and what one Indian is doing in the courts, here is a link to more information.
