Thanksgiving: Remembering the First Forgotten

It is easy to see why the netroots have been disappointed with Obama's high-profile appointments so far. Names like Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and Rahm Emmanuel do not represent any challenge to the political status quo. However there is one Obama constituency that appears to be drawing a perfect flush. Both former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, named to head Health and Human Services, and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano named to Homeland Security are highly regarded by American Indians and Alaska Natives.

“We're lucky to have such stellar representatives with people with whom Indian Country has really good relationships,” said Jacqueline Johnson-Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, a nonprofit organization that represents more than 250 tribes.

Many falsely imagine that the United States emerged as a global power as a result of the Industrial Revolution but it was the grabbing of native American Indian territories in the 1800's that provided the country's dramatic economic expansion. It was that thirst for more land and greater farm production that led to the "Indian Homestead Act". By 1871, the federal government stopped signing treaties with Native Americans and replaced the treaty system with a law giving individual Indians ownership of land that had been tribal property. Officially known as the Dawes Act, it presented as a way for some Indians to become U.S. citizens but in reality it was designed to allow more European settlers access to the land at a time when more and more grain was needed to feed the exploding cities in the U.S. and Europe.

America's First Forgotten


To his credit, Obama is moving to honor his word, naming stellar advocates Mary Smith, Mary McNeil and Yvette Robideaux to work on justice, agriculture and health issues, while three current and former attorneys with the Native American Rights Fund - John Echohawk, Keith Harper and Robert Anderson - will advise the new president on changes being proposed within the Interior Department. The issue that remains of utmost concern is the the department's Indian trust fund system, an organizational debacle subject to 12 years of litigation during Cobell vs. Kempthorne.

“This is our last big chance to get a lot of things done,” said Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff from Montana's Blackfeet Nation in the class action lawsuit."We're very excited about the new administration," said Mark van Norman, the executive director of the , on the final day of the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. Larry Rosenthal, a partner with the Ietan Consulting lobbying firm, was an early supporter of Obama. He said the Democratic candidate reached out to tribes early on in the campaign and won them over with overarching pledges to respect tribal sovereignty and the government-to-government relationship.

Cobell's plaintiffs contend that the Government is in breach of its trust duties to Indian beneficiaries. They seek relief in the form of a complete historical accounting of all Individual Indian Monies (IIM) accounts. While Cobell is technically not a money damages case -- that part of the case having been dismissed by Judge Lamberth on the grounds that the DC Circuit Court is a court of equity -- plaintiffs contend that a complete accounting will show the IIM accounts to be misstated on the order of billions of dollars. If that contention were indeed supported by the Court, plaintiffs would leverage such a finding to seek an adjustment of all IIM account balances.

The Sordid History of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Between 1820 and 1934, it was national policy to break up reservations and parcel out allotments of 80-160 acres to individual Indian owners. Many of these lands were rich in timber, minerals, water and fertile soil. Today, 11 million acres of land are held in trust for over 387,000 beneficiaries via the Individual Indian The current trust balance is around $450 million, but several billion dollars more have been lost over the years due to undervalued and/or uncollected lease payments, missing records (the majority of BIA's leases are stored in places with "no retrieval capacity," like abandoned salt mines) and destroyed checks.

In addition there are some 2000 Tribal Trust Accounts,which includes per capita annual payments, compensation for rights-of-way and court settlements, which total $2.3 billion. As with IIM, however, waste, fraud and abuse are rampant. An audit revealed at least $2.4 billion is missing or otherwise unaccounted for over just the 20-year period from 1973 to 1992, making an accurate reconciliation of accounts virtually impossible. These were the factual Stipulations filed in June of 1999

1. [T]he Department of the Interior cannot provide all account holders with a quarterly report which provides the source of funds, and the gains and losses. [See 25 U.S.C. §4011.]

2. [T]he Department of the Interior does not adequately control the receipts and disbursements of all IIM account holders. [See id. §162a(d)(2).]

3. [T]he Department of the Interior’s periodic reconciliations are insufficient to assure the accuracy of all accounts. [See id. §162a(d)(3).]

4. [A]lthough the Department of the Interior makes available to all IIM account holders the daily balance of their account and can provide periodic statements of the account balances, the Department does not provide all account holders periodic statements of their account performance. [See id. §162a(d)(5).]

5. [The] Department of the Interior does not have written policies and procedures for all trust fund management and accounting functions. [See id. §162a(d)(6).]

6. [T]he Department of the Interior does not provide adequate staffing, supervision and training for all aspects of trust fund management and accounting. [See id. § 162a(d)(7).]

7. [The Department of the Interior’s] record keeping system [is inadequate]. [ See id. §162a(d)(1), (3), (4),(6).]

The judge in the case, was a Reagan appointee known for speaking his mind. Judge Lamberth had repeatedly sided with the Native Americans in their class-action lawsuit. He condemned the government's perfidy and found both Interior Secretaries, Gale Norton and Bruce Babbitt, in contempt of court for their handling of the case. An appellate court would reverse Lamberth opinions, including the contempt charge against Norton. And in 2005, after Lamberth lambasted the Interior Department as racist, the government petitioned the Court of Appeals to remove Lamberth, claiming he was too biased to continue with the case.

In defending his position Lamberth wrote “The idea that Interior would either instruct or allow BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] to withhold trust payments, and then to stonewall the Indians who dared to ask why, is an obscenity that harkens back to the darkest days of United States–Indian relations.”

Speaking at the Crow Reservation in Montana during his campaign Obama declared that “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as native Americans – the first Americans.”
So far, it seems that Black Eagle, the Crow's newest adopted son intends to keep his promise to help those wronged... America's most intransigent original sin.

Something To Ponder This Thanksgiving:


May the gods blow fair winds beneath thy wings Black Eagle.
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). ...
Lamberth removed On July 11, 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, siding with the government, removed Judge Lamberth from the case -- finding that Lamberth had lost his objectivity. "We conclude, reluctantly, that this is one of those rare cases in which reassignment is necessary," the judges wrote. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, or called simply the DC Circuit Court, is the federal appellate court for the U.S. district court in Washington, DC. Appeals from the DC Circuit, as with all the US Courts of Appeals, are heard by the...
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). ...
The Appeals Court concluded that some of Judge Lamberth's statements went too far, and "on several occasions the district court or its appointees exceeded the role of impartial arbiter." The Court wrote that Lamberth believed that racism at Interior continued and is "a dinosaur -- the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind."
The Appeals Court ordered the case reassigned to another judge [December 7, 2006. Case reassigned to Judge James Robertson for all further proceedings].