American Indians who claim the federal government
owes them billions of dollars are crying foul over a recently
released report. In 1996, Indians across the country filed a
class-action lawsuit, alleging the Interior Department mismanaged
billions of dollars in royalties from oil and gas production,
timber-harvesting and grazing on Indian land (HCN, 2/4/02: Indian
trust is anything but).
To check the accuracy of its
books, Interior commissioned a $20 million study, which traced the
history of the trust accounts of four individuals. The report found
only a single mistake by the Interior Department between 1915 and
1999, and calculated that the department owed the four American
Indians $61.
Attorney Keith Harper of the nonprofit Native
American Rights Fund calls the study “wholly invalid,”
and says the accountants did not verify the accuracy of the
transactions.
Interior spokesman Dan DuBray questions
why, then, plaintiffs fought to keep the report secret – it
was released in March after having been kept under seal for more
than a year. “It’s odd that a report that folks worked
so hard to keep under wraps is now somehow all fraudulent and full
of holes,” he says.
Harper says the report was
designed to win the Interior Department sympathy in Congress.
“They know they’re losing in court, so their only hope
is to motivate their friends on the Hill to undermine this
(lawsuit) through congressional legislation.”
In
January, Interior proposed a $335 million study to look into the
accounts of 260,000 individual Indians, but Congress is questioning
the expense. The case heads back to court May 5.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Missing Interior money: Piles or pennies?.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
