After 14 years of litigation, here’s a list of U.S. Interior Department trust obligation violations uncovered as part of the “gross mismanagement” of Indian trust lands. The breaches of trust were cited in the January 2010 amended Cobell vs. Salazar complaint, a class-action suit that led the Obama administration to agree to a settlement in December 2009. Here’s a link to the Cobell v. Salazar settlement agreement and amended complaint. The amdended complaint to recover restitution and damages and other monetary relief is dated January 2010.
GENERAL NATURE OF THE ACTION (as printed directly from pages 1-4 of the amended complaint, which is attached at the end of the settlement agreement).
1. This action is brought to redress gross breaches of trust by the United States, acting by and through the Defendants, with respect to the money, land and other natural resource assets of more than 450,000 individual Indians.
2. Involved in this action are accounts commonly referred to as Individual Indian Money (“IIM”) accounts. As is more fully set forth herein below, IIM accounts include money, which is the property of individual Indians, held by the United States as trustee on their behalf. Such accounts at the time of filing this action reflected a balance of more than Four Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars ($450,000,000.00), and more than Two Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars ($250,000,000.00) passes through them each 2 year; the true totals would be far greater than those amounts, but for the breaches of trust herein complained of.
3. Involved as well are funds that were collected or should have been collected by the federal government as trustee for individual Indians (commonly referred to as individual Indian moneys (“IIM”)), and the resources, including land, held in trust for individual Indian trust beneficiaries. Defendants have mismanaged those funds, land, and resources in breach of their trust duties and, thereby, have prevented Plaintiffs from receiving income to which they are entitled.
4. Defendants, the officers charged with carrying out the trust obligations of the United States, and their predecessors, have grossly mismanaged, and continue grossly to mismanage, such trusts and trust assets in at least the following respects, among others: (a) They have failed to keep adequate records and to install an adequate accounting system, including but not limited to their failure to install an adequate accounts receivable system; (b) They have destroyed records bearing upon their breaches of trust; (c) They have failed to account to the trust beneficiaries with respect to their money; (d) They have lost, dissipated, or converted to the United States’ own use the money of the trust beneficiaries; and (e) They either have unlawfully obstructed the appointment of a qualified and competent Special Trustee or unlawfully have prevented the Special Trustee for American Indians, appointed pursuant to the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994 (“the 1994 Act”), P.L. 103-412, 108 Stat. 4239, codified to 25 U.S.C. §§ 162a(d) and 4001-4061, from carrying out duties and responsibilities conferred upon him by law to correct their unlawful practices and procedures with respect to IIM accounts. (f) They have mismanaged trust funds held or to be held for individual Indians in the following respects:
(1) They have failed to collect or credit funds owed under leases, sales, easements or other transactions, including without limitation, having failed to collect or credit all money due, to audit royalties and to collect interest on late payments; 3 (2) They have failed to invest trust funds; (3) They have underinvested trust funds; (4) They imprudently have mismanaged and invested trust funds; (5) They have made erroneous or improper distributions or disbursements of trust funds, including to the wrong person or account; (6) They have charged excessive or improper administrative fees; (7) They have misappropriated, or failed to take steps to prevent the misappropriation of, trust funds; (8) They have withheld unlawfully the distribution and disbursement of trust funds; (9) They have deposited trust funds above FDIC insurance coverage in accounts in failed depository institutions, resulting in lost principal and interest; (10) They have failed to control, or investigate allegations of theft, embezzlement, misappropriation, fraud, trespass, and other misconduct regarding trust assets and have failed to make restitution or seek compensation for same; (11) They have failed to pay or credit to IIM Accounts accrued interest, including interest on special deposit accounts; (12) They have lost funds and investment securities as well as income or proceeds earned from such funds or securities; (13) They have lost funds through accounting errors; (14) They have failed to deposit or disburse funds in a timely fashion; and (15) They have engaged in conduct of like nature and kind arising out of Defendants’ breaches of trust in connection with mismanagement of IIM Trust funds.
Go the to Cobell v. Salazar settlement agreement and amended complaint for the rest of the story.
Jodi Rave
*Ms. Rave is an Individual Indian Money account holder and landowner on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. She won the University of Nebraska Sorensen Award for her reporting on the Cobell lawsuit as well as the Nebraska Associated Press award for enterprise reporting for her series on the management of Indian lands. Her writings on the Cobell suit are also included in“The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity,” a book based on award-winning journalism stories from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Additionally, Ms. Rave is the first, and only, American Indian woman awarded a Nieman Fellowship for journalism at Harvard University.