The American Indians have struggled through their entire history with the United States government of being defrauded, marginalized, taken advantage of, and discriminated against. Even with the trust setup by the United States government in the 1800's to hold the American Indians assets, with the Interior Department as the trustee, it has come to light that in Cobell v. Norton the government has once again defrauded them. The legislation putting the land and property in trust as well as the strict rules for trustees should have protected the American Indians, but potentially billions of dollars have been lost or stolen.

In COBELL v. NORTON Elouise Cobell, of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, seeks to be provided with an accounting of the trust held by the Internet Department.

Although U.S. policy in the 1870s was to locate Indians on reservations, hunger for the land by non-Indians led to a break-up of most of the reservations starting in the 1880s. Thousands of individual Indians generally were allotted beneficial ownership of 80- to 160-acre parcels of land in the break-up. As trustee, the government took legal title to the parcels, established an Individual Indian Trust and thereby assumed full responsibility for management of the trust lands. That included the duty to collect and disburse to the Indians any revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction, timber operations, grazing or similar activities. (Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc., 2005)

Unfortunately, the United States government has done an extremely poor job of maintaining a list of beneficiaries. Furthermore, they have done an extremely poor job with the record keeping of billions of dollars worth of assets.

The first phase of the trial is now complete and the American Indians had won the the Secretaries of the Treasury and Interior had breached their trust obligations. This will result in an a much needed overhaul of the system, which the judiciary will monitor for the next five years. "To help enforce his orders, Judge Lamberth has appointed both a special master, who oversees the preservation and production of trust documents, and a federal monitor, who provides the judge with assessments of the truthfulness of Interior's representations to the Court regarding execution of trust reform. (Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc., 2005)" Even more concerning is that after nineteen months after the Judge's orders all work has just a "sham" (Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc., 2005).

Phase two of the trial will be to provide an accounting of the money has not begun nor been scheduled (Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc., 2005). Regardless, the American Indians have an upward battle with this lawsuit. While it is clear that they will almost certainly win the litigation they may never see a good reform of the system nor ever get a proper accounting of the money that they are owed.

References

Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc. (2005). COBELL v. NORTON: An Overview. Retrieved May 25, 2005, from http://www.indiantrust.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Overview.Home