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Cobell: Delay and deception in trust fund case
Monday, September 1, 2003
"When I went to Washington on a hot, sultry June day in 1996 to file a lawsuit over the billions of dollars of trust funds that the government had lost, misplaced and otherwise grossly mismanaged for hundreds of thousands of American Indians, I had no idea I would still be in court seven years later.
Yet today, after three Cabinet secretaries have been held in contempt by a federal judge and after four lengthy trials and a successful defense on appeal of our claims on the merits, the federal government has failed to clean up the trust records. It cannot certify the accuracy of a single one of the estimated 500,000 current individual Indian trust accounts.
That's the sad bottom line on how the federal government has continued to treat the nation's first citizens."
Get the Story:
Elouise Cobell: Accounting long overdue for Indian trust funds
(The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 8/31)
Relevant Links:
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton -
http://www.indiantrust.com
Related Stories:
Shirley: BIA 'swindling' Navajo landowners
(8/21)
DOI: Paying Navajos less for land is
reasonable (8/21)
Whistle-blower warned DOI on Navajo land use
(8/21)
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