Tribes driving trust reorganization effort

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Facebook Twitter Email
THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2002

A group of tribal leaders has endorsed the creation of a new Department of Interior official to handle the trust assets of hundreds of tribes and 300,000 American Indians.

Rejecting Secretary Gale Norton's heavily criticized proposal to create a separate Indian trust agency, the panel has whittled down nearly 30 alternatives to a set of common elements. Included is a senior level official who will have complete authority over all aspects of trust reform throughout the department's bureaus, agencies and offices.

The bureaucrat, in the form of an undersecretary or a deputy secretary for Indian affairs, would be responsible for coordinating the often disjointed efforts to fix the broken system. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), all of which perform trust services for Indian Country, remain intact and report to the new official under the concepts endorsed by the task force.

But in a shift of the Interior's current structure, the tribal leaders are recommending the Office of the Special Trustee (OST) be dismantled. Its major operations would be handed back to the BIA in an effort to beef up the power of Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb to manage the $3.1 billion in assets held in trust for tribes and individual Indians.

"The lines of authority, responsibility and communication between these two entities has been uncertain and at times has come into direct conflict," the tribal leaders state.

The tribally-endorsed proposals are contained in a draft package being disseminated in Indian Country in preparation for another round of intense consultation sessions, the type many said were lacking when the Bush administration announced its reorganization last November amid pressures from a federal judge overseeing the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust.

This time around, though, tribal leaders are driving the overhaul through the trust reform task force. Composed of 24 tribal leaders, Interior representatives and technical assistants, the panel has been meeting since January with the dual purpose of killing the Bureau of Indian Trust Assets Management (BITAM), Norton's proposal, and developing an alternative.

With their guiding principles now defined, the task force is eyeing a a somewhat aggressive timetable for implementation. The effort is already underway and will include regional meetings, a public comment period and, in what could turn out to be the most challenging aspect, changes to the law which created the OST.

The schedule is tentative but revolves around the upcoming mid-June conference of the National Congress of American Indians, whose president Tex Hall co-chairs the task force, and a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing at the end of the month. Additional meetings would take place until November, according to the task force.

Coinciding with the activity is the department's addition of a new member to its team. Abraham E. Haspel, currently a deputy assistant secretary within the Department of Energy, will join the Interior June 7, his office told Indianz.Com yesterday.

Tribes can expect to receive more information about the upcoming consultation next week, according to the task force. The panel will convene on June 13 (*) in advance of NCAI's mid-year session, which takes place June 16-19 in Bismarck, North Dakota.

*Ed Note: The correct date is June 13, not June 14 as originally stated.

Read the Draft Package:
TRIBAL LEADERS / DOI TRUST REFORM TASK FORCE UPDATE (5/28)

Relevant Links:
Indian Trust, Department of Interior - http://www.doi.gov/indiantrust
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton - http://www.indiantrust.com
Trust Reform, NCAI - http://130.94.214.68/main/pages/
issues/other_issues/trust_reform.asp