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MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2002

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) plans to send a terse letter to Secretary of Interior Gale Norton regarding her failure to make millions of dollars in royalty payments to Indian Country, an aide told angry Navajo tribal members on Friday.

The letter will also seek that Indian beneficiaries receive interest on the delayed payments, Joe Trujillo said. "This is an outrage," he was reported by The Albuquerque Journal as saying.

"This should not be happening. This is totally stupid. We're going to make a lot of noise."

Representatives of Domenici and Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) attended a meeting in Nageezi, New Mexico, to report their problems over a court-ordered shutdown at the Interior. A computer system that process payments to individual Indians has been offline since December 5 in response to the department's lax security.

Get the Story:
Navajos Demand Delinquent Royalty Checks From Interior (The Albuquerque Journal 1/12)
Navajos to norton: Pay us now (The Farmington Daily Times 1/12)
Trust-account mess hampers agencies' work (The St. Paul Pioneer Press 1/13)
The Beltway Notebook: Protecting Indian trust records creates suspicious roadblock (The Denver Post 1/13)

Relevant Links:
Indian Trust, Department of Interior - http://www.doi.gov/indiantrust
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton - http://www.indiantrust.com

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