The Bush administration retaliated against Indian beneficiaries last fall by withholding checks and other information about their trust accounts, a federal judge said on Monday.

But if Interior Secretary Gale Norton wants to prove otherwise, she should come to court and testify, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in a 22-page decision. He said he would hold an evidentiary hearing "sooner rather than later" to determine once and for all whether the department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs retaliated against account holders.

"These Indians are the poorest minority group in the country," Lamberth said. "The idea that Interior would either instruct or allow BIA to withhold trust payments, and then to stonewall the Indians who dared to ask why, is an obscenity that harkens back to the darkest days of United States-Indian relations."

The ruling came in response to Norton's request to set aside an October 21 ruling that blasted the department's "sordid history of mismanagement and neglect" in the long-running trust fund lawsuit. Lamberth found evidence that BIA employees, acting on directives from top officials in Washington, D.C., delayed trust fund payments and refused to communicate with beneficiaries about their accounts.

Special Trustee Ross Swimmer vehemently denied the allegations at the National Congress of American Indians annual meeting that same month. "There's no retaliation," he said on October 23. "In fact, there is an attempt to comply to the greatest extent possible with whatever orders come out of the Cobell court."

But the plaintiffs, Indian beneficiaries and tribal leaders disputed Swimmer's assertion. They said they were told of a "gag order" imposed on any information related to the trust fund.

"It's really difficult to reconcile some of the statements we hear from Swimmer with what I see at home," said Michael E. Marchand, a council member for the Confederated Colville Tribes of Washington. "It seems like we're talking about different worlds."

"There is activity going on that probably would be best characterized as retaliation," he added. "I don't know what else you would call it.'

Lamberth said he believed these accounts rather than those of the Interior. He said it took the department a week to ensure that checks wouldn't be delayed.

"The week-long time lag in the later instance is inexcusable," he wrote. "No doubt, this time lag is to blame for whatever damage the Indians sustained as a result of BIA withholding their trust checks. One might even go so far as to draw the inference that this delay was intentional retaliation by the Secretary and her agents against the members of the plaintiff class."

At NCAI, Swimmer had suggested that not every followed his orders. He derided the plaintiffs and Lamberth for suggesting that the Indian employees of BIA and the Office of Special Trustee were retaliating against other Indians.

"It is now going to be a fact. It will be repeated as a fact that retaliation is going on," he said. "So who's doing it?"

The mixup has since been cleared up with the issuance of further orders from the court. One dealt with land sales of individual Indian allotment and the other with communications between Interior and account holders.

OST officials this week said they have deployed more than 40 trust officers in the field and have implemented a national call center, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to respond to queries from beneficiaries. The call system is similar to ones used by banks and can be used to provide information about trust payments.

"We have found out that ... in 92 percent [of the calls] the first person they talk to, that person at the call center was been able to answer their question," said Donna Erwin, the deputy special trustee.

Get the Decision:
Cobell v. Norton (February 7, 2005)

Relevant Links:
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton - http://www.indiantrust.com
Cobell v. Norton, Department of Justice - http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/cases/cobell/index.htm
Indian Trust, Department of Interior - http://www.doi.gov/indiantrust