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In The Hoop
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2002

Welcome to In The Hoop, Indianz.Com's occasional column about assorted Indian issues.

Trust, We Hardly Knew Ye...
After a long and difficult career of not being used to provide an historical accounting for 300,000 American Indian beneficiaries, the Department of Interior has decided to "retire" thousands of trust fund records.

According to a Valentine's Day memo, the Office of the Special Trustee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has decided these records no longer need to be maintained. So OST is sending 32,000 cubic feet of documents to the Federal Records Center in Missouri.

Conveniently enough, the 19 or so Office of Trust Records (OTR) employees charged with maintaining the records are also being "reassigned" while others are being "abolished."

The memo states: "It is anticipated that this change will allow OTR to focus its efforts on records management and move away from the tasks associated with records maintenance."

So why is this all happening? Well, if you believe reports by special monster Alan Balaran, former OTR Director Ken Rossman wasn't really doing his job. So while his former subordinates get shifted around, he gets a cushy assignment working for Special Trustee Tom Slonaker in Washington, D.C., where -- presumably -- his actions can be more closely monitored.

But according to a personnel manager at OST, the reason for removing the records is simple: it's just too darn expensive to store the documents.

Oh, No She Didn't!
Remember when Secretary of Interior Gale Norton told tribal leaders they better come up with an alternative to her Bureau of Indian Trust Assets Management (BITAM) or else she'd go ahead and implement her final solution?

Well last week in court, she challenged the Individual Indian Money (IIM) plaintiffs to do the same. "I haven't really seen a proposal from you all," she haughtily told attorney Dennis Gingold.

"So just as someone who really does have the responsibility to manage a problem, I don't see a receiver as really the solution to this, that it might superficially appear," she said.

But as with her declaration that BITAM is "superior," it turns out Norton hasn't really researched the idea all that much. When asked if she reviewed court documents describing the receiver, she said she and her staff haven't actually discussed the "details."

Oops.

Go for the Gold
First it was the Cherokees, or those claiming such heritage, who surpassed the Navajos as the tribal ancestry with the most numbers.

Now come the Tongans, who stand to steal a prized Navajo food staple away from the Navajos and take the Gold medal in the Navajo Taco Olympics. These islanders may be far away from the Four Corners but they apparently know how to fry some bread, throw meat on it and lather it with beans, chile and cheese.

This of course has upset Navajo Taco Stand Owner Joe Begay. He told The Arizona Republic (Username: IndianzCom, Password: indianz.com) about his Olympic-sized worries.

"I'm sorry I ever got involved in this," said Begay. "It was supposed to be limited to three Navajo food booths, and then two Tongan food vendors also began selling Navajo tacos. We filed a protest and got an apology, but they're still selling Navajo food."

As for the answer to our question, the kids in the picture are Mormon AND Tongan.

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