American Indians want more control of trust fund

Jodi Sokolowski - Staff writer

WASHINGTON -- American Indians deserve more say in how their trust fund is managed and organized, tribal representatives told a Senate panel Tuesday.

"We recognize the need for trust reform but it must be in concert with the government to benefit tribes," said Colleen F. Cawston, chairwoman for the Colville Business Council and recording secretary for National Congress of American Indians. "We have the knowledge, the experiences. We believe we have useful information to contribute to a solution."

Tribal representatives from around the nation -- including the Spokane, Colville and Yakama tribes -- told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee they oppose a plan by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to create a new agency to oversee 1,400 tribal accounts and 300,000 individual trust accounts.

The trust fund program manages tens of billions of dollars in royalties from timber and other natural resources on Indian land that the Interior Department oversees, and has been criticized for mismanagement for more than 70 years. Since December, when the computer system was shut down by a federal judge's order, no checks have been sent out.

Norton wants to remove responsibility for the trust funds from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and set up a Bureau of Indian Trust Asset Management within the Interior Department.

Cawston said that would splinter the trust program and make it weaker.

"All the tribes are against BITAM," said James Martin, executive director of United South & Eastern Tribes. "It takes away our authority to govern."

The people who use the funds should manage them, said Clifford Lyle Marshall, chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council in Hoopa, Calif.

Tribes should solve their own problems because they are self-governing, he said.

Tribes aren't opposed to reform, said Gary Morishima, of the Intertribal Timber Council of Portland. But they want clearer vision, not hasty change, he said.

"The goal must be accountability," he said. "No one knows what BITAM is and what it intends to do."

Committee member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said tribes should play a central role in reforming the trust.

"Tribes and individual Indians are the beneficiaries of trust assets, and the United States has the responsibility to honor the government-to-government relationship it has with tribes."

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2002

Answers

I had no idea this paternalism was still going on. Absolutely the tribes should have more involvement.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2002

Good grief!!!!! I also had no idea the government was doing this. I got caught ASSUMING again. Sheesh!!!

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2002