The Denver Post 

June 4, 2001 

EDITORIAL: Fix Indian trust fund mess 

By not appealing the Indian trust fund case to the U.S. Supreme  Court, the 
Interior Department now must put up or shut up: Fix its  computer system and 
pay the Indians what they're owed, or accept  federal court supervision of its 
management of the accounts. 

For more than a century, Uncle Sam has controlled many  Indian assets, 
including mineral deposits, oil reserves, water  rights, grazing leases and 
the like. In theory, the government was  supposed to manage the accounts for 
the Indians' benefit through a  trust arrangement. But over the decades, the 
Bureau of Indian  Affairs (which is part of the Interior Department) and the 
U.S.  Treasury badly bungled the job, mingling money from the various  
accounts and losing track of how much individual Indians were owed. 

No wonder the Indians finally sued. The case was brought in  1996 by the 
Boulder-based Native American Rights Fund and former  Denver attorney Dennis 
Gingold, on behalf of Montana resident and  Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell 
and several thousand other Indians  nationwide. 

The Clinton administration promised to clean up the mess, but  an internal 
BIA memo leaked earlier this year admitted the effort  had 'imploded.' 

Meantime, the Interior Department kept losing in federal  court, with judges 
repeatedly siding with the Indians. 

In this light, the Bush administration's decision not to  challenge the court 
rulings may indicate that the government  finally is willing to give the 
Indians what it owes them: a  correct accounting of what should have been 
paid in the past, and  guarantees that the trust funds will be properly 
managed in the  future. 

That monumental policy transformation would be most welcome. 

While we have expressed concern about Interior Secretary Gale  Norton's 
environmental policies, there is no doubt that Norton  takes her 
responsibilities for Indian issues very seriously. 

The key worry is if Norton can deliver. The trust-fund mess is  so 
long-standing, and so convoluted, that it would take Hercules  to untangle 
it. 

But the effort to sort out the accounts and pay the Indians  what they've 
been owed, in some cases for generations, is long  overdue. 

Norton and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill must make the task  a top 
personal priority.