An important case in Indian Affairs just received a ruling. The maltreatment of Indians is such a sad part of our nation's history.
The editorial yesterday in the NYTimes caught my eye regarding the American Indian Trust funds (the Cobell case), 11 years before the courts and how the funds were mismanaged. The Federal District court ruled that the Interior Department had "unreasonably delayed" its accounting for billions of dollars owed to the Indian landholders and the agency "cannot remedy the breach."
The editorial writes, that it is an "irreparable breach of fiduciary responsibility: The Indians were given land allotments between the end of the 19th century and 1934, a time when it was government policy to try to do away with tribal entities and reservations. The government held title to the land, and these accounts were meant to collect and disburse the revenues."
Having grown up in Oklahoma and learning in third grade of real history versus the history we are presented while I did a history project on the state, I've held a life-long interest in Indian issues. The Dawes Act was just one decimation to Indians and it was important to me at one time to trace family roots of land ownership in Oklahoma to see if my historical family hands were clean from land grabs (they were). In the mid-90s the chief of the Arapaho tribe told me that what happened to the American Indians was worse than the Holocaust. Also this week, "President Bush's threat to veto a bill to improve health care for the nation's American Indians is cruel and unfair," writes the NYTimes.
To see if this decision is seen as a good one by the Indians, I turned to a blog I follow, Wampum, that has stayed on this Cobell case from an Indian perspective (it is -- Wampum has the plaintiff's press release). He noted what Federal Judge Roberts said in his decision - "The record is not inconclusive, however, on the tension between the expense of an adequate accounting and congressional unwillingness to fund such an enterprise" and this is Wampum's interesting elaboration and opinion of the circumstances behind the judge's statement:
Robertson is referring to the actions of a Republican Congress, some of
which I discussed here on Wampum two years ago. Essentially, Tom Delay
rammed through legislation defunding the accounting. Why? My theory was
then, and now remains, that BigEnergy fears an accurate accounting, as
it will begin to uncover their many misdeeds regarding royalty
underpayments, possibly on the scale of tens (hundreds?) of billions.
Robertson is laying the blame at the feet of Delay et al. Note that he
does not commit to whether an accounting is achievable in relation to
documents - to say as much would close the door on one huge source of
documentation of trust accounts - the books of BigEnergy!
Indian Art: An exhibit has just opened at the Institute of the American Indian Art (IAIA) Museum in downtown Santa Fe today featuring Choctaw art. Choctaws are the third largest American Indian tribe, after the Navajo and the Cherokee and were originally from the Southeast but moved to reservations in Oklahoma and are considered one of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma. I'll go this weekend.
Indian Books: What is hard in understanding these Indian issues is that there is no single united voice for the many tribes. The best book I've ever read is the seminal one by Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. I've just finished The Real Americans - The Team That changed a Game, A People, a Nation by Sally Jenkins. The latter is about the Indian football team fielded by the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in the early years of the 20th century.
Political Indian Positions: I came across interesting information on McCain while researching these issues. I had been impressed with McCain's pushing of Indian issues and watched the hearings on C-Span. I thought McCain's
involvement in Indian issues was pure-hearted and so I was surprised to
come across his ulterior motives and it makes me question the candidate, seriously. Wampum also has a link to Indianz.com that if elected, Obama plans to appoint an Indian policy advisor at the White House.
Maybe people other places are suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous economies, but in some places it is all about the oil (over $121/barrel), or natural gas. Pronounced by old-timers like my dad and uncle, who grew up in the business: awl and gas.
