First off, though, I called it in and no, the Mni Wiconi project did not get adequate funding. This bill only applies to Indian Health Service water projects, not Bureau of Reclamation projects.
The Mni Wiconi project, originally scheduled to be completed in five to ten years some twenty-five years ago, did however finally reach the extreme edge of the Pine Ridge Reservation recently, giving some few residents there potable running water for the first time ever. I guess the 20th Century is finally catching up.
There is a further bit of sting to the issue as this IHS bill was sponsored by none other than the other Senator from South Dakota, John Thune, whom Tim Johnson narrowly defeated in 2002 thanks to the heavy turnout by Oglala Sioux voters (Thune went on to defeat Daschle in 2004), which resulted in the retaliatory de-funding of the Mni Wiconi project. He and Bush are still sticking it to the Oglalas, which I guess is to be expected of such evil men. Projected completion has been extended for the umpteenth time, now to the year 2013.
Well, it was worth hoping, anyway. Maybe next year.
Now, on to the Interior Trust Fund scandal. First of all, you have to know and understand that from before the creation of the United States land "owned" by the Indians could not be bought or sold, except directly to and from the sovereign--first the King, then the federal government. Tribes quickly realized they were getting screwed, and insisted on perpetuity clauses and other solid guarantees in most of the treaties made. Treaties being amongst the highest laws in the land, the Supreme Court first sided with the tribes, and everyone else has been hacking away at those pillars of justice ever since.
Anyway, since we couldn't simply conquer the Indians and take their land, we did the next best thing: we "paid" them for it. And, since Native Americans had next to no rights and no access to institutions of higher finance, the United States held that money in trust for the Indian tribes. It appears as if most of those payments were illusory.
One
popular way to steal Indian land "legally" was to convert land held in trust (by the U.S. for the tribes) into allotments for individual tribal members and their heirs, which could be sold and invariably were when impoverished individual Indians had to sell out, and that money too was theoretically held in trust for individual Indians and their heirs--about half a million of them today. The individuals and heirs were also supposed to be paid for exploitation of minerals on the land they did still own. As each successive generation multiplied, fractionation caused individual accounts became smaller and smaller, until today many accounts hold only a couple of dollars or less.
So there are really two funds, one for tribes and one for individuals, both of them FUBAR. Honestly, I don't know what the status of the lost tribal trust funds is.
Both funds were theoretically managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I say theoretically because it turned out that the BIA didn't even have an accounts receivable department for roughly a hundred years. Money supposed to be paid to the Indians was simply dumped in the general fund. When
Eloise Cobell launched her landmark suit on behalf of the individual Indians in the 1990s, she had already traced some of that
funding to such things as the bailout of Chrysler and reduction of the national debt.
The BIA responded by attempting to destroy the records they did have, and stonewalling every step of the way. At one point, they claimed the records they did have, held in a water-damaged warehouse, were
contaminated with the hantavirus, and supposedly they asked if they could borrow spacesuits from NASA to retrieve them. (I distinctly recall later wandering through the Department of the Interior and seeing hundreds of rusty file cabinets lining the halls--presumably the same deadly rat-poop contaminated files they told the judge they didn't want to touch.)
The judge presiding over the individuals case was none other than Royce Lamberth, probably more famous for being one of the few acknowledged judges who presided over the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act">FISA courts. I have long suspected that Lamberth's lack of humor may rest in his knowledge that the Indian Trust Fund was also used as a slush fund to cover so-called "black ops," but that's only a suspicion.
Whatever the case, the money and most of the records are long gone, and Lamberth ruled the United States to be in breach of trust. Now (unless something interesting has happened that I don't know about, which is possible) the fight centers on figuring out how much money was stolen. Plaintiffs and defendants disagree on the way to account for the theft. DOI wants to place the figure at far below $40 billion and trace the accounting back to when Ms. Cobell launched her suit in 1996, while the plaintiffs demand a full and honest accounting. Factoring in interest and damages could easily push the total over $100 billion, possibly more.
Lamberth held Interior's feet to the fire pretty well for awhile before he moved on, throwing various Secretaries of the Interior and Assistant Secretaries for Indian Affairs (when the Bush Administration bothered to appoint one) in contempt and shutting down Interior employees' access to the Internet for literally years. The scandal spreads across every Presidential administration since about James Garfield, but the Clinton Administration is certainly responsible for document destruction and cover-up, and the Bush Administration appears to me to be pissed that they couldn't steal some of that money themselves (actually, they probably already did in the Reagan Era). They've played a much better game of deceit and delay than Clinton's lawyers ever did, and as far as I can tell nothing of importance has happened in five years.
Congress also plays a role, as they consistently refuse to adequately fund the computing systems needed for actual accounting, and will certainly refuse to appropriate a hundred billion dollars for restitution unless somehow forced to do so by the courts. As a result, the Indians are effectively paying for the accounting themselves through a reduction in services from the BIA as money is diverted from other projects to fund the trust fund reconciliation.
The case has far deeper ramifications than I've ever seen discussed in print. Tribes have always been the canaries in the coalmine when it comes to our government's corruption--that's why Jack Abramoff went after tribes first and everything else second, because they're the easiest target out there. How did Bush get away with walking away from non-Indian treaties like the ABM treaty, you ask? He did it thanks to a long line of American leaders who violated that highest law of the land by ripping off the Indians. Treaties--and therefore the rest of the law in either direction from the Consitution to county ordinances--may be unassailable in theory, but screwing over the tribes showed that in practice there is little to no recourse if the feds choose to violate them, and a day of reckoning for such deeds can always be put off, if not entirely ignored. And, you can bet they'll happily do the same thing to us non-Indians when it becomes expedient. Say for example the banks all fail again and the FDIC goes belly up, what will protect your money? Nothing, is the answer clearly given in this case, with the prospect of a pittance after you're dead.
The Indian trust fund scandal shows that there is no real rule of law in America--and nobody knows that better than the Bush Administration. They're the first ones I saw who took the same theories of malpractice and wrote it in letters miles high in fields other than that of esoteric Indian affairs.
On the other hand, if someone--say a President Obama--forces America to meet its obligations to tribes, then everything else starts to have a little bit of substance again. Here's hoping for that.
But I doubt it.
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