.............. Indians sue government ............... for $27.5 billion
A conservative estimate is that over 12 million Native American Indians lived here (in the United States) prior to contact with European explorers. Centuries later, the population had been reduced by 90%.
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What is the difference between the U.S. Government of that time and Hitler?
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The U.S. Government won the war! He who wins the war writes the history books. One person's manifest destiny is another person's genocide! Andrew Jackson signed The Removal Act of 1830, pushing Indians westward and causing the "Trail of Tears" in 1838, a forced march of the Cherokee's resulting in mass deaths. ................. "It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters," Andrew Jackson said in his second annual message to Congress. "By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites" and "It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy" Jackson stated.
Congressman Davy Crockett opposed the Indian Removal Act because it uprooted 60,000 indians from peaceful tribes and brutally forced them off their land and across the Mississippi River. Several polititions warned him he was ruining his career. "I told them it was a wicked, unjust measure, and that I should go against it, let the cost to myself be what it might," Crockett said in his autobiography.
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The white settlers' concern may have been the result of previous encounters.
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Trust Funds Litigation
Landmark class-action lawsuit
Seeks to enforce the trust duties owed by the United States to 500,000 Indian trust beneficiaries.
Photographs courtesy Library of Congress Prints & Photographs
The case was filed in federal court in June 1996
Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana, is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit over the federal government’s mismanagement of individual Indian Trust Accounts. The lawsuit, Cobell v. Norton, seeks an accurate accounting from the Interior Department of the Individual Indian Money trust accounts. Some experts have placed the government liability at between $10 billion to $40 billion. Congressional leaders are trying to resolve the dispute through legislation. A federal judge has ruled the Department of Interior lost track of the funds it received for leases and sales of land it took in trust from individual American Indians.
Plaintiff Elouise Cobell wants $27.5 billion, but the Interior Department admits to errors of about $500 million in lost funds and interest. The government is accused of century-old mismanagement of trust lands and trust revenues and misconduct by the White House and the Interior Secretary. The Cobell lawsuit has been a trailblazer in trying to hold the government accountable. In 1999, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin where held in contempt of Court. Judge Lamberth ruled that the United States had breached the trust duties and ordered a full accounting of all trust funds from 1887 to present. That decision was affirmed unanimously on appeal. Lamberth has concluded a second contempt trial of Interior Secretary Gale Norton and former Oklahoma Secretary of Transportation and present Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb. They are charged with perpetuating a fraud on the Court and repeatedly lying to the Court about the status of trust reform. The decision is pending.
Crossing the badlands of the U.S. Government
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
*Responsible for the management of 55.7 million acres of land held in .. trust for American Indians and Alaska Natives. *There are 561 federally recognized tribal governments. *Developing forestlands and agriculture, leasing assets, economic ..growth, protecting water and land rights and creating an ..infrastructure. In 1887, the U.S. government took control of 11 million acres of tribal lands in the West. The government was supposed to be paying into Indian trust accounts revenues from oil, gas, timber, minerals, and grazing on those acres and distributing payments to account holders.
Cobell asked the Court to take direct supervision and control over trust reform: "What we need and what we have asked for is a receiver. Without a receiver, reform will never occur and this mismanagement of our money and land will continue."
It is time for the government to smoke the peace pipe.
Federal Judge Lamberth issued strong criticism of the Interior Department and found two former Secretaries of the Interior in contempt of court. He also found a former Treasury Secretary in contempt. The appeals court reversed eight orders issued by the judge and two others were rejected. Judge Lamberth said the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs handling of trust fund accounts was "peppered with scandals, deception, dirty tricks and outright villainy," and called the department "a dinosaur - the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind."
ooooI can't have a federal judge badmouthing my staff. It's not right! And I can't pay the Indians billions of dollars...we need that for fighting the war in Iraq...to fight for freedom and democracy and the values we cherish.
"It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages." "By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power." "The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual." "Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode?" "Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous." Andrew Jackson A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume II, by James D. Richardson, published by Bureau of National Literature and Art ,1908
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ooooI can't have a federal judge badmouthing my staff. It's not right! And I can't pay the Indians billions of dollars...we need that for fighting the war in Iraq...to fight for freedom and democracy and the values we cherish.
