Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Same Old
Most Americans, I'd venture to say, have at least some sense of the injustice perpetrated against Native American nations by the government of the United States, but when it comes to American Indian property rights under US law, there's plenty of confusion to go around.
Two sources for helping to clarify this hotly-contested issue are http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Treaties/Treaties.html and http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412062
By reading some of the treaties posted at First People, it becomes readily clear that they were intricately-detailed, highly-complex real estate transactions that explicitly described the landscapes and payments, as well as the implicit perpetual obligations and responsibilities of the exchange that have been worked out over the last century and a half.
Most recently, the billions of dollars potentially lost to the tribes as a result of the Department of Interior's theft of revenues owed for leases, royalties and sales of property, is potentially what Indian Country Today described as "the greatest land grab in 150 years.''
This mismanagement of the Indian trust fund by Interior--perhaps the most blatant example of stolen royalties from oil, gas, coal and other mineral leases--was exposed in a 1996 attempt to reconcile the trust fund accounts from between July 1, 1972 and September 1992. When the federal government's unconscionable attempt to have the case dismissed failed, it asked the court to impose a statute of limitations on claims for funds before 1984. According to Federal Claims Court regulations, the statute of limitations is six years, a term set by Congress.
Keeping these stolen funds by using technicalities in the Indian Claims Commission Act, possibly novel, is probably the most egregious case of Congress and the Executive branch colluding in depriving the benificiaries of these long-standing liens by trickery since the fiduciary responsibilities were first assumed by Interior. To the tribes, though, it is just one more case of broken promises.
Two sources for helping to clarify this hotly-contested issue are http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Treaties/Treaties.html and http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412062
By reading some of the treaties posted at First People, it becomes readily clear that they were intricately-detailed, highly-complex real estate transactions that explicitly described the landscapes and payments, as well as the implicit perpetual obligations and responsibilities of the exchange that have been worked out over the last century and a half.
Most recently, the billions of dollars potentially lost to the tribes as a result of the Department of Interior's theft of revenues owed for leases, royalties and sales of property, is potentially what Indian Country Today described as "the greatest land grab in 150 years.''
This mismanagement of the Indian trust fund by Interior--perhaps the most blatant example of stolen royalties from oil, gas, coal and other mineral leases--was exposed in a 1996 attempt to reconcile the trust fund accounts from between July 1, 1972 and September 1992. When the federal government's unconscionable attempt to have the case dismissed failed, it asked the court to impose a statute of limitations on claims for funds before 1984. According to Federal Claims Court regulations, the statute of limitations is six years, a term set by Congress.
Keeping these stolen funds by using technicalities in the Indian Claims Commission Act, possibly novel, is probably the most egregious case of Congress and the Executive branch colluding in depriving the benificiaries of these long-standing liens by trickery since the fiduciary responsibilities were first assumed by Interior. To the tribes, though, it is just one more case of broken promises.
