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Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 19:21:55 -0700
Sender: Native Americans Discussion
<INDIAN-HERITAGE-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
From: John Wm Sloniker <johnwms@SERV.NET>
Subject: [IHF] (N/P) Trust-fund suit goes to court
Indian trust-fund suit goes to court
Monday, June 7, 1999
By RACHEL SMOLKIN and JESSICA WEHRMAN
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE (Seen in the PI)
NAVAJO NATION, N.M. -- During the latter years of Bessie
Jim's
life, she pawned cherished jewelry to buy gas in search of one
simple
answer: Why had her checks stopped coming?
Each time she made the 120-mile trip to the nearest Bureau
of
Indian Affairs office on the Navajo reservation in northwestern
New
Mexico, the response she received was the same: Your money is
in your
trust account. We will send the check in the mail.
"Poor Bessie would go to the post office to check on a
daily
basis," her daughter said in Navajo, speaking through a translator.
"But the money didn't come."
Thursday, a team of lawyers will try to convince a federal
judge
that hundreds of thousands of Native Americans like Bessie Jim
never
received their checks or learned basic answers about money the
federal government is supposed to be holding for them in trust.
[Photo]
Betty Whitey, above, says that for years her late mother,
Bessie Jim, failed to get the Bureau of Indian Affairs to
send money owed her. [Scripps Howard News Service]
The class-action lawsuit touches some of the nation's poorest
residents, victims of a land management system they were forced
into
but do not understand. In Washington state, members of the Yakima,
Quinalt and Colville tribes are among those who may be affected.
After the federal government pushed Native Americans off their
lands and onto reservations in the mid-1800s, officials divided
the
reservations into parcels known as allotment lands. Oil, gas and
timber companies lease these lands and make lease payments to
the
federal government, which is responsible for collecting the payments
and holding them in trust for Native Americans.
Payments vary widely, from a few cents every three months to
$15,000 or more in parts of oil-rich Oklahoma. Most land tracts
average 80 to 160 acres and can be shared by multiple landholders.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs acknowledges past mismanagement
of
trust accounts but says it is working hard to correct mistakes
and
create a viable system.
But for many landholders, the system is a mystery punctuated
by
frustrating encounters with paternalistic bureau employees.
Two generations after Moses Bruno's death, his family is still
rankled over the government's treatment of their grandfather.
Bruno's descendants can count the ways the government wronged
Bruno in its care of his land: How they've found documents suggesting
Interior Department employees regularly skimmed 10 percent of
the
money owed Bruno; how the government allowed an oil company to
pay
Bruno $100 to dump salt water into his creeks over his objections,
devastating the environment; and how, when Bruno, a Potawatomi
Indian
from central Oklahoma, died penniless in 1960, it pushed his heirs
to
sell the remaining 40 acres of his land to pay off a $97.01 grocery
bill and funeral debts.
Worse still, his family said, the government stole his dignity.
When Bruno tried to gain control of his land, the local BIA agency
deemed him incompetent to manage it.
"Every time they touched my grandfather's land, they cheated
him,"
says Leon Bruno, Bruno's grandson.
Seattle attorney Phil Katzen, who represents 10 Northwest tribes
but is not involved in the suit, said, "I'm sure that there
are
many tribal members in the Northwest whose trust funds have been
mismanaged by the BIA."
"In Eastern Washington, tribal members have lands that
have been
leased out by the BIA for grazing. In Western Washington, tribal
members have lands that have been leased out for timber,"
Katzen
said.
Ron Allen, chairman of the Olympic Peninsula's Jamestown Klallam
Tribe and president of the National Congress of American Indians,
agreed that "there are quite a few" tribe members in
Washington state
who stand to benefit from the suit and the BIA's related reform
efforts. An exact number wasn't known.
Lawyers for the Native Americans want a reckoning of the
government's inability to reconcile accounts, find land titles
or
explain leases, but also of the daily humiliations perpetrated
against a people. In their view, the BIA has betrayed trust
responsibilities for the Indian landholders it is supposed to
serve.
Ervin Chavez moved from his Navajo reservation land to a better
life for himself and his family. His home outside Farmington,
N.M.,
gives him pride but has not stopped his exasperation with the
BIA.
Chavez, who represents a group of Native American landholders,
tells of a trip to the local BIA office several years ago when
he
overheard an employee informing landholders her computer was down.
Many had traveled more than 100 miles to ask questions about their
leases or find out why payments had not come.
Is the computer really down? Chavez finally asked another
employee.
No, the employee replied, we have a new computer system and
she doesn't know how to use it.
In remote BIA offices such as the one in Crownpoint, N.M.,
problems with antiquated telephone systems -- rather than lack
of
knowledge -- might have interfered with an employee's ability
to
operate a computer, said Genni Denetsone of the BIA's Window Rock,
Ariz., office.
She said assisting landholders can be a time-consuming process,
hampered by language barriers and difficulties shaping questions.
Even when BIA employees speak Navajo, communication problems
persist with a language that until recently was only spoken. Some
landholders have trouble conveying what information they want.
"There's conversational Navajo and then 'real estate Navajo,'
which
is a little more difficult," Denetsone said.
She acknowledged the BIA has received complaints from time
to time
for treating landholders with condescension. "We try to stress
to our
employees courtesy and assisting the customer," she said.
"We've had
a lot of effort with outreach meetings."
Denetsone has seen many improvements since she came to the
BIA in
the 1970s and hopes its new computer system will help as well.
BIA
officials say the new system, which will be launched June 25 in
Montana, will computerize land titles and leases now kept on paper
records.
But Denetsone said more improvements are needed, including
better
computer software and more staff. "We have a 16 million-acre
reservation, about the size of West Virginia, and we have a staff
of about 50," she said of the Navajo reservation that extends
across
New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
In this environment, researching a trust account's history
can
take several months, she said. "We have six months of data
in the
computer, and they might want something that's 8 or 10 or 12 years
old, and it might be stored in boxes somewhere."
Dorothy Valdez Wilson understands the long wait that can accompany
a request for information.
She lives with her husband and five of her seven children in
a
dilapidated two-bedroom trailer with no electricity, no heat and
torn
plywood on the bathroom floor. Plastic sheeting covers holes created
when a recent windstorm blew out all the windows, and stray dogs
roam
her land. When family members want to bathe, they heat water on
the
stove and carry it in buckets to the bathtub.
Wilson's $15.53 check from the BIA comes once every three or
four
months. She knows that when her father died, the land was divided
among herself and her siblings. But she does not understand how
much
land she owns. She is not sure which company leases the gas line
on
her property or whether that line is turning a profit.
During her most recent trip to the nearest BIA office, Wilson
said
she asked for information about her revenue and was told she would
receive an answer in the mail. That was in February. In May Wilson
was still waiting.
"It is very difficult for anyone to make a living out
here, where
there is very little income," she said. "Sometimes I
can't sleep
worrying and thinking about what I can't get for my kids."
Still, Wilson's father loved the land and asked her to care
for it.
"Dad would say: 'The Earth is our Mother Earth,'"
she said. "This
is the allotted land, and I'm going to stay on it. Whatever happens
I'm going to stay here."
For Native Americans taught to treat the land with love and
respect, some of the government's worst misdeeds extend beyond
missed
paychecks and lost land titles to the treatment it allowed of
the
land itself.
If attorneys for the Indians succeed in their latest and largest
battle, the government could be responsible for billions of dollars
that may help families such as Dorothy Wilson's.
"It would be very helpful if that money would start rolling
in,"
she said. "It would help a lot of my people. I could see
their faces
smiling, their children's faces, knowing there's hope."
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==============================================
To: redorman@theofficenet.com
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 12:39:13 -0700
From: "Eagle Ortega" <unityofnations@eudoramail.com>
Subject: BIG MTN. BENEFIT
Organization: QUALCOMM Eudora Web-Mail (http://www.eudoramail.com:80)
Robert Dorman,
I would like to say that the 1999 BIG MOUNTAIN BENEFIT was
a good success
for the Dine'h (Navajo) people. May 29th at the AZTLAN CULTURAL
ARTS FOUNDATION
in Los Angeles,CA
This event raised $ 800.00 dollars....We would like to thank
the Dine'h
people and the resistors from Big Mountain...AHO! ALL MY RELATIONS
I would like to thank my brothers and sisteers who have dedciated
their
time and their efforts to this benefit. .. we need to continue
to Save
Big Mountain!
I aprreciate the work efforts of Mauro Oliveria, SOL,
Andres "SEADOG" Amaya, John Owen from Unity of Nations.
most sincerely,
Eagle, Organizer
UNITY OF NATIONS
=========================================
From: DINETAH29@aol.com
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 00:37:06 EDT
Dear Big Mountain supporters,
I have gotten several inquiries asking when the Sundance in
Big Mountain
will
take place. John Benally says the Sundance at Camp Anna Mae in
Big Mountain
will begin with Purification from July 11-14. The Sundance will
take place
from July 15-18.
John Benally invites everyone to come and pray for and support the resistance.
..
Thank you,
Yours sincerely,
Marsha Monestersky
Consultant to Sovereign Dineh Nation