Tribes meet deadline
Trust accounts: Lawsuits filed in time for accounting of federal funds
Congress refused to extend time limit for legal action against the federal government.

By Judy Gibbs Robinson

Published: January 12, 2007

At least four Oklahoma Indian tribes scrambled to beat a deadline and sued the federal government in the last days of December, seeking an accounting of their trust assets.

The Sac & Fox Nation, Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma joined a class-action lawsuit filed by the Native American Rights Fund on Dec. 28. The Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma sued independently on Dec. 30.

Under a statute of limitations set by Congress, tribes had until Dec. 31 to file trust accounting lawsuits. The last Congress refused to extend that deadline.

"This is a horrible example of an unintended consequence,” Ponca Chairman Dan Jones said. "They opened the door and, in my opinion, unleashed a can of worms.”

The tribal lawsuits mirror a class-action case filed by Eloise Cobell, a Blackfeet from Montana, against the U.S. Interior Department. The suit accuses the government of mismanaging the trust accounts of individual Indians and seeks a historical accounting of every dollar.

In December 1999, a federal court ordered an accounting, which has bogged down in the Interior Department.

In the wake of the Cobell action, at least 50 tribes have filed their own lawsuits, but others were financially unable to do so, according to a news release from the Native American Rights Fund.

The fund's lawsuit seeks to represent more than 250 tribes that lack the financial resources or information needed to meet the Dec. 31 deadline. Only 11 tribes are named plaintiffs, including three from Oklahoma.

The Ponca lawsuit seeks a reckoning of its own tribal trust accounts, some dating to the 1870s.

"The basis of the suit is that the government failed to provide for the tribe as it stated it would in an 1868 treaty,” Jones said.

According to the Indian rights group, the Interior Department isn't any better prepared to account for tribal trust accounts than it was for individual accounts.

A 2005 report from the Office of Inspector General said the Interior Department procedures and controls were inadequate to ensure Indian trust fund activities and balances were recorded properly or timely.

"The bottom line is that despite the agency reports and 20 years of congressional mandates, no adequate accountings have resulted to date,” said John Echohawk, the fund's director and a member of Oklahoma's Pawnee tribe.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned Congress in March 2005 that tribal trust litigation could get expensive.

"The United States' potential exposure in these cases is more than $200 billion,” he said in written testimony to a House Appropriations subcommittee.