David and Goliath in Indian Country

"I've never seen more egregious misconduct by the federal government," said Royce C. Lamberth, the federal judge overseeing the Individual Indian Trust (IIT) reform case, which stands as the largest class action lawsuit ever filed against the U.S. federal government. His comments were elicited in 1999 when the Department of the Interior and Treasury Department announced they had "inadvertently" destroyed 162 boxes of vital trust records during the course of the trial, then waited months to notify the court of the "accident."

Filed more than seven years ago by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and her legal team, and representing more than 500,000 individual Native American landholders, the Indian Trust case -- also known as Cobell vs. Norton -- is easily one of the biggest stories of government mismanagement and malfeasance in modern U.S. history. The case has turned into such a nightmare for the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Treasury that the government now has more than 100 lawyers assigned to the case; more than it employed in the Microsoft antitrust litigation.

At stake is over $100 billion rightfully belonging to the nation's most impoverished people. The Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Treasury say they have simply "lost" the money and claim they cannot now provide an accurate accounting of how much is owed to whom. In the course of the lawsuit, the federal government has destroyed vital accounting documents, filed false reports to the court, and generally conducted itself in such bad faith that a total of 37 past and present government officials, including current Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and former Secretary Bruce Babbitt, have been held in contempt of court for their misconduct.

During the first of two trial phases, the government attempted to limit its liability, but suffered a resounding defeat when Judge Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to conduct a full accounting of Indian trust assets -- dating all the way back to 1887 -- and imposed strict liability on government trustees.

"This is a landmark victory," Cobell said of Judge Lamberth's Phase One decision. "It is now clear that trust law and trust standards fully govern the management of the Individual Indian Trust and that Secretary Norton can no longer ignore the trust duties that she owes to 500,000 individual Indian trust beneficiaries."

Unlikely Warrior

Elouise Cobell lives in Browning, Mont., where she founded and helps run the first tribal-owned bank in the country. She also served as treasurer of the Blackfoot tribe from 1970 through 1983.

Growing up, Cobell's family had no plumbing, electricity or running water. She remembers they would often complain about sporadic or suspiciously small checks from the government for the land given to Cobell's grandmother during "allotment" at the turn of the century, land that is now leased out by the Dept. of Interior and the BIA to ranchers and timber companies.

Allotment was the policy ushered in by the Dawes Act in 1887 in an attempt to break down tribal structures and reduce Native American land holdings. The heads of tribal households were given up to 320 acres of land, but were forbidden actual ownership; instead, the government forced a trust relationship, in which the Interior and the BIA would oversee the land and disburse all revenue from its use to the individual landholders.

The Act also allowed for the sale of "surplus" land, a provision white settlers exploited fully in their purchase of around 90 million acres -- almost 65 percent of all Native American lands -- by 1932. The government stated during this period that this trust relationship was necessary because it did not believe Indians were capable of managing their own affairs.