Lakota AID Registered Charity No: 1097444 October 2005

BIA Accounting  Records Destroyed! Extract taken from Lakota Journal Sept 23rd 2005-written by Bill Mcallister with the Cobell Litigation Team. At the same time that the Interior Department is bragging to Congress about it’s Indian Trust accounting plan, the national archives and records administration (NARA), reports ongoing destruction of BIA accounting records only a few blocks from the Federal courthouse in Washington. In a filing last week, NARA disclosed that it is “investigating” one or more incidents involving what may be intentional acts aimed at unlawfully removing or disposing of permanent records from the Interior Department. In the latter dated Sept 13, NARA attorney Jason R Baron said that “The members of the agency noticed what appeared to be federal records at the main archives building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Sept and among the records destroyed were documents from the 1950’s from the BIA”. Baron also said “Subsequently more of what appeared to be Indian records were discovered in a waste basket in the stack area in Main Archives”. Baron said in the letter “It is not known if these two incidents are related”. Baron said both the NARA Inspector General and the US Attorney for the District of Columbia had begun investigations. Dennis.M.Gingold, lead plaintiff for the Indians who are seeking full accounting of their government managed individual Indian Trust accounts, called the destruction “The same repugnant, desperate actions we’ve come to expect from Interior Secretary Gale Norton and her unethical actions”. Despite numerous court orders to preserve records related to Indians and to the individual Indian Trust, the Secretary and the Interior Department continue to destroy irreplaceable trust documents three blocks from the federal courthouse where they were held in contempt for destroying trust records. “Unless and until Norton is thrown in jail she will continue to destroy documents in order to undermine this 10 year old litigation,” said Norton, “When a sitting cabinet level official protected records 60 yards from where the constitution is displayed, we have a government that is out of control”. The BIA runs a trust programme for individual Indians. Although established in 1887, the government has yet to provide a complete accounting of funds in the accounts. A lawsuit filed in 1996 by Elouise Coball, a member of the Black Foot Tribe in Montana, is pressing the government over it’s repeated failures to give 500,000 Native Americans a proper accounting to the funds that should be in their accounts! Sent in by Brenda Aplin 28th 0ct 2005: www.lakota-aid.co.uk [Home] [Why the Lakota need your Help] [Newsletter] [Ambulance Project]