Trust Fund Lawsuit Could Be Near Complete Victory for Indian Plaintiffs By Tanya Lee FLAGSTAFF, Ariz., Feb. 28 - "What's wrong with winning?" Elouise Cobell asked a packed room at the opening of Information Management Network's 8th Semi-Annual Native American Finance Conference in Las Vegas. Cobell, her colleagues and supporters, and half a million Native Americans could be on the verge of winning the largest class-action lawsuit this country has ever seen. On Jan. 30, federal Judge James Robertson ruled the Bureau of Indian Affairs would never be able to give a full accounting of how much the government owes to individual beneficiaries of a trust account set up to keep track of and pay out royalties to some 500,000 Native Americans from leases the government negotiated and oversaw on their behalf as part of its trust responsibility. "Now we're all back in play," Cobell said. "The Department of the Interior can no longer say, 'Just give us more money, and more time, and we'll figure it out.'" The next trial starts almost immediately. On March 5, the judge will begin hearing testimony on how much is owed to the trust beneficiaries. "We need to put together a proposal," said Cobell, "What is the restitution due to individual Indians? Because the judge decided it is impossible to do a full accounting, it is now up to the government to prove each claim it makes. If they can't show they paid it, they owe it." Cobell pointed out that a settlement was possible during the course of the lawsuit, but the government's terms became increasingly unreasonable. "They dug in their heels," she said. And now the settlement terms will be much higher, running into "billions and billions." On June 10, 1996, Cobell filed a class-action suit demanding the federal government account for more than a hundred year's worth of royalties on leases owed to individual Native American allottees throughout Indian Country. Over that time, the government had neither kept adequate records nor developed an accounting system to keep track of how much it collected and how much was disbursed. For more than 10 years, the government said they would do the accounting, fix the system, and get the job done. Three Secretaries of the Interior have been held in contempt of court, the Department of the Interior website had its BIA section shut down by court order. A special master was appointed to oversee Interior's efforts to fix the accounting system, and the federal government has spent millions looking at the accounts, and millions more trying to stop Cobell. "We won time after time," Cobell said. "Then the government would try to retaliate. They threatened to cut federal funding for education, health, all Indian programs." But the tribes stood together and because they did, said Cobell, eventually, the feds backed down. The lawsuit asked the government to do three things: fix the accounting system, give individual Indians a full accounting, and, finally, make restitution if it turned out that the plaintiffs had been cheated of moneys owed them. The first and second issues have been resolved with the Jan. 30 ruling. The third will go to trial March 5, and a breach of trust responsibility on the part of the federal government that has gone on for six generations could be righted.