The civil contempt trial of Interior Secretary Gale Norton got under way Monday in a federal court in Washington, DC, with the lead attorney for Native Americans declaring that Norton and the department “have abused this court” and the “integrity of the judicial process” by failing to comply with orders in 1999 that directed the agency to clean up its management of individual Indian trust accounts.

Norton, the department and past Interior administrations have “perpetrated” a “fraud” on the court by filing false reports about the trust fund accounts, which hold Indian royalty monies, and by not complying with court-ordered accounting reforms and trying to cover it up, claimed Dennis Gingold, a Washington lawyer representing Native Americans in the class-action suit against Interior, in his opening statement. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys, which are representing Norton and other department officials, did not make an opening statement Monday.

The five-and-a-half-year-old lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of Elouise Pepion Cobell of the Blackfeet Reservation in western Montana, alleges that Interior as fiduciary has abused and mismanaged the individual Indian trust funds over the past century, bilking Native Americans out of as much as $10 billion in royalty monies stemming from oil and natural gas production, and timber and mining activities on their lands. [Case No. 96-1285].

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered Norton and Neal McCaleb, assistant secretary of Interior for Indian Affairs, to show cause why they should not be held in contempt of court “in their official capacities” for neglecting to carry out accounting reforms that he ordered in 1999 in the case and by filing “false and misleading” quarterly status reports. The case is expected to last anywhere from a week to several weeks, according to parties involved.

Norton was a no-show at the hearing because of “demands on her schedule,” DOJ attorney Mark Nagle told Lamberth. The secretary “can’t even come up the street in a limousine” to the courthouse, complained Gingold, while his client, Cobell, traveled 2,500 miles from her ranch in Montana for the hearing. This case, depending on how it plays out, could be one of the biggest challenges that Norton faces as head of Interior.

Although the issue was not raised Monday, attorneys for Cobell have asked Lamberth to transfer oversight of the Indian trust fund accounts from the Department of Interior to a court-appointed receiver.

Interior’s still-existing attitude toward the Indians trust funds was reflected in a 1932 document from the Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the then-Secretary of Interior, Gingold told Lamberth. It said “there was no good reason to provide accurate trust information to individual Indian trust beneficiaries because they are illiterate, they are stupid and they won’t understand what we’re telling them anyway.”

Since then, “nothing has changed with regard to [that] attitude” toward the trusts, Gingold argued. The federal government “forced” Native Americans to put their royalties into trust, he noted. Over time, “the United States government has treated this trust property as the government’s property, as the assets of the Department of Interior or the Department of Treasury,” and, in fact, has at times used the Indian trust monies to reduce the national debt.

“That attitude has been predominant in the Department of Interior…probably since 1849,” said Gingold. There is a “total absence of any concern [by Interior] in what is in the best interest of the trust beneficiaries.”

Native Americans receive monthly checks from the Interior-supervised trust fund accounts for royalty-bearing activities on their lands, but they contend that the payouts have fallen far short of their own royalty calculations, and that the problem has persisted for decades.

The argument by Norton and other Interior officials that the trust accounting problems “didn’t happen on our watch” in not a defense, argued Gingold. He noted that Norton also has signed off on “inaccurate” quarterly reports about the status of the trust funds.

Interior previously represented to the court that “they were going to finally fix it [the problem] this time,” said Gingold, but it still exists today. Every assurance made in this court “demonstrated…bad faith” on the part of Interior, he noted. “This is a disgraceful situation.”

Not only has Norton and other department officials shown contempt for the court, but they have displayed “contempt of the trust beneficiaries,” Gingold said.

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