Legal experts from around the nation gathered Friday at the Federal Indian Trust Responsibility Conference to educate people about the largest class-action lawsuit brought against the federal government.
The detailed discussion, held in ASU's College of Law Great Hall, focused on the failure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to account for money held in federal Indian trust accounts since 1887.
"The problem has been neglected literally since the 19th century," said Kevin Gover, law professor at ASU. "That's when the mismanagement of Indian assets really began, and over time, everybody in line sort of passed it along to the next guy."
The money, which is now estimated at $13 billion after accrued interest, is owed to nearly half a million American Indians for revenues that were generated from lands allotted to them in the 19th century.
Money was generated from mining, oil and gas drilling, grazing and other activities and was to be disbursed to American Indians.
Following a lawsuit filed in 1996, a Washington D.C. federal court ordered the Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs to determine how much money is actually owed.
James Cason, associate deputy secretary for the Department of the Interior, said the department estimates about $13 billion over the last 100 years, but plaintiffs asserted $176 billion was owed.
"If you make the assumption that we took in $13 billion over time, and we never paid out a dime, and you add compound interest to it then it's $176 billion," Cason said.
Cason called the assertion ridiculous, because no one would have let it go on that long.
"It assumes a premise that our Indian beneficiaries were never clever enough to figure out they weren't getting money for over 100 years, and that we had 100 years worth of congresses that never caught on," Cason said. "That just doesn't happen."
Cason said other parts of the reform include surveying lands that haven't been surveyed since the late 1800s, integrating new trust beneficiary services and new forms of records management to keep track of trusts, and clearing up unresolved will issues.
Gover said they plan on having several more conferences because of the complexity of the issue and doesn't know when this will be resolved.
"I don't know that it gets resolved," Gover said. "There's a push under way in Congress right now to really change the law around this issue. We knew that, and that's why we have people here that are going to discuss that legislation."
Reach the reporter at beth.cochran@asu.edu.
