Tribal sovereignty

[chiggerbit]

Almost makes a person wonder who the hitman was who took down SunCruz owner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

[compared2what?]

Fraud
The Bureau of Indian Affairs

You might be interested in Cobell v. Salazar, chig. It's kind of an incredible story. And at least imo, Elouise Cobell would be a household name with holidays named after her if there were any justice in this world. Link to the plaintiff's side here, and to the wiki entry here.

Also, as long as we're at it, we still need to free Leonard Peltier.

[chiggerbit]

Sheesh!

...Lawyers for the Justice Department and the Interior Department have made clear throughout the Cobell litigation that the government's firm position is that the Individual Indian Money (IIM) Trust is not a real trust and that Indians are owed nothing no matter how much money and other assets are missing or have been looted from the Trust....

[compared2what?]

Sheesh!

...Lawyers for the Justice Department and the Interior Department have made clear throughout the Cobell litigation that the government's firm position is that the Individual Indian Money (IIM) Trust is not a real trust and that Indians are owed nothing no matter how much money and other assets are missing or have been looted from the Trust....

I know, right? I so admire her for at least making them say that out loud in public. Now if only the world would just get in the habit of hearing and responding to it with the righteous fury that it should every single fucking time it's said already, we might not have to hear it more than just the once more.

I do realize that we on this part of this continent in the present era may have lost our generation's place in line for that one. Nevertheless. I figure that I might as well refuse to stop hoping until I die on the barricades that I'm never going to get the chance to be fighting on in reality. It being purely a notional thing, both as hope and as refusal, it can't really hurt anyone at least.

[chiggerbit]

http://tinyurl.com/yjx6d4d

A Broken Trust

The government cannot account for billions of dollars it owes to Native Americans.

by Tom Dunkel and Bill Hogan, Motherjones.com

Josephine Wild Gun lives with her son's family in a run-down house on the Blackfeet reservation in Heart Butte, Montana. Like many of her neighbors, she owns several tracts of reservation land that are held in trust by the US government. Federal officials manage her nearly 10,000 acres, leasing much of the property to private interests for grazing and oil drilling. In return, Wild Gun is supposed to receive royalties from the Indian Trust Fund, created in 1887 to oversee such payments to Native Americans.

But despite the lucrative leases, Wild Gun has never received more than $1,500 a year from the trust fund. A few years ago, the payments began trickling off; one check totaled only 87 cents. When her husband died in 1994, Wild Gun had to borrow money to pay for the funeral. Now in her early 80s, she survives on less than $400 a month in Social Security. "I think they're cheating her really big," says Wild Gun's daughter-in-law, Diana.

Wild Gun is one of approximately 300,000 Native Americans who are suing the Interior Department, claiming that they are owed at least $10 billion in payments on some 10 million acres. The fund is in such disarray, the government concedes, that it doesn't have any way of knowing how much it actually owes - or to whom.

"It's a total mess," says Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit. "They've stolen from the Indians because we're minorities and we're poor. It's one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of the country."

Cobell's harsh assessment is shared by Republican John McCain of Arizona, a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, who calls the fund's mismanagement a "national scandal," and by US District Judge Royce Lamberth, who is hearing the case. "I've never seen more egregious misconduct by the federal government," the judge declared. This spring, Lamberth is expected to consider placing the fund in the hands of a court-appointed receiver, a move that would give the judiciary an unprecedented degree of control over an entire federal bureaucracy.

The trust fund proved to be a disaster from the start. To give the government greater control of tribal lands, Congress divided reservations into parcels called "allotments" and awarded them to each member of a tribe-but reserved the authority to manage the property. Anyone who wanted to lease Indian-owned lands made their payments directly to the government, which was then supposed to pass the money along to the Indians who had been allotted the lands.

But officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs often failed to collect lease payments-and when they did, the money didn't always make its way to Native Americans. As many as 90 percent of the fund's records may be missing, and the few that are available are in comically bad condition. An Interior Department report provided to the court refers to storage facilities plagued by problems ranging from "poisonous spiders in the vicinity of stored records" to "mixed records strewn throughout the room with heavy rodent activity."

Federal officials have "spent more than 100 years mismanaging, diverting, and losing money that belongs to Indians," says John Echohawk of the Native American Rights Fund, which is directing the lawsuit.

"They have no idea how much has been collected from the companies that use our land and are unable to provide even a basic, regular statement to most Indian account holders."

In 1999, Judge Lamberth found Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt for failing to produce documents and slapped the government with a $625,000 fine. But the effort to sort out delinquent payments drags on.

In December, the judge began considering contempt charges against Babbitt's successor, Gale Norton, for providing "false and misleading" information about the government's attempts to clean up the fund. Norton has fought the charges and has established a new agency to oversee Indian accounts, but the senior official in charge of overhauling the system admitted in an internal memo last year that the government's implementation plan submitted to Lamberth was based on "wishful thinking and rosy projections."

In December, the judge also ordered the Interior Department to shut down most of its Internet operations after an investigator discovered that the department's computer system allowed hackers easy access to Indian trust accounts.

With the Internet off-limits for weeks, many federal employees could not receive or respond to emails, and thousands of visitors to national parks were unable to make online reservations for campsites. The shutdown also prevented the trust fund from making payments to more than 43,000 Indians, many of whom depend on the quarterly checks to make ends meet. In Montana and Wyoming, some beneficiaries were forced to apply for tribal loans to help them through the holidays.

The check delays heightened the frustrations of Native Americans, who have asked Lamberth to take control of the trust fund. In December, a special master appointed by the court issued a 154-page report urging the judge to name an independent receiver to oversee the fund. "Without such direct oversight," the report concluded, "the threat to records crucial to the welfare of hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries will continue unchecked."

However the current case is resolved, the problem is likely to get even bigger in the coming months. The accounts now under dispute involve only royalties owed to individual Indians; some tribes are expected to file new lawsuits to recoup payments they are owed on 38 million acres of tribal land. Taxpayers have already spent an estimated $800 million to sort out the fund's records and pay for the government's court defense. Yet officials appear no closer to making past-due payments.

"Right now all they have is a plan to make a plan," says Keith Harper, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.

"Our view is, beneficiaries can't wait that long."

* * *

September 18, 2002

Norton and McCaleb found guilty of contempt of court

Join ranks of former officials Babbitt and Gover

by: Jim Adams, Indian Country Today

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a decision dripping with years of frustration, the federal judge hearing the Indian Trust Fund class action suit found Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Interior Secretary of Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb guilty of contempt of court.

The ruling, in a spin-off from the main case, found the two officials had "committed a fraud upon the court" on five issues central to resolving the Trust Fund debacle involving massive funds, possibly as much as $10 billion, owed to at least 300,000 individual Indian trust account holders and further sums owed to tribes.

"The department has now undeniably shown that it can no longer be trusted to state accurately the status of its trust reform efforts. In short, there is no longer any doubt that the Secretary of Interior has been and continues to be an unfit trustee-delegate for the United States," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth.

Norton did have some defenders, U. S. Rep. J. D. Hayworth, R.--Ariz., co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus, praised Norton's "extraordinary attention" to the 115-year -old problem and called the ruling "misdirected, unfair and untimely." . . .

The case has been before Judge Lamberth in the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia since 1999, and he previously issued contempt orders against Clinton Administration officials Bruce Babbitt, then Secretary of the Interior, and Kevin Gover, his Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.

The decision leaves open the question of future control of the trust accounts. Rather than put them into receivership, as class-action plaintiff Elouise Cobell has requested, for now Judge Lamberth promoted court monitor, Joseph S. Kieffer III, to the role of special master-monitor with added powers to enforce court orders.

Kieffer, who has been court monitor since April 2001, issuing scathing reports on Interior's progress and for coming under fire from Norton's attorneys, who called for his removal. . . .

For more on Gale Norton, GO TO > > > Birds on the Power Lines

[chiggerbit]

Remember Gale Norton? She was in the news recently:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... n/2009/09/

Feds Probing Gale Norton For Corruption: LAT
Zachary Roth | September 17, 2009, 12:23PM

Fmr. US Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton
Read More
Dick Cheney, Gale Norton, Interior Department, Italia Federici, Jack Abramoff, Justice Department, Oil, Steven Griles
Share
Digg This


Did Gale Norton, President Bush's far-right interior secretary, illegally use her position to benefit an oil company that later hired her? Justice Department investigators want to know, reports the Los Angeles Times.

In a nutshell, here's what DOJ is looking into:

In January 2006, Norton's Interior Department awarded three oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado -- potentially worth hundreds of billions -- to a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. Two months later, Norton resigned, saying she had no job lined up. But later that year, she was hired by Shell as in-house counsel.

The Feds are said to be looking at whether Norton broke either of two laws: One which prohibits federal employees from discussing employment with a company while that company is involved in dealings with the government that could benefit it; and a second, the "denial of honest services" law, which makes it a crime for a government official to "violate the public trust" by, for instance, giving contracts to friends or associates.

"If [Norton] had feelers out, or was in discussions with Shell in any way, she is absolutely forbidden from participating in any way from doing anything with Shell," a law enforcement official told the LA Times.

Conservatives may call this a political prosecution. But the probe was actually begun during the final months of the Bush administration, by the department's own inspector general. That was Earl Devaney, a respected veteran of government service who is now the watchdog for the stimulus funds. More recently, a criminal referral was made to the Justice Department, after the Interior investigators concluded that there was sufficient evidence of potential illegal activity.

A closer look at the decision to award Shell the leases helps explain why that conclusion might have been reached.

The story starts with Dick Cheney's energy task force, which recommended aggressive efforts to encourage private industry to develop ways to extract oil from shale rock. The Bureau of Land Management then issued six oil shale "research, development and demonstration" leases, which each granted access to up to 160 acres of federal land in the west, in order to develop shale programs.

Shell seems to have been hooked into the process almost from the start. It filed its first application for a lease just one day after the department issued its call for proposals in June 2005.

Then in August, Congress changed the law to allow companies to own more than one oil shale lease, which they had previously been prevented from doing. Although Interior Department officials said they did not notify potential bidders about the law change, Shell quickly filed two more applications. No other company applied for more than one lease. In early 2006 -- after recommendations by an interdisciplinary team involving officials form other government departments -- the interior department announced that it would award the three leases to Shell.

Critics had also charged that giving three leases to Shell defeated part of the purpose of the initiative, which was to allow companies to test different methods for the extraction process. Shell's three leases were for a variation of the same process.

Then, that December, Shell announced that it had hired Norton as in-house counsel to its unconventional fuels division, which includes oil shale. She remains in the job today.

This isn't the first time that Norton's interior department -- and potentially the secretary herself -- has been implicated in muck. Jack Abramoff funnelled $500,000 to a pro-industry group Norton founded, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, calling it "our access to Norton." The group's director, Italia Federici, a former Norton aide, then used her access to Norton and Interior number 2, Steven Griles -- who she was dating -- to make sure that Abramoff was taken care of. Federici pleaded guilty in 2007 to tax evasion and obstruction of Congress. Griles did jail time after pleading guilty the same year to lying to investigators.

Norton had long been considered a potential subject of inquiry in connection to the same events, but has never been charged.

[chiggerbit]

This is interesting. Note the name, Michael Meese. If it's the same Michael Meese, then he's served in the United States Army for 25 years.

http://www.narf.org/nill/bulletins/dct/ ... opland.htm


.....Traditionally, the enforcement of federal law on Indian lands has been a responsibility of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency within the Department of the Interior. Under the ILERA, the BIA is authorized to delegate that responsibility to tribal police through a written contract and, once the contract is in place, through federal commissions called "special law enforcement commissions" or "SLECs" issued to individual tribal officers determined to be qualified on a case-by-case basis. The written contract is commonly referred to as a "deputation agreement." It sets forth the scope of the tribal police officers' authority under the SLECs and the type of training, certification and security clearance the tribal officers must complete before they can be commissioned as federal agents. The BIA maintains a standard deputation agreement that can be modified on a case-by-case basis as necessary. The details of this statute and the implementing regulations will be set forth below.


*2 In February 2003, Michael B. Meese, Chief of the Hopland Police Department, submitted applications for SLECs pursuant to the ILERA to the Sacramento office of the law enforcement division of the BIA for himself and two other tribal officers (Compl.¶ 21). The government concedes that it began the process of negotiating the necessary deputation agreement with the Hopland Band (Br.6). Chief Meese's applications were "approved" by the BIA's office of law enforcement services in Phoenix (Compl.¶ 22). That office prepared SLEC cards for the three tribal officers and sent them to Chief Meese. In March 2003, Chief Meese returned signed SLEC cards to the BIA's Phoenix office for affixing photos, lamination and subsequent return to the tribe ( id. ¶ 23). The BIA, however, never returned the signed SLEC cards to the Hopland Band ( id. ¶ 24).


Instead, the BIA informed the tribe that the Department of the Interior had placed a moratorium on the issuance of any further deputation agreements ( ibid. ). The department said it was reviewing the terms and conditions of its standard deputation agreement ( ibid. ). In June 2003, the Hopland Band, through counsel, requested that the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs provide "a waiver from the moratorium on issuing Special Law Enforcement Commissions" for Chief Meese and two other tribal police officers ( id. ¶ 27). The request was denied in August 2003. The denial provided in relevant part ( id. Exh. C).....

[chiggerbit]

Michael, apparently, is the son of Edwin Meese.

[chiggerbit]

I was going to post a wiki on Edwin Meese to inform international members about who he is, but it only took one look to see that they really painted lipstick on the pig. I'll keep looking.

[chiggerbit]

Here's a chapter devoted to Edwin Meese by the Independent Counsel investigating Iran/Contra. Remember, this is just for starters.

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_31.htm

[chiggerbit]

And then there's this, which must be familiar to most here:

http://www.nationalcorruptionindex.org/ ... ile_id=263

Edwin Meese
Last Updated: October 13, 2008

US Attorney General during the Reagan-Bush administration, Meese led the organized theft of a breakthrough software program, known as PROMIS, from a private company leasing Meese then oversaw its modification for covert use, and personal profit, from sales to foreign governments and banks.

The PROMIS system was created by a company named Inslaw, for US Attorneys to merge criminal case data across the nation. Beyond requirements, it produced far greater depths of information access. It devised an omniscient blueprint of its host’s innermost workings, down to details ever known possible.

In 1982, the Justice Department signed a $10 million contract with Inslaw for distribution of an enhanced, even more powerful version. This contract specified that the enhanced PROMIS features were Inslaw’s property, to be later compensated for in good-faith negotiation.

The enhanced PROMIS software was spectacular. It created its own inquiries, to reveal every minute bit of information throughout any operation with which it made contact. The precursor of artificial intelligence, PROMIS was able to actually improve its own information gathering and control abilities.

As later confirmed in Federal courts and Congressional hearings, Meese and his assistants, realizing PROMIS potential, cut off contract payments to Inslaw, forcing it into bankruptcy. They then pirated this next-generation software, and turned it over to Meese’s colleague from California Governor Reagan years, named Earl Brian. Meese’s wife was loaned money to invest in Brian’s company, named Hadron Inc.

Meese’s Deputy AG, another California crony named Lowell Jensen, had actually owned a company that lost a government bid to Inslaw. Not surprisingly, Jensen was put in charge of breaching the PROMIS contract with Inslaw.

Afterward, Meese arranged for Jensen’s appointment as U.S. District Judge in San Francisco.

Meese and Earl Brian arranged for the development of an untraceable “backdoor” component. It provided the ability, by satellite, to covertly transfer or even alter information, within any system linked to it. Ultimately, entire systems’ content could be secretly replaced by parallel “alternate reality” systems, chosen by those in control of the hidden “back door.” This quickly became the ultimate tool/weapon for clandestine intelligence operations, whether legitimate or not.

Several witnesses and documents identified Brian as a key figure in the 1980 election “October Surprise” Iran hostage outrage. The PROMIS bonanza was reportedly in reward for his services. A highly skilled political and financial manipulator, Brian eventually gained control of United Press International and the Financial News Network. In 1996 he was convicted on ten counts of securities fraud and sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Congressional reports estimated that PROMIS versions were sold to at least 80 foreign governments, and many more international financial entities. One of the first was the notorious BCCI, the 1980s’ money laundry for narcotics cartels, terrorist fronts, dictators and the CIA. During the Iran/Contra hearings, Colonel Oliver North testified that BCCI was the illegal operation’s cash clearinghouse. When the secret arms sales became exposed in November 1986, raising questions of legality and prompting congressional and public scrutiny, Meese became the point man for the Reagan Administration’s effort, in Meese's words, “to limit the damage.”

In 1987, federal bankruptcy judge George Bason ruled that Justice had stolen PROMIS through "trickery, fraud and deceit." He awarded INSLAW $6.8 million in damages and, in the process, found that Justice Department officials made a concerted effort to bankrupt Inslaw and force its liquidation.

The DOJ appealed and lost, but then the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the case on a legal technicality. A petition to the Supreme Court in October 1991 was denied review. Then-Attorney General Dick Thornburgh refused to investigate the DOJ or appoint an independent counsel.

Three months after the initial verdict was issued, George F. Bason, the federal bankruptcy judge presiding over the original case, was denied reappointment to the bench by the Justice Department ending a 14-year tenure. His replacement, S. Martin Teel, had been the attorney who unsuccessfully argued the Inslaw case before Judge Bason on the Justice Department's behalf.

The lawsuits and widening disclosures prompted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks, a Texas Democrat, to launch a two-year investigation into the Inslaw affair. The resulting report in 1992 said that, among others, Meese and others had indeed conspired to steal PROMIS.

In 1991, after his own year-long investigation, free lance reporter Danny Casolaro told friends he’d had conclusive evidence linking Meese’s theft of PROMIS to murderous, officially sanctioned CIA arms and drug deals. The morning before his final meeting with an implicated government official, Casolaro’s body was found in a West Virginia motel room, his arms slashed at least fourteen times, all his notes and documents missing. His death was ruled a suicide.

International sales of PROMIS in the ‘80s were estimated to be at least $800 million, though how much Meese, Brian and the others made from it is not known.

From 1996 until September 11, 2001, a small company named Ptech, owned by later declared terror financier Yassin Al-Qadi, was somehow given control of the US Government’s most vital computer systems, using an enhanced version of PROMIS.

Convicted FBI traitor Robert Hannsen, according to the Washington Times and Fox News in 2001, sold the Bureau’s own version of PROMIS to the Soviet KGB, and Osama bin Laden then bought the software on the Russian black market.

Edwin Meese left the Justice Department in 1988, most well known for his official Report on Pornography the year before. He found that it was harmful.

Since then he’s been a featured board member and spokesman for various right-wing organizations. Among them is the Capital Research Center (CRC), whose stated purpose is “opposition research” to disclose where funding is really coming from for various so-called “consumer causes.” However, in the early ‘90s, it was learned that CRC was also a lobby group, supported by the tobacco industry, until its cancer-link cover-ups were revealed in Congressional hearings.

[chiggerbit]

And from Seymore's The Last Circle:

http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/11.htm

...Dr. Brian ultimately directed his energies towards biological technology. Another of his companies, Biotech Capital Corporation of New York, became 50% owner of American Cytogenetics, which was planning in 1982 to create a subsidiary to engage in genetic research. One notable investor in Biotech, when it went public in 1981, was Edwin Meese. Today, American Cytogenetics in North Hollywood, California, conducts Pap tests for cervical cancer. It also tests tissue samples for cancer and related diseases. Sales in 1985 were $3.4 million....

[chiggerbit]

http://www.copi.com/defrauding_america/chp_22.htm

...SELLING THE STOLEN SOFTWARE
After receiving the leased software from Inslaw, Justice Department officials gave the software to Earl Brian,(344) who then used CIA contract agent Michael Riconosciuto to alter the program at the Wackenhut-operated facilities on the Cabazon Indian Reservation near Indio, California....

Which sort of brings us full circle in demonstrating the incestuous nature of corrupt non-Indians' use of tribal land, and how the Bureau of Indian Affairs is used to allow them to do it.

[Joe Hillshoist]

That was nicelt done chig.

Thanks for this thread its a great resource actually.

[chiggerbit]

See what I mean?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... wD9BJOMLG3

Indian Affairs won't recognize Little Shell Tribe

By MATTHEW BROWN (AP) – 16 hours ago

BILLINGS, Mont. — After a 31-year wait, the U.S. Department of Interior said Tuesday it will not recognize Montana's Little Shell Tribe, a group of landless Indians who have struggled to stay together through more than a century of poverty and dislocation.

The tribe's long campaign for acknowledgment now turns to Congress. Members of Montana's delegation said they would push to circumvent the executive branch decision.

"It kind of hurts, naturally, but it's not the end of the line," said Little Shell elder Roger Salois, 72, after learning of the government's denial.

"It's really hard to describe a feeling like this," Salois added. "You have your community and your place to go. We don't have that. But we're still together, and we're still Little Shell."

The three-decade delay in answering the tribe's application was chalked up in part to "departures from precedent" — a reference to the Little Shell's scattered membership and its history of intermarriage with non-Indians and members of other tribes.

Critics, including U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, blamed the delay on the "broken" bureaucracy that oversees Indian recognition requests.

Tester and fellow Montana Democrat Sen. Max Baucus said they introduced legislation Tuesday to override the Interior Department's decision. U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Republican, earlier introduced a similar measure in the House.

Federal recognition would bring housing grants and other assistance to the tribe's 4,300 members, who are spread across Montana and neighboring states and provinces.

Members of the tribe are candid about their mixed ancestry: Many also call themselves Metis, a Canadian people with European and Native American roots.

But while their lineage is mixed, they say their identity is not.

"They've got their rules, and you've got to fit into the slot. But we know who we are," Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians Chairman John Sinclair said.

"Why didn't they just tell us 'no' 30 years ago?" Sinclair added.

Nedra Darling of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs said officials had to make their decision based on a strict set of criteria that allowed little flexibility.

"That's what Congress gave us. Those are the regulations they set," she said.

The agency's 242-page rejection decision said the Little Shell had failed to show enough "cohesion" during the early 1900s, after many of the tribe's members had been uprooted and were wandering northern Montana and southern Canada.

Members of the group who ended up in Montana lived primarily in "already existing, largely multiethnic settlements," the decision stated.

"In none of these multiethnic settlements did the petitioner's ancestors constitute a majority or even a significant percentage of the population," it said.

The tribe has not had a place of its own since the late 1860s, when Chief Little Shell and his band were excluded from a federal treaty signed with related tribes.

The decision Tuesday acknowledged 89 percent of the Little Shell can trace their lineage to the Pembina Band of Chippewa Indians.

Chief Little Shell's descendants were later forced into Canada, where some married into communities of French-Canadian fur trappers. That influence can be seen today in the tribal song, a fiddle jig.

The tribe later migrated back south into Montana, with many settling in an impoverished area of Great Falls known as Hill 57.

Salois and other tribal elders say residents of Hill 57 often scavenged for scrap metal to survive. They were rejected by the white community, even as they had no place on the reservations of established tribes.

Members of the tribe also scattered through the remote towns along northern Montana's Hi-Line, a 400 mile stretch following U.S. Highway 2 and the former Great Northern Railway. Despite the geographic hurdle, Salois insisted the tribe's members retain strong connections.

"They might go somewhere, but they're still family. It's the same doggone way," he said. "Just because we're not on a reservation doesn't mean we're not Indians."

The petition rejected Tuesday was filed in 1978 after several earlier attempts fell short.

Nine years ago, Montana formally recognized the Little Shell, allowing it to get grants for tobacco-use prevention and economic development. The tobacco grants were recently suspended because the tribe was not properly accounting for the money.