IF THE U.S. TREATS NATIVE AMERICANS LIKE THIS - CAN NATIVE HAWAIIANS BE FAR BEHIND ?
Here's What Noted Native American Activist Elouise Cobell Says -
Imagine a bank that took your money on a regular basis, never gave you a statement, had no idea how much was supposed to be in your account and argued it has no responsibility to return your money to you or provide you any information about your money.
Now imagine that same financial institution destroying the documents, lying in sworn statements and in court, and routinely defying court orders.
It doesn't take a lawyer to understand federal and state regulators would be padlocking the door to that bank and walking the bank's managers off to jail.
Well, there is such an institution, and it behaves exactly this way.
But it's not a bank. It's the U.S. government.
The only difference here is the managers are never held to account for their theft and fraud.
Since 1887, the government has been taking proceeds from land owned by individual American Indians, including oil and gas, forestry, minerals and other leasing in which resources are extracted from Indian land.
That money is supposed to be held in trust and paid to the American Indian beneficiaries on a timely basis.
But the money is gone, and the government refuses to account for it - despite court orders that say they must.
These are not mere allegations. These are facts. We've proven them in court in the individual Indian trust case.
Although the government has lost four separate times at trial, it still refuses to do the right thing. Instead, officials have been slapped with repeated contempt citations and other court sanctions, including shutting down the Department of Interior's Web site because it left the trust account open to tampering.
After more than eight years of litigation, not a single individual Indian beneficiary has ever received an accounting. Not one!
Tragically, more and more of my fellow beneficiaries die without ever seeing justice done.
A century of mismanagement continues today - mismanagement that has annually robbed hundreds of millions of dollars from individuals and their families.
