Bonners Ferry Local Guide including all of Boundary County Idaho

Bill would end federal oversight of trust lands

Friday, October 27, 2006; TN

The government would end its long and controversial responsibility for managing American Indian trust lands under a proposed change to a bill settling a decade-old lawsuit by Indians against the government. Senate Indian Affairs Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Vice Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., filed the bill last year to overhaul the trust system and end the lawsuit. The senators had discussed settling for $8 billion as recently as July, but they have struggled to find a plan all sides can accept. The latest proposal, posted this week on the committee's Web site, is endorsed by the Bush administration. Indians claim in their class-action lawsuit that the government has mismanaged more than $100 billion in oil, gas, timber and other royalties held in trust from their lands dating back to 1887. The litigation, filed in 1996 by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, deals with individual Indians' lands. But several tribes have also sued claiming mismanagement of their lands. - Full Story