Famous Dave would inherit BIA mess:
"WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Minnesota's 'Famous Dave' Anderson has never met Elouise Cobell, but he'll get to know her if he takes the helm of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Cobell, a Blackfoot Indian, still lives in the house in Montana that her grandfather built for her grandmother. Besides the house, she also inherited timber, oil and other property rights the U.S. government accorded Indian landholders more than 100 years ago.
She has no idea how much her thousand acres are worth, because the money is held in government-run trust accounts. And the government, by its own admission, has a very incomplete picture.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth recently called the Indian trusts -- involving billions of dollars in at least 300,000 accounts -- 'a gold standard for mismanagement by the federal government.'
The District of Columbia judge's Sept. 25 ruling ordering a prompt accounting came in response to a lawsuit bearing Cobell's name, now a household word in Indian Country."
"WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Minnesota's 'Famous Dave' Anderson has never met Elouise Cobell, but he'll get to know her if he takes the helm of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Cobell, a Blackfoot Indian, still lives in the house in Montana that her grandfather built for her grandmother. Besides the house, she also inherited timber, oil and other property rights the U.S. government accorded Indian landholders more than 100 years ago.
She has no idea how much her thousand acres are worth, because the money is held in government-run trust accounts. And the government, by its own admission, has a very incomplete picture.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth recently called the Indian trusts -- involving billions of dollars in at least 300,000 accounts -- 'a gold standard for mismanagement by the federal government.'
The District of Columbia judge's Sept. 25 ruling ordering a prompt accounting came in response to a lawsuit bearing Cobell's name, now a household word in Indian Country."
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