“What happened here is that tribal land and trust-fund administration was gradually turned over from regular (mostly white, it is true) civil service bureaucrats to tribal bureaucrats who either couldn’t or didn’t manage the accounts openly and honestly...so all the federal and private dollars that were poured into tribal accounts over the past 30 years simply can’t be accounted for.”
Wrongo bongo. What happened transpired from longer back than just 30 years ago, through multiple administrations, heads of the trust and bureaucrats, ‘white’ and otherwise.
What happened was the ‘accounting sytem’ was essentially no system at all - no standard forms, no standard recoring of actions, no standard procedures and no standards about record keeping; the judges, in all these cases have said the ‘evidence’ (the record) when found represented no standards and in the main was essentially missing.
The best estimates of ‘the record’ has been inferred from the records of the oil/gas/mining interests (that were given leases on triba; lands) regarding what THEY received, and the tribes bank records of what THEY recieved.
The sums ARE large and if Congress wants to prevent this in the future they will prioritize the Interior department budget so that it cannot be said the resources are not there to fix the problem and also demand reports to Congress of audits that show it is and at some point finally has been fixed.
Wuli is on the right path here - this litigation has been going on for decades in various forms. People should check out Reagan appointee Royce Lamberth’s rulings in previous litigation here. Team Obama has so poisoned the well on these sorts of cases that it is impossible to know whether this settlement is on the level.