[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 83 (Wednesday, June 16, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6884-S6886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. DASCHLE (for himself and Mr. Johnson):
  S. 2523. A bill to exempt the Great Plains Region and Rocky Mountain 
Region of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from trust reform reorganization 
pending the submission of agency-specific reorganization plans; to the 
Committee on Indian Affairs.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, today Senator Johnson and I are 
introducing a bill that reflects the concerns of tribal leaders about 
the lack of progress on trust management reform and their 
dissatisfaction with the Department of the Interior's reorganization 
plan to deal with it. It offers an alternative to the Department's 
approach that tribal chairmen in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain 
regions believe will better serve their members.
  Trust reform is a particularly vexing issue that has confounded 
Federal policymakers and frustrated Native Americans for years. But the 
bottom line is that when the United States Government divided Indian 
lands in 1887, it made a commitment, through solemn treaty obligations, 
to hold those lands in trust, to manage them wisely, and to give any 
income from the sale or lease of the land to its Indian owners. It has 
never fulfilled that promise.
  The Indian trust has been so badly mismanaged, for so long, by 
Administrations of both political parties, that no one today has any 
idea how much money should even be in the trust--let alone, how much is 
owed to individual account holders and to tribes, and for what. 
Meanwhile, too many individual and tribal community needs go unmet in 
Indian Country because of the lack of resources. That is the 
contradiction that simply cannot be allowed to continue.
  I know that the Interior Department has gone to great efforts to 
reform its internal structure to get a handle on the administration of 
the Indian trust fund. And I appreciate that Interior officials believe 
that their reorganization plan has been shaped, at least in part, by 
``listening sessions'' it held in Indian Country. Yet, the fact remains 
that tribal leaders around the country do not accept the premise that 
those meetings represented true consultation, and they do not accept 
the Department's reorganization plan as a legitimate response to 
mismanagement of the Indian trust. A number of tribal leaders have told 
me that the Department's ``listening sessions'' were hardly that, but 
could more accurately be described as a notification of how the 
Department would proceed.
  Tribal leaders in my State believe strongly that the Department's 
reorganization plan moves in the wrong direction. Instead of 
integrating the trust and ``non-trust'' functions of the Department, it 
separates those functions even further. They also believe the plan 
ignores the unique character of each region's challenges. The Great 
Plains Region, for example, has more Individual Indian Money Account 
holders than any other region and holds 33 percent of the nation's 
tribal trust assets.
  I acknowledge that this is a difficult problem and that some in the 
Administration sincerely desire to solve the trust management problem 
in a way that ensures that stakeholders receive what is due them in a 
timely manner. I also greatly appreciate the attention devoted to this 
matter. However, I do believe some of that attention has been 
misdirected. And, given the recent history of the trust reform debate, 
I have no credible answer to tribal leaders' lament that the Department 
appears more interested in undercutting the Cobell v. Norton lawsuit 
than in considering the opinion of tribes in South Dakota or the rest 
of Indian Country.
  Since the Department formally unveiled its reorganization proposal 
earlier last year, numerous questions have been raised about exactly 
how this reorganization, which is currently being advanced 
administratively, will improve the present trust fund management and 
accounting procedures.
  What are the role and responsibilities of the Special Trustee's trust 
officers who will be dispatched throughout Indian Country, and how will 
these positions relate to the local and regional BIA offices? Is this a 
duplication of services?
  Who has oversight over these positions, and what accountability 
mechanism is in place to monitor their performance? What are the lines 
of authority?
  Will Indian preference apply to any new positions that are created by 
the reorganization?
  Why is the reorganization effort affecting the Office of Indian 
Education Programs when the court mandate affects only trust fund 
management reform? Does the plan violate the BIA amendments to the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization?
  The list of questions is long, and tribal leaders and their 
constituents deserve answers. Those answers cannot be gleaned from the 
18 pages of organizational charts the Department has provided as a 
rationale for its plan to reorganize the BIA and the Office of the 
Special Trustee.
  This past February tribal leaders from nearly every Indian Nation in 
America traveled to Washington for a meeting of the National Congress 
of American Indians to discuss a variety of issues, including trust 
reform. They expressed unanimous opposition to the Department of 
Interior's reorganization efforts, and their urgent plea to Congress 
was that the federal government work with Native people to find an 
honorable and equitable solution to the Indian trust fund dispute.
  In March, in an appearance before the Senate Indian Affairs 
Committee, Tex Hall, Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort 
Berthold and President of the National Congress of American Indians, 
testified that tribal leaders do not believe that their views are 
reflected in the Department's trust reorganization plan. And the 
Chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Michael Jandreau, a member of 
the BIA-Tribal Task Force on trust reform, told the Committee that 
``meaningful involvement [of] and input from tribal leadership'' and 
the failure by the federal government to recognize ``obvious treaty 
obligations'' are contributing to the inability to reach consensus on 
trust reform.
  This disagreement between Indian Country and Washington runs deep and 
cannot be solved by Interior Department officials simply re-drawing 
lines on organizational charts. The search for resolution must include 
real, meaningful, and ongoing consultation between Department officials 
and the tribes and tribal leaders. After all, we are talking about 
Indian people's money.
  At the March Committee hearing, Harold Frazier, testifying in his 
capacities as Chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and as 
Chairman of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association, offered 
both a critique of the Department's reorganization plan and an 
alternative to it. He emphasized that a majority of Indian tribes 
opposed the reorganization, not just because it was implemented without 
``meaningful tribal consultation,'' but also because ``a one-size-fits-
all approach to trust management reform is certain to fail.'' While 
acknowledging that some aspects of reform, such as land consolidation 
and improved record-keeping, are better managed at the national level, 
Chairman Frazier pointed out that basic services provided at the agency 
level are the key to the most efficient utilization of trust assets and 
that these resource decisions are best made at the local level

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so they may be adapted to serve tribal beneficiaries' unique needs. And 
he offered the Great Plains Regional Proposal for Trust Reform as an 
alternative to the Department's reorganization plan.
  Senator Johnson and I believe that Chairman Frazier has made a 
constructive contribution to breaking the trust impasse, and the bill 
we are introducing today codifies the Great Plains Regional Proposal 
for Trust Reform, as expanded by the inclusion of the Rocky Mountain 
Regional Tribes. It is based on the principle that differences among 
tribes in population, employment, revenue base, and even geographic 
location effect the type of trust reform suitable for each area, and it 
has precedent in a provision of the FY 2004 Interior Appropriations 
bill, Section 139, that exempted certain self-governance tribes from 
the Interior reorganization plan.

  Our proposal exempts the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain tribes from 
the Department of the Interior's trust reform reorganization, excluding 
current efforts to reform Indian probate and encourage land 
consolidation, thereby precluding the Department from reorganizing the 
BIA at the agency level. It also stipulates that any funds appropriated 
to accomplish trust reform at the agency level within the Great Plains 
and Rocky Mountain Regions can be expended only under plans developed 
by local tribes in cooperation with, and with the approval of, the 
Department of the Interior. And it authorizes $200,000 for the Great 
Plains Region and $200,000 for the Rocky Mountain Region to be used for 
the development of agency-specific reorganization plans.
  The legislation Senator Johnson and I are introducing today is not 
intended to end the trust reform debate. We still do not have an 
historical accounting of trust income; we still do not know if certain 
records exist; and we still do not know how much the United States of 
America owes to Indian people and to the Tribes. Neither is the 
legislation intended to limit other regions searching for their own 
solutions; to the contrary, we and the tribes of the Great Plains and 
Rocky Mountain regions respect other regions' rights to develop 
proposals that meet their own unique needs. But we do hope our proposal 
will help refocus the debate in a more constructive, substantive, cost-
effective manner, acknowledging that the tribes know what is best for 
them and should be consulted--in a meaningful way--and play a key role 
in this process.
  The tribes understand that the Interior and Treasury Departments, the 
BIA, and the Special Trustee for American Indians must be their allies 
in the search for a solution. But friction over reorganization has 
diverted attention from the more fundamental challenge of providing a 
full and fair accounting to Indian people, and ultimately paying the 
money that is owed to them and the tribes.
  Now that the Department has been given authorization to proceed 
administratively with its reorganization plan, I hope the Department 
will submit to Congress a legislative proposal on how to address the 
underlying, substantive problem that we have been wrestling with for 
far too long. I also hope the Department will embrace the pilot program 
Senator Johnson and I are proposing today, with the support of the 
Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Tribal Chairmen's Associations.
  In closing, I think it is extremely important to reflect on two 
central facts about the Indian trust debate as we consider the proposed 
reorganization of the BIA and the OST, and the Great Plains and Rocky 
Mountains Tribal Chairmen's Associations' ideas for localizing trust 
reform.
  First, residents of Indian Country have been victimized for 
generations by persistent mismanagement of trust assets by the federal 
government. Far too many families for far too long have been denied 
trust assets to which they are entitled because of Federal 
mismanagement. And this situation has adversely affected their quality 
of life.
  Second, frustration with the Federal Government's failure to come to 
grips with this problem has not only led to litigation (Cobell v. 
Norton), it has also solidified the tribes' determination to be part of 
the solution to the problem. Effective trust management reform will 
remain an elusive goal if the tribes are not full participants in this 
exercise.
  We need to recognize the human dimension and consequences of trust 
mismanagement, and we need to accept that tribal leaders must be equal 
partners in its reform. The bottom line is that the tribes do not have 
the resources they need to adequately address the full range of socio-
economic challenges they face. In the case of trust reform, the issue 
is not simply boxes on an organizational chart, but lives that 
literally hang in the balance.
  Yesterday I met with Chairman Frazier, Chairman Jandreau, and Oglala 
Sioux Tribal President John Yellow Bird Steele. Their frustrations with 
the Department's reorganization proposal could be summed up with the 
comments made by one chairman and echoed by the other two: ``They left 
us out of the equation. We have many of the records, and we know what 
adjustments need to be made at the agency level to address our local 
needs. Whether it's historical accounting or reorganization, we have to 
be part of the solution.''
  It's a concept so simple that it should go without saying, but the 
Administration has not adhered to it. But we still have a chance to 
turn that around. The tribes of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Montana, and 
Wyoming have stepped up to the plate. They aren't just complaining 
about the Administration's proposal; they're offering their own. 
They've developed regional proposals to fit their unique regional 
needs. We should respect their judgment, and the judgment of other 
regions that will undoubtedly follow with their own proposals.
  The history of trust management has been a travesty, and, without a 
concerted and open-minded effort to address the issue, the future will 
not be any better. The United States has a fiduciary responsibility to 
Indian Country based on numerous treaty obligations. We must satisfy 
our obligations. We must work together to craft a solution to the 
underlying trust problem. Let's start by granting the Great Plains and 
Rocky Mountain Regions greater autonomy to fashion their own trust 
solutions.
  There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                S. 2523

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. APPLICABILITY OF TRUST REFORM REORGANIZATION TO 
                   THE GREAT PLAINS REGION AND ROCKY MOUNTAINS 
                   REGION OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

       (a) Definitions.--In this section:
       (1) Agency.--The term ``Agency'' means an Agency of the 
     Bureau of Indian Affairs within a Region.
       (2) Region.--The term ``Region'' means each of the Great 
     Plains Region and the Rocky Mountain Region of the Bureau of 
     Indian Affairs.
       (3) Secretary.--The term ``Secretary'' means the Secretary 
     of the Interior.
       (b) No Reorganization.--Notwithstanding any implementation 
     of the trust reorganization plan for the Bureau of Indian 
     Affairs in fiscal year 2004 or 2005, the Secretary shall not 
     reorganize the Bureau at the Agency level in a Region except 
     with respect to the reform of probate procedure and efforts 
     to encourage land consolidation.
       (c) Trust Management Infrastructure.--The Secretary shall 
     not impose trust management infrastructure reforms on, or 
     alter, the existing trust resource management system of an 
     Agency unless the reforms are expressly agreed to by the 
     Indian tribe covered by the Agency.
       (d) Agency Plans.--
       (1) In general.--Any funds made available to accomplish 
     trust reform at the Agency level shall be expended in 
     accordance with a plan developed by the Indian tribe covered 
     by the Agency, in cooperation with the Secretary and approved 
     by Act of Congress.
       (2) Timing.--An Agency shall submit the Agency plan to the 
     Secretary not later than 180 days after the date on which 
     funds are made available under subsection (f).
       (e) Report.--
       (1) In general.--After submission to the Secretary of an 
     Agency plan under subsection (d)(2), the Secretary shall--
       (A) prepare a report that includes findings and 
     recommendations of the Secretary concerning the Agency plan; 
     and
       (B) provide the Indian tribe covered by the Agency 60 days 
     in which to submit comments regarding the findings and 
     recommendations of the Secretary.
       (2) Submission to congress.--After receiving comments of 
     the Indian tribe under paragraph (1)(B), the Secretary shall 
     submit to the Committee on Indian Affairs of the Senate and 
     the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on 
     Resources of the House of Representatives--
       (A) the Agency plan;

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       (B) the report of the Secretary; and
       (C) the comments of the Indian tribe.
       (f) Authorization of Appropriations.--There is authorized 
     to be appropriated to the Secretary $200,000 for each Region, 
     to be made available to the Agencies for use in developing an 
     Agency plan under subsection (d).
                                 ______