Albion Monitor /News
...You can choose almost any year since the BIA's predecessor, the Indian Department, was created in 1824 and find governments reports describing poor management, no accounting system, missing money, no attempt to fulfill the fiduciary duty to the Indians as promised and required by law...

The following quotes from various government reports help illustrate that the same problems that led to this year's lawsuit have existed for more than 170 years:

1828:

"The arrangements in the fiscal affairs of the Indian Department are in the extreme. One would think that appropriations had been handled with a pitch fork. ... There is a screw loose in the public machinery somewhere."
-- H.R. Schoolcraft

1955:

"The deficiencies include disbursements of individual Indian moneys without adequate support, deficiencies in accounting for cash and bonds and in computation and distribution of interests income and other weaknesses in internal procedures."
-- U.S. General Accounting Office report

1991:

"The Bureau's management of Individual Indian Monies (IIM) and Tribal trust funds is inadequate to properly maintain and administer the $2 billion dollar fund for which it has responsibility. The BIA's management of tribal and Individual Indian Trust Funds lacks effective management/internal controls, reliable systems and management information. Tribal and individual accounts lack credibility and have never been reconciled in the entire history of the trust fund."
-- Secretary of the Interior's Annual Statement and Report to the president and Congress

1996:

"It's bewildering that the Department of the Interior cannot even offer a full accounting for the manner in which it administers this important fund and refuses to address the numerous allegations of fraud, waste and abuse."
-- Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Committee on Resources

The quotes go on and on and so does the abuse.

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Albion Monitor August 15, 1996 (http://www.monitor.net/monitor)

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