So here's the summary of the Slonaker affair...
In July, 2002, Special Trustee for American Indians Tom Slonaker (a Clinton appointee held over by Bush) testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (chaired then by Sen. Inouye) that the Interior Department's handling of the Individual Indian trusts was pretty much as fucked fouled up as it had ever been, despite a federal court order that a "full accounting" take place. Slonaker had submitted his proposed testimony to his Interior superiors, namely Dep. Sec. J. Steven Griles and Gale Norton, who summarily demanded that he change most of it. Two Justice Department attorneys as well as Kyle Sampson, White House advisor to the President, also called Slonaker and demanded he change his testimony.
Slonaker did not submit his statement, but testified in person, saying that an accounting as Norton et al. were proposing would not meet the Court's requirement. After he appeared before SIAC, Slonaker was fired. Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in TAP, asserted at the time Sampson was involved, "Slonaker claims he was forced out, and sources close to the case say Griles and White House counsel Kyle Sampson barred Slonaker from telling the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that the Interior Department was unable to live up to its trust responsibility because documents had been destroyed."
Pete Dominici was at that SIAC hearing, as was Orin Hatch, for whom Sampson was a top aide before being placed at the White House. Sampson used twork for Parr, Waddoups, Brown, Gee & Loveless, many of whose clients are leasors of federal and Indian land, thus potentially affected by Slonaker's testimony, i.e., if the government doesn't have the docs for a complete accounting, then they need to get that info from the lessors.
I know it's complicated, but I've argued for years that Interior and DoJ were in collusion to try and subvert the Court's order on a full accounting, as it could cost the government and/or the resource extraction industries many billions (Gonzales testified recently that it could be upwards of $200 billion - that was just before he and Kempthorne offered a paltry $7 billion to settle all the cases.)
Comments
It's all so frustrating and demoralizing. What makes it worse is that no one really seems to care. The media should be pushing this, but of course they won't. Self-interest. If the Indians were paid what they were owed that would be alot of tax dollars that white people can't use for what they want. So it's easier to look the other way and pretend you don't know what's going on.
I wish that the court would take some of these things completely out of the hands of the government. The whole point to the government negotiating land usage, mineral rights, etc is because the Indians are too stupid to do it and would mismanage it. Can't get any worse than what the government has done for them already. Let the tribes handle mineral, water, forestry rights and all that themselves.
Posted by: Donna | March 15, 2007 01:11 AM