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Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt launches BIA records system in Billings By CLAIR JOHNSON The Billings Gazette Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt launched a new records system in Billings Friday designed to clear up trust accounts his agency manages for American Indians saying it was a step toward restoring the integrity of reservations broken up by allotments. Cutting a red ribbon wrapped around a computer and pushing a button on the keyboard, Babbitt ushered in the new system that combines Bureau of Indian Affairs land title records with a separate BIA database containing information about income from those lands. The new program is called Trust Asset Accounting Management System Initiative (TAAMS). Babbitt and Kevin Gover, assistant secretary for Indian affairs, told more than 100 people - including tribal leaders from Montana and Wyoming - gathered in the Federal building that they were committed to ensuring the new system would correct an accounting nightmare that began more than a century ago. In opening ceremonies, Burton Pretty On Top, a Crow spiritual leader, conducted a prayer and pipe ceremony in which Babbitt, Gover and tribal leaders waived smoke from a sweet grass braid over themselves and puffed a long, beaded pipe whose bowl was shaped like a duck's head. A drum group from Crow Agency performed a flag song.
David Orr, executive vice president of Applied Terravision, Artesia Systems Group, the Texas-based contractor, gave a demonstration of the new system. Crow Tribal leader Clara Nomee told Babbitt she was encouraged that the government is upholding its treaty obligations. She also presented the secretary with a beaded bolo tie, which he promptly put on in place of his necktie. One of the longest-running criticisms of the BIA is its antiquated record-keeping system, which has lost track of millions of dollars owed to tribes and tribal members from leases, royalties and court settlements. A group of account holders are suing the Department of Interior and the BIA in Washington, D.C., alleging the agencies have failed to provide accurate account balances for 300,000 individual Indian accounts and 1,600 tribal accounts. The individual accounts are worth $500 million and the tribal accounts are worth $2.5 billion. The department plans to spend $147.4 million in the next three years to improve its handling of Indian trust accounts. About $60 million will be spent on the computer system and $54 million on cleaning up data. Gover said the Billings Area Office of the BIA, which includes Montana and Wyoming, was selected as the pilot office for the new system because it had the right people for the project and has a good diversity of resources that are tracked - like oil and gas royalties, mineral production, agriculture leases and timber. In brief remarks, Babbitt said the sad history of allotments began with one of the most misguided laws in American history - the General Allotment Act. He said the 1887 legislation was a way to break up Indian reservations and to open them to settlement. Babbitt called the act a "dagger aimed at the heart of Indian culture" because it said, in essence, there was no place in America for Indian tribes to hold their land and determine their future. With the new records system, Babbitt said the government is beginning to square up the history of its trust obligations. The problem goes back to the 1880s when Congress approved various allotment acts that divided reservation lands among individual tribal members. The practice continued until 1934. Many Indians sold their land and more than 10 million acres of the trust land base was lost between 1887 and 1934. The land was to be held in trust and usually was passed down to the owner's heirs. Through successive generations, the number of heirs often grew to the point that dozens of people could own an interest in the same parcel of land, resulting in fractionation of the property. Today, the average parcel has about 40 owners, said Rex Hackler, BIA's communication director. BIA must register each change in title as it passes through numerous generations. Ownership interests, sometimes as small as 1/500,000 must be recorded. No matter how small, whatever income is generated on those lands must be divided among all owners. Gover, for example, has an interest worth 7 cents in a parcel in Oklahoma, Hackler said. Addressing the problem of fractionation, Babbitt said Congress must pass legislation to allow tribes to begin consolidating allotments on a voluntary basis. He said there is a $5 million pilot program under way at a Minnesota reservation to buy the interests of anyone who wants to sell. The BIA will convey the title to the tribe with a lien for repayment of the purchase price, he said. Babbitt said the media have sensationalized estimates of what the government may owe Indians. He said he did not know if it's $10 million or $100 million. "The dollar figures are manageable," he said. "Our obligation is to square the accounts. We take that seriously and we will." Gover said the BIA has struggled to run the program, but until now Congress hasn't provided the funding it needs to be effective. Gover praised BIA employees, 93 percent of whom are Indian, for their hard work on the project. "Nobody wants the system fixed more than BIA," he said. "It's about Indian people fixing a problem created by neglect." Critics have called the new system a sham because the records are in disarray and have accused Interior officials of inaugurating the system in Montana to avoid the scrutiny of the national media. Gover said the BIA selected the Billings Field Office a year ago, before it knew there would be a trial or what media coverage might be. Gover also said critics have a right to be skeptical. However, he said the BIA is committed to an aggressive roll-out schedule that calls for having the program operating nationwide by 2001. "We cannot stop. We cannot slow down and we cannot turn back," he said.
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