Tribes sue federal government for poor trust fund

[Okwes]

Tribes sue federal government for poor trust fund management

BOISE, Idaho Nearly a dozen American Indian tribes, including the Yakama
tribe of Washington, have filed a lawsuit against the federal government asking
it to account for billions of dollars held in tribal trust funds.
The Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit law firm based in Boulder,
Colorado, is seeking class-action status for the suit to represent about 240
tribal governments that have trust accounts with the United States.
The firm says the U-S Department of the Interior, which manages the
accounts, has failed to provide a complete accounting for Indian money in the funds
despite several congressional orders to do so.
The government holds about 16-hundred trust fund accounts, for more than 300
tribes. Their total worth is estimated at about three (b) billion dollars.
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The other named plaintiffs in the latest case are: the Nez Perce tribe of
Idaho; the Klamath tribe in Oregon; the Mescalero Apache tribe in New Mexico;
the Tule River and Yurok tribes in California; the Hualapai tribe in Arizona;
the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe, the Pawnee Nation, and the Sac and Fox Nation in
Oklahoma; and the Santee Sioux tribe in Nebraska.