Throughout history, the actions and condescension of the United States government toward groups with low socioeconomic status and tinted skin tones have been deplorable at best. One would envision that in our current day and age, the vulnerability of minorities in our country would have diminished through the efforts of black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian leaders. We should be an egalitarian society where a person's skin tone and bank account are not a measuring stick of worth.

But this is not so.

Case in point, the Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton class-action lawsuit, which pits 500,000 American Indians against the U.S. Department of Interior for the malfeasance and gross mismanagement of Indian accounts held in trust since the late 19th century.

Bill Wetzel

Beginning in the 1870s, the government's policy was to place American Indians on reservations ÷ which were then broken up as early as the 1880s ÷ once they realized this land was too valuable to be inhabited solely by a slew of savage heathens. So from there, these heathens were allowed to have 80 ÷ 160 acre parcels that were then held in trust by the government. As legal trustee, the government established Individual Indian Trust funds, held all legal titles and approbated responsibility for the management of these lands. This was to include collection and disbursement of all revenue gained from grazing, timber exertions, mining and oil and gas operations.

This is where the bullshit level rises much deeper than usual.

Over the course of the last century, the trustee neglected to keep proper records, and through a succession of accounting and legal blunders, they failed to bill oil companies, collect royalties from leaseholders and overlooked payments entitled to American Indian beneficiaries. In simple terms, the trust accounts were not audited for more than 100 years and were so poorly conducted that if the trustee were anybody else but the U.S. government, they would be some bad man's cellmate /girlfriend rright right now. The account records were mishandled to the point that they were deemed inauditable and could only be probed back for 20 years. Even then, in just that short span of time, the trustees were unable to account for more than two billion dollars that should have been dispersed to the beneficiaries.

This is beyond inexcusable.

On June 10, 1996, Elouise Cobell, former treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe, filed litigation for the two-fold purpose of forcing the government to account for the billions lost and to permanently reform the system. Judge Royce Lamberth ruled on Dec. 21, 1999, that the secretaries ofthe Interior and Treasury had breached their trust obligations to the American Indians, citing their conduct as "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form."

Over the course of the trial, which has spanned two presidencies so far, both former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and current secretary Gale Norton have been held in contempt for various offenses. They include repeated delays in producing documents, destroying pertinent documents, false testimony and bureaucratic retribution.

The government has been court-ordered to reform the system, but the date for phase two of the trial forcing accountability has yet to be determined.

This shameful display from our government continues on with the Bush Administration, which is now seeking to enact legislation in order to pay for the private attorneys retained by U.S. officials who inflicted these crimes and aided in committing these acts of fraud. So not only are the trustees dodging accountability, they are attempting to carjack U.S. taxpayers, including the American Indians they already owe, by taking their money and utilizing it to pay for fraudulent officials.

So how does this all affect Arizonans?

Imagine for a minute that the trustees kept their promises from the beginning, when those trusts were set up over a century ago, in a state with several large American Indian reservations that have suffered from harsh socioeconomic problems since their very beginning ÷ a state where reservation and non-reservation economies are inextricably linked by the their placements next to each other. Consider billions of dollars dispersed into these economies and the consequence this would have in diminishing drug trade, violence and any other negative byproduct of a low-income, socially chaotic environment. Understand the quality of life that has been robbed from each and every one of us.

You have the right to be angry about it.