Law professors ask: Is trust still valid?

[nosmokes]

It is nothing short of criminal that the funds in this trust have not been disbursed and a full accounting made and the missing funds replaced. At full value, not with the monopoly dollars that passes for currency today.
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original-indiancountry

Law professors ask: Is trust still valid?

by: Kara Briggs / Today correspondent

PORTLAND, Ore. - Native American law professors meeting in early April in Portland called for the overhaul of U.S. trust responsibility to Indian nations, saying that economic development in Indian country depends on it.

''Trust is costing tribes a lot, and it doesn't have many benefits. What is the future of trust responsibility? We ought to get rid of it,'' said Kevin Washburn, a Chickasaw professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Washburn and a number of other law professors gathered for the Lewis & Clark Law Review Symposium at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland. The theme of the symposium was ''Indigenous Economic Development: Sustainability, Culture and Business.'' But talk centered on U.S. policies, laws and court decisions that affect Indian nations.

Washburn and others questioned the modern role of trust responsibility.

Federal trust responsibility to Indian nations was not expressed in the U.S. Constitution, he said. It first appears in U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall's decisions in the 1830s. But trust as wielded by federal staffers of various experience levels, of varied efficiency, in a variety of government agencies is not something Indian nations can rely upon, Washburn said.

As they must rely upon it when the National Indian Gaming Commission holds up a tribal casino development for years because it doesn't approve of the financing package. Is the opinion of a mid-level government worker more credible, Washburn asked, than those of elected leaders of Indian nations and their advisers?

''In the Indian context, trust is always 'we are trying to save you from yourself,''' he said. ''In the Indian context, it only seems arrogant, paternalistic.''

''At what point,'' a Native woman in the front row called out, does 'all men are created equal' come into this?''

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