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32 NARF Legal Rev. 1 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/narf32 and id is 1 raw text is: LEAVE NO TRIBE BEHIND: NARF Takes on a Class Action for Billions of Dollars of Government Mismanagement of Tribal Trust Funds The Native American Rights Fund's (NARF's) Legal Review readers no doubt are acutely aware of Cobell, et al. v. Kempthorne, et al., the lawsuit that NARF helped file more than ten years ago on behalf of hundreds of thousands of individual Indians for the mismanagement of their trust funds by the United States government. Our readers also know that the Cobell litigation con- tinues to this day, with the federal government steadfastly refusing accountability for its gross mismanagement of individual Indian trust funds. What readers may not know is that Cobell was only the tip of the iceberg. The mismanage- ment by the federal government of tribal trust fund accounts far exceeds that of individual Indian trust fund accounts; so much so that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in his 2005 testimony to a U.S. House of Representatives Committee, estimated that the United States' potential liability for tribal trust fund misman- agement may exceed $200 billion. To address this liability Congress established a deadline of December 31, 2006 after which tribes likely were to be precluded from challenging the misman- agement of their tribal trust funds. Therefore, on December 28, 2006, at the direction of eleven named plaintiff tribes (recently amended to twelve tribes), NARF filed a class action lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C. on behalf of potentially over two hundred and twenty- five (225) tribes, seeking full and complete accountings from the federal government for hundreds of tribal trust fund accounts worth billions of dollars. This lawsuit is named Nez Perce Tribe, et al. v. Kempthorne, et al. History of the Government's Trusteeship of Tribal Trust Funds The federal government long ago assumed the role of trustee for tribal trust funds and VOLUM 32~NO.1WNTERISPRING 2007 -O UM - - , q o

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