U.S. Department of the Interior

STATEMENT

In response to today's findings by Judge Lamberth, the Departments
of Justice and Interior issued the following statement.

"The Department of Justice does not believe that the facts of this case or the applicable law justify a finding of contempt," said Robert D. McCallum, Jr., Assistant Attorney General of the Department's Civil Division. "We disagree with the court's decision and are evaluating it to consider all of the options for appeal."

The Department of the Interior is gratified by the Justice Department's statement and notes that for more than 100 years, the federal government has been responsible for managing trust assets estate for individual Indians. These lands total more than 11 million acres and are now owned by more than 300,000 people.

For well over a century the government's management of these trust lands has been criticized as underfunded and inadequate.

In the last 18 months the current Administration at the Department of the Interior has focused intense efforts on reform. The budget for Indian trust reform has increased more rapidly than any other part of the Department's budget. The Fiscal Year 2003 budget request for $83.6 million is a 44 percent increase over the FY 2002 budget amount.

Trust reform is a complex undertaking. It is much more complex than improving financial management in the way one would reorganize a failing corporation. Interior's service to the Indian community strives to operate in a collaborative way, giving Indians a voice in how their services are provided. This Administration has done more to fix a very broken trust management system than any previous Administration in history. Indeed, this progress has been noted by the judge and the court monitor during proceedings.

Portions of this contempt decision are based on actions that took place under the previous Secretary and were thus inherited by this Administration. The Department has been attempting to address the court's concerns and will continue to address them.

The Department has worked very hard over the last 18 months to improve the trust management system and will continue to do so.

Although this contempt case has taken up literally thousands of hours of peoples' time - time that could be better spent continuing to bring even greater change to the trust management system - the Department must evaluate all options to appeal the contempt decision. Meantime, we will continue to work with the leadership of Indian Country and the Congress to develop meaningful reform that builds upon this Department's accomplishments to date.

The contempt order is directed to their official capacity and not to them as individuals.

Attached are some of the key accomplishments made in the Trust Management program since February 2001.

Trust Accomplishments since January 2001