Bureau of Indian Affairs Faces New Probe

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Conflict of interest investigations launched this past week into a regional office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs are just the most recent probes of an agency that has faced repeated allegations of ethics violations and incompetent management.

The FBI, the Interior Department's inspector general, and Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, all have begun exploring allegations that regional BIA officials in California essentially commandeered the Ione Band of Miwok Indians and its leadership.

The reengineered tribe, which now includes several BIA officials along with dozens of their relatives, wants to build a $100 million casino in one of California's burgeoning wine regions with the BIA's assistance agency. The tribe's hereditary chief opposes the plan, and went to Washington asking Congress to intervene.

Other allegations involving tribal recognition entangled the Clinton administration's BIA director and top officials, one of whom allegedly illegally backdated documents granting federal recognition to a Seattle tribe seeking to open a casino.

The bureau has been reorganized over the last year, and this month was taken over by a businessman who is promising reforms.

"There have been all sorts of problems in the bureau for years. It's been underfunded basically since Day One, and the policy shifts in the administration and Congress have created problems in creating any sort of continuity," said Robert Anderson, director of the University of Washington's Native American Law Center.

But the last decade has seen the rise of Indian casinos, a multibillion-dollar industry that has given tribes money and recognition while also highlighting problems in BIA.

"It used to not be popular to be a member of a tribe, nor lucrative," said Anderson, a Chippewa who was a top policy adviser in Clinton's Interior Department.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a longtime critic whose appropriations subcommittee oversees the FBI and Justice Department budgets, said the latest development "again shows how the Indian gambling issue is exploiting Indians and potentially corrupting government officials."

Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, has called for a halt to all new tribal recognitions - a necessary step toward opening a casino - until reforms are made, something he has unsuccessfully sought since a scathing Interior Department report about BIA activities in the closing days of the Clinton administration.

Just before he left his job as head of the BIA in January 2001, Kevin Gover granted four tribes recognition - over the recommendations of BIA staff - making the tribes eligible for federal benefits and possibly casinos. A federal investigation found another top official, Michael Anderson, had already left office when he returned to sign and backdate documents recognizing the Duwamish tribe of Seattle.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute, the same decision it reached when the Interior inspector general said former BIA deputy commissioner Hilda Manuel violated lobbying laws by representing the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts after leaving the agency.

The BIA also faces allegations of systemic mismanagement.

The Bush administration proposes to increase spending on the agency's handling of Indian trust funds after Interior Secretary Gale Norton was held in contempt of court by a federal judge who said she lied about progress on reforms. That ruling was overturned on appeal. The government and more than 500,000 Indian account holders agreed this past week to mediate allegations that the Interior Department mismanaged billions of trust fund dollars.