Daniel Inouye: “Resolving Indian trust management issues should be one of the foremost priorities of this Congress. Ever since the…”

“Resolving Indian trust management issues should be one of the foremost priorities of this Congress. Ever since the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, serious problems have plagued the Federal government's trust management efforts. Due to recent congressional interest and support, the Department of the Interior has been able to make significant progress in reforming its trust management systems. Working in collaboration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of the Special Trustee are: Instituting a national, state of the art, trust asset management system; Implementing a revised Trust Management Improvement Project High Level Implementation Plan; and Instituting improvements in systems, operations, and policies that will help ensure that the Federal government meets its fiduciary obligations to Indian Tribes and individual American Indians. However, I am very concerned that the Senate mark does not fully fund the Bureau of Indian Affair's trust services programs. All of our efforts to reform trust management could become meaningless if BIA can't sustain these reforms by providing the funding and staffing to properly manage the trust land that produces trust income, to produce accurate and timely land title information, and provide timely closing of long open estates.”