The Billings Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is located downtown in the federal office building. The building is shared by BIA, the federal District Court, Bureau of Reclamation, Forest Service, FBI, and other federal agencies. BIA occupies most of two floors in this five story office building. The building is an off-white color, and appears to be constructed from slabs of poured concrete, a cold and ominous looking place with narrow slits for windows.
If you count the total number of BIA area offices, the total amount of Indian reservation land and the number of Indians living on each reservation, you find that Billings is representative of about one tenth of BIA’s total Area Office operations.
On a Monday morning in December, 1985, I first met the man I was to work for, Bill Benjamin. Previously there had been some letters back and forth, and a few telephone conversations, but now he was to become my supervisor. Bill is a Blackfeet Indian (the word is always plural, there is no such thing as “a Blackfoot”), he was pleased to have a CPA on his Financial Management staff, and he had a list of work he wanted me to take on.
Any new job is a little difficult during the transition stage, and much of my time went into filling out personnel forms, meeting fellow workers and finding out where the various offices and files were located. A major task was to start learning about BIA.
This is a different world. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is always referred to by Indians as BIA. As I learned later when studying the Crow Language, the word in that language for “BIA” is, you guessed it, BIA. All three letters are pronounced, just as you would say “CPA” in English, and similar to the way CPA is written, the periods after each of the three letters in “BIA” are omitted.
The Billings Area Office is a regional office for the administration of the Indian reservations located in Montana and Wyoming, with the exception of the Flathead Reservation, which is handled by another area office. There are about forty five thousand Indians on seven reservations included within the Billings Area Office, organized as follows:
Blackfeet Reservation, Montana.
The U.S. part of the Blackfeet Nation. Others live in Canada.Rocky Boy Reservation, Montana:
Certain bands of Chippewa and Cree.Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana:
Certain bands of Assiniboine and Gros Venture.Fort Peck Reservation, Montana:
Certain bands of Assiniboine and Sioux.Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Montana:
The entire Northern Cheyenne Nation.Crow Reservation, Montana:
The entire Crow Nation.Wind River Reservation, Wyoming:
Part of the Arapaho.
Part of the Shoshone.
After my first brief field trip to a reservation ( Northern Cheyenne) as a BIA employee, I was introduced to the Area office’s Employee Handbook. Here is what BIA says about itself, as found in that “Employee Handbook” which is given to each new employee:
“Welcome to the Billings Area, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and to the challenge of providing services to the Indian People of Montana and Wyoming.
“The Bureau’s mission, as established by Congress, can be summarized in the following four key statements:
“1. To recognize and preserve the inherent rights of tribal self-government and to strengthen tribal capacity to govern.
“2. To provide resources for tribal government programs.
“3. To serve as an advocate for the sovereignty and rights of American Indian Tribes in dealing with other governmental entities and the private sector.
“4. To fulfill and execute the Federal Government’s trust obligations to American Indian Tribes.”
It was a gradual process, over a period of time, for me to discover that BIA’s handbook is self-serving and there is little truth in it. BIA does allocate money as appropriated by congress (item 2. above), but that’s about where the truth ends.
It does not do ANY of those other fine things that it so grandly speaks of, or else it does them so poorly that the mission statement is completely misleading. In most cases it does exactly the opposite of what is claimed. I will refer to many of BIA’s claims further on and show how they are a facade that conceals injustice and fraud with phony words.
All of the Agency Superintendents for the seven reservations in Montana and Wyoming (where there are BIA “ Agencies ” or branch offices) report to the Area Director in Billings. The Area Director also has some responsibility for Indians in his area who do not live on reservations.
To complicate things, there are also Indian trust lands that are not located within reservation boundaries. Often Indians retain some element of ownership, such as rights to hunt and fish, cut firewood, or extract coal and minerals, on former reservation lands. Very often these rights, other than perhaps mineral rights, are not honored by our state or federal courts.
The abbreviation IIM stands for Individual Indian Money, and in effect it is a banking system operated by BIA. Accounts are maintained by computer in each area office, and most of the entries into the accounts are made by computer terminals located remotely in the Agency offices at the reservations.
Unlike other banks, which have internal auditors, outside auditors and systems of internal financial controls, BIA is very wary of good accounting.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are simply “missing” from the trust accounts that belong to the Indians. You will hear more about that later on, and in 1996 it became the subject of a class-action law suit.
The office atmosphere is one of fear, frustration and boredom. There is little incentive to do a good job, so the emphasis turns to trying to avoid complaints. The best way to avoid a complaint about what you do is to do nothing. Certainly there is no risk taking, no innovation, no serious attempt to correct basic problems or improve the system. BIA takes care of those who try to make improvements - it gets rid of them. It supports a hierarchy of loyal thieves - those are strong words, but we’ll support them later on.
On occasion a mistake is made - someone is hired who really cares. Most of them give up and leave in frustration. The few who take on the system are fired on one pretext or another. Those who go along with the system rise to become top management, which produces corrupt management and stagnation.
The method of management is best termed “divide and conquer.” Employees are assigned to perform routine tasks with little or no information about departmental goals and responsibilities. As a relic left over from the Army, BIA has a semi-military command structure. Supervisors don’t suggest, they issue commands and directives and keep tight control over any initiative that might crop up from time to time. All thoughts must flow through the chain of command, which prevents innovation and creative thinking, and there is a careful watch to avoid dissent, which is called trouble making.
All authority is in a very few hands, which includes the Area Director, two Assistant Area Directors, and a few department heads. If the Area Director is out of the office, even for an hour or two, this is all shuffled around and the remaining employees assume the title of “acting” Area Director, and the like, similar to the command structure of an Army. All letters and “directives” of any importance must be signed by the Area Director, and in a few cases by department heads. There are absolutely no exceptions, and no creativity or personal initiative is allowed.
One of the many complaints about BIA from Indians is that so much of the Indian Budget is consumed by administration and overhead. With this in mind, BIA avoids the word “administration,” and job titles are constructed to take credit for “operating” assigned programs and functions, rather than administering them, simply a play on words. This resulted in my job title of “Operating Accountant,” even though I had absolutely nothing to do with accounting operations.
Benjamin made it very clear to me from the start that I was in charge of absolutely nothing, and my job was “staff” rather than “line,” meaning that I also was not in charge of any person. If this had been a business organization, as the only qualified accountant I would have been in charge of the accounting personnel, or at least in some way responsible for the accounting function. Not true at BIA. I was allowed to talk to the accounting people and ask them what they did, but I could not comment on their work, point out errors to them or recommend that they make improvements or corrections.
I was to work for Benjamin only, accept only work assigned by him, and report directly to him. Over a period of time, I gradually discovered just what it was that he wanted.
First, he wanted a better understanding of the accounting process in general, and of BIA accounting in particular. He had been exposed to some college courses in accounting, but had no related experience at all, and wanted to increase his knowledge. I found nothing objectionable about that, except that it was for his personal benefit rather than related to my job assignment. I did try to teach a bit as we went along, but accounting is really learned by doing, and by exposure to a variety of work experience found in the “real” world. He did not have enough basic experience on which to build.
As a second matter, BIA was becoming more aware of auditing, and now and again there would be an audit by the General Accounting Office. Their findings and recommendations required answers, and a trained accountant could deal with such things, while Benjamin could not. I was to respond to these demands, drafting letters for his signature.
Related to this, a new law had been passed (the Single Audit Act), requiring outside CPA audits of Indian contracts administered by tribal governments. The problems raised by these audits had to be handled or administered by someone, and I was to be the person who took care of that. No problem, that’s well within my background and experience as a CPA.
The remaining area Benjamin wanted me to cover was to review and report on the accounting records maintained by the Area Office. That is a useful function, although I feel Benjamin saw it as just another way for me to teach him accounting. To review, report and recommend (the three Rs) is auditing, and BIA was forbidden to employ auditors, since that function “belonged” to the General Accounting Office (GAO) and to the Inspector General. Government agencies protect their “turf” or territory, and the practical result was that since GAO performed audits, BIA could not do the same thing. For whatever reasons, the function was also assigned to me, and it would lead directly to big trouble.
The problem, as you will later see, is that what Benjamin really appeared to want from me, was a clean bill of health, the very thing I was unable to produce.
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