American Indians To Protest Rubin

About 30 American Indian undergraduates and graduate students plan to dress in full Native regalia and turn their backs in protest while Robert E. Rubin ’60, who preceded University President-elect Lawrence H. Summers as Secretary of the Treasury, delivers this year’s commencement address.

The group is protesting Rubin’s role in a lawsuit that claims the Treasury Department and the Department of the Interior never paid billions of dollars owed to American Indians living on reservations—and then destroyed the boxes of documents that proved the mismanagement.

A handful of Harvard students or their families are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are predominantly members of the Sioux and Blackfeet tribes.

The student protesters said they do not want to disrupt commencement but feel a visible action is necessary to call attention to the ongoing lawsuit, which has been largely ignored outside the American Indian community.

“The point is that there is a serious issue here that people have brushed under the rug,” said Natalie A. Landreth, a third-year law student who is organizing the action.

Landreth said the lawsuit’s complexity has kept it out of the public eye. During commencement, the students plan to distribute information to explain the intricacies of the lawsuit.

“You just can’t boil it down to a slogan, it’s so complicated,” Landreth said.

The lawsuit has a long and complex history.

When American Indians living on reservations lease their land to companies to mine for natural resources, the Treasury Department acts as the banker in the transaction, transferring funds from the private companies to the American Indian tribes.

But according to the plaintiffs, many American Indians who participated in these deals never received their money or received only a fraction of what they expected to be paid.

“For decades, people have been wondering where their money went,” Landreth said. “They see 10 oil wells on their land but don’t get a dime.”

In 1996, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) filed a lawsuit charging that the Departments of the fiduciary duties to manage the money.

The plaintiffs and protesters fault Rubin, Summers and the Department of the Treasury especially for their conduct in the trial. When the trial began, Rubin headed the Treasury Department. Summers took over in 1999.

Two years ago, the government admitted that the Department of the Treasury destroyed 162 boxes of documents pertinent to the case.

Rubin was charged with civil contempt of court for the failure to produce court-ordered records, according to NARF reports.

In the court opinion, the judge reprimanded Rubin, saying, “The way the defendants have handled this litigation up to the commencement of the contempt trial is nothing short of a travesty.”

The trial still awaits settlement while the court collects what documentary evidence exists.

“It’s been such a mean lawsuit,” said third-year law student Heather D. Thompson. “An absolutely ridiculous amount of document destruction has gone on, and neither Summers nor Rubin have ever stood up and decided to do the right thing. They are the two worst offenders.”

The protesters said they chose to protest during commencement in an effort to bring their cause to the public eye.

Rubin has already been alerted about the plans for a protest and Landreth said she hopes he will respond.

“Maybe he can explain what’s been going on,” Landreth said.

Thompson stressed that they do not want to be disruptive, but said they have no other choice.

“We were originally upset when Summers was appointed,” Thompson said. “There were all these nice articles about him, but the Native community was not consulted at all.”

And the insult was only compounded when they learned of Rubin’s selection, Landreth said.

“This is just ridiculous,” she said. “There’s no way to get this information out there but to stand up and protest—literally.”

—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.