Mike Wallace's report on government mishandling individual American Indian trusts for royalties paid for corporate oil pumping, mining and logging on Indian land is unconscionable. It was indicated on the 60 Minutes report, aired April 3rd, that there is at least $2 billion (that they know of) owed to individual Indians and their families going back nearly a hundred years.

It was reported that the federal government took over the Indian's affairs in trusts because they were too ignorant and incapable of handling it themselves. But the Department of Interior, Treasury Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have bungled the whole thing for all those years. Records were carelessly kept, stored and destroyed. Indian landowners, most of them impoverished, have received small fractions of what is owed.

Here's a thought: The federal government maintains detailed records of elected officials, presidential appointees and employees. Instead of the taxpayers footing this bill, all of the individual government employees, and their estates, who mishandled the Indian trusts for all those years should pay what is owed to the Indians out of their pockets, not ours.

Responsibility should begin with the Clinton administration and congressional oversight committees. Indeed, Congress is adding insult to injury by approving $2.1 billion to maintain peace keeping operations in Kosovo, ironically, just about what is owed to our fellow American Indian citizens. Is there no end to the shame?