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History

Established by the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-412), the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) was created to improve the accountability and management of Indian funds held in trust by the federal government.  As trustee, the Department of the Interior has the primary fiduciary responsibility to manage both Tribal trust funds and Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts.

The Indian trust consists of approximately 56 million acres of land. Over 11 million acres belong to individual Indians and nearly 45 million acres are held in trust for Indian tribes. On these lands, the Department manages over 100,000 leases. It also manages approximately $3.4 billion in trust funds. For fiscal year 2008, funds from leases, use permits, land sales, and income from financial assets, totaling approximately $460 million, were collected for more than 378,000 open IIM accounts. Approximately $506 million was collected in fiscal year 2008 for about 2,700 tribal accounts (for over 250 tribes).

The mission of the OST is to provide oversight, reform and coordination of the policies, procedures, systems and practices used by various agencies to manage Indian trust assets. This mission is integrally related to the Department of the Interior's goal of meeting its responsibilities to American Indians.

The goals of the OST include:

1. to protect and preserve Indian trust assets and collect and accurately account for income due beneficiaries;
2. to obtain agreement with all Tribal and individual Indian account holders on the balances in their trust accounts in a manner that is fair to both the Indian community and the general public, does not impair or impede reform efforts, and does not result in reductions in Indian programs; and
3. to provide timely and responsive customer services to account holders.