Lawyers from the Native American Rights Fund today will ask a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to grant class-action certification on behalf of 250 tribes whose tribal trust fund accounts are managed by the U.S. Interior Department.

Twelve tribes named as lead plaintiffs in the Nez Perce vs. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne suit are seeking a complete and historical accounting of their tribal trust fund accounts managed by the Interior Department for the past 188 years.

"The situation is so bad on how the government continues to manage the trust accounts that it's not an easy task to bring these claims," said Melody McCoy, a NARF attorney. "The government just resists at every step of the way, resists turning over the information so tribes can make their claim. The government knows how bad it is. And they are terrified of liability."

The Interior Department manages more than 1,800 trust fund accounts for more than 250 tribes. As of 2007, account balances for tribal trust funds totaled $2.9 billion. A restitution award on behalf of tribes could exceed $500 billion, said McCoy, who will present oral arguments Thursday before U.S. District Judge James Robertson. McCoy is one of five lawyers who will argue the tribal trust case on behalf of NARF, a Native legal advocacy organization based in Boulder, Colo.

Interior Department lawyers filed a motion in June to dismiss the Nez Perce vs. Kempthorne tribal trust fund case. They argue tribes have "no legal footing" for claims of breach of trust and the demand for an accounting because tribes received account statements, a requirement of the Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994.

NARF lawyers are saying the account statements done by the Arthur Anderson accounting firm in 1996 were incomplete.

Congress required all tribes to meet a December 2006 deadline if they wanted to challenge the 1996 Arthur Anderson tribal trust fund reports prepared for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Tribes who did not file suit risked their right to challenge the reports.

At least 47 tribes have filed separate suits in district court or land claims court for full and complete accountings.

The Nez Perce vs. Kempthore suit names 12 tribes as lead plaintiffs, including the Mescalero Apache, Tule River, Hualapai, Tlingit and Haida, Yakama, Klamath Tribes, Yurok, Santee Sioux, Cheyenne-Arapaho, Pawnee, Sac and Fox. If certified, the class-action suit will include all the tribes that have not filed their own case.

All class members will be notified if and when the suit is certified by the federal court.

The Interior Department has been assigned the role of managing money earned from Indian lands, a job that has been historically wrought with systemic accounting blunders, according to dozens of Congressional and government reports over the last century.

Federal bureaucrats have been managing tribal trust lands since 1820.

It began managing lands for Native individuals in 1887.

Judge Robertson is currently overseeing a similar case. Cobell vs. Kempthorne, a class-action suit, was filed 12 years ago by Elouise Cobell, a community economic developer from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. The Cobell case sought an historical accounting on behalf of more than 500,000 Native landowners. Robertson has said he will likely announce a landmark multibillion-dollar cash settlement in that suit in August.

"He just had the Cobell trial," said McCoy. "He's probably thinking, 'Oh, my God, look what happened in Cobell. Now, I have hundreds of tribes coming in."