Every Indian Claims Commission commissioner until the late 1960s lacked federal Indian law experience.

Evidence

The first commissioners were not appointed until eight months after the bill was signed. Edgar E. Will, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, served as the first chief commissioner, along with Louis J. O’Marr and William Holt. All were white men, and none had any experience in federal Indian policy or federal Indian law. (That would remain true for all the commissioners until the late 1960s, even after the commission was expanded to include five members.) Their offices were located in Washington, DC, far away from where most Tribal members lived, and only lawyers approved by the commission were allowed to represent the Tribes. The commissioners could have created and staffed an investigative division right away, as authorized by the 1946 legislation, to help them verify the facts of the claims brought forward. But they did not do so for several years. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 156