It is hardly unusual to read of shoddy or inadequate services provided Native Americans in Montana and elsewhere.

Too often it seems as though Indians are the last priority.

Still, Tuesday's story about the federal Indian Health Service was an eye opener. At a time when the agency often runs out of money necessary to provide adequate health care to the Native Americans it serves, it turns out that the IHS can barely run itself.

According to the Government Accounting Office, the Congress' watchdog agency, the IHS has lost at least $15.8 million worth of equipment over the past few years. The lost or stolen property usually is just written off, with no one held accountable.

How does an agency simply lose some 5,000 items ranging from computers to trucks? (Because the investigation was just a sampling of IHS operations, the total number of missing items and their value probably is much higher.)

Worse, according to the GAO, the agency "made a concerted effort" to obstruct GAO investigators' work, including misrepresentations of data and fabricated documents.

"It's disgusting what's happening at the Indian Health Service," said North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "We can't continue to allow this. We have people dying because they can't get health care, and then we get a report like this."

Coming on the heels of last year's revelations that despite the high rate of crime against Native Americans, the Bureau of Indian Affairs receives only about 30 percent of the funding it needs for law enforcement, the new IHS report is just another example of the not-so-benign neglect with which this country ignores its obligations toward Indian Country.