About 30 American Indian undergraduates and graduate students plan to dress in full Native regalia and turn their backs in protest while Robert E. Rubin ’60, who preceded University President-elect Lawrence H. Summers as Secretary of the Treasury, delivers this year’s commencement address.

The group is protesting Rubin’s role in a lawsuit that claims the Treasury Department and the Department of the Interior never paid billions of dollars owed to American Indians living on reservations—and then destroyed the boxes of documents that proved the mismanagement.

A handful of Harvard students or their families are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are predominantly members of the Sioux and Blackfeet tribes.

The student protesters said they do not want to disrupt commencement but feel a visible action is necessary to call attention to the ongoing lawsuit, which has been largely ignored outside the American Indian community.

“The point is that there is a serious issue here that people have brushed under the rug,” said Natalie A. Landreth, a third-year law student who is organizing the action.

Landreth said the lawsuit’s complexity has kept it out of the public eye. During commencement, the students plan to distribute information to explain the intricacies of the lawsuit.

“You just can’t boil it down to a slogan, it’s so complicated,” Landreth said.

The lawsuit has a long and complex history.