Mother Jones isn’t a magazine I put much stock in, as it usually pushes an agenda that I don’t agree with, however, it has published an interesting article about the justice system on American Indian reservations:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/vigilante-justice-oklahoma-indian-reservations
The article focuses on “Ruben,” an Indian tough-guy-for-hire who doles out justice at the end of a heavily-scarred fist when the folks on the reservation have found “the system” lacking.
Statistically speaking, he’s probably right. The rate of violent crime among Native Americans is twice the national average (PDF); on some reservations, it’s 20 times higher. At least one in three American Indian women will be raped (PDF) in their lifetimes. Yet just 3,000 tribal and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officers—the only kinds of cops with jurisdiction on Indian land—patrol 56 million acres. In 2008, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas had nine officers for 9,000 people in an area twice the size of Delaware. (A typical town with the same population has three times that number.) Tribal courts can only prosecute misdemeanors such as petty theft and public intoxication. They can’t issue sentences longer than one year without meeting special criteria, and even then, three years is the maximum. More serious crimes must be handled by federal prosecutors, who turn down 65 percent (PDF) of the reservation cases referred to them.
Non-Indians commit two-thirds of violent crimes against Indians, including 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults. Yet thanks to a 1978 Supreme Court ruling, tribes can not prosecute outsiders who commit crimes on their land. (The case involved a white guy who’d assaulted a tribal police officer and another who’d attempted a high-speed getaway from reservation cops.)
That’s right: the supposedly-sovereign Indian nations can’t even prosecute serious crime on the reservation. They are restricted only to misdemeanors and forced to refer the more serious cases to federal prosecutors, who may not have the resources to prosecute the kinds of crimes that are ordinarily pursued by the States.
Accordingly, men like “Ruben” are hired to dole out a more immediate and severe kind of justice. The bizarre plight of the American Indian has produced both a demand for such men and the supply:
We pull up to the house of two of Ruben’s friends, where the guys show off the driveway they poured today and the cabinet renovation they’ve done in the kitchen. They all talk about Indian loan-guarantee programs, and, as is often a topic of conversation, the various benefits different tribes give out. Ruben’s tribe, like most, isn’t one of those wealthy ones with casino revenues to distribute in abundance or invest in tribal services. A quarter of American Indians live below the poverty level; Ruben is on food stamps. His casino royalty check last year was for $8. “I’d rather they send a midget to my house to knock on the door,” he says, “and when I open it, have him punch me in the nuts and say, ‘Thanks for bein’ Pawnee.’”
Also, “Ruben” is a funny guy. There’s nothing funnier than an Indian midget showing up at your house and punching you in the testicles.
Of course, Mother Jones wouldn’t be Mother Jones without singing the praises of President Obama:
In July, President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act (PDF) in the White House’s East Room. Standing beside him were two Indian men in headdresses, and Lisa Marie Iyotte, a Lakota woman whose rape case the feds had decided, without even interviewing her, not to pursue. (She couldn’t stop sobbing, even after Obama put his arm around her.) The act includes reforms like increasing tribal courts’ sentencing authority to three years—if they provide public defenders and trained judges. It mandates that tribal officers be instructed how to interview sexual-assault victims and collect evidence. It requires the Department of Justice to keep track of any Indian cases it declines to prosecute, and to gather more statistics on crime on Indian land. Obama called it “an important step to help the federal government better address the unique public safety challenges that confront tribal communities.”
OMG! That poor woman was immune even to the charms of the Chosen One! It must be some kind of Indian voodoo magic! Never mind that the Act (as reported, I haven’t read it) doesn’t really do that much. 3 years of sentencing authority isn’t all that much of an improvement, particularly if such authority is granted only if the tribes provide judges and public defenders, which are probably low on the list of line items of each tribe’s budget. Further, the mandatory training in interviewing and collecting evidence from sexual assault victims sounds more like lip-service to the feminist lobby rather than a real attempt to curb crime. I mean, what good is it without the authority to try and punish the offenders? Finally, requiring the DOJ to keep statistics on Indian crime? WTF? They don’t already do this?
I have always believed that the American Indians got royally hosed by both European settlers and later, by the American government. Hell, the Indians are even worse off than the blacks, and our government is directly responsible not just for past ills, but for their current problems as well.
That’s why I support a couple of measures to help these people. First, let’s clean up the reservations and give the tribes the authority to enact tribal law (inasmuch as such laws are generally consistent with Constitutional guarantees of due process and the fundamental rights we all hold dear). This necessarily includes the power to prosecute crimes on Indian land.
Second, let’s open up our pocketbooks to help these people out. I’m usually the last person to suggest federal spending on anything that doesn’t promote the general welfare, but these folks have been unfairly screwed over, repeatedly, by our government. We need programs for civil and criminal justice on the reservation, money to develop infrastructure, maybe even some social programs. If we’re going to throw cash at any special interest, it ought to be the natives.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
