Native Americans and the Law

Written by: Michael Arnold

It is no surprise to some that Native Americans that are living in their native land of America, this great country we live in, are having trouble with the law. They are facing massive, hardcore policing, as well as mass incarceration. This is not to say that all of the incarcerations are not for the right reasons, but we can assume that some aren’t. More of this is coming to light thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement that began a few years ago.

The Black Lives Matter movement “insisted that demands for justice and equality for the black community remain part of the national conversation” (NoiseCat). It brings up the issues across the nation of policing and mass incarceration of black people. Unfortunately even though this is a huge and positive step for black people, there are another people living in the same great country of the United States that are facing similar injustices, if not worse. The Native American injustices that include mass incarceration and heavy policing have gone largely unreported.

And example a Huffington Post article from 2015 gives is a mentally ill tribal citizen was shot and killed by Denver police. There began to be protests in Denver’s native community, which helped bring to light the incredible (in a negative way) rate at which police kill Native Americans. They already make up less than one percent of the national population, but make up over two percent of all police killings, according to the CDC. This is an awful fact that needs to be brought up more in the public news space. I know we are all dealing with a global pandemic currently, but once this passes we certainly have yet another issue to fix that our country has faced for way too long. The Black Lives Matter movement has been great for the public awakening to the mass injustices committed against black Americans, but we need to do something for the Native Americans as well. They deserve it so much for the awful way they have been treated ever since settlers came hundreds of years ago to take over and dominate America.

Like I stated before, there is not only heavy policing and killing of Native Americans, but also mass incarceration. The states that have a more populous number of Native Americans living in them have been overrepresented in the criminal justice system for a long time. An example is in South Dakota where Native Americans make up “[nine] percent of the total population, but [twenty nine] percent of the prison population” (NoiseCat). Alaska is in no better a situation where Native people make up fifteen percent of the state’s total population and yet the prison population is thirty eight percent Native people (Noise Cat).

These issues are complicated even more than they already are by “overlapping and unresolved conflicts between tribal, federal and state jurisdictions” (NoiseCat). Whenever a crime is committed on a Native American reservation, or within a Native community, it is hardly ever clear which agency is supposed to be in charge of the prosecution. It has to be determined by a highly complex set of factors, which include but are not limited to the severity of the charges and the races of the victims and alleged perpetrators. This is so wrong to have a native people living in their “own” land and yet when a crime is committed we have to delve deeply into the situation, find out every single detail down to the DNA code (basically) to figure out who is supposed to handle the case. It is so wrong on so many levels, and this is yet another of the countless reasons why things that go to court cases and things like that take forever to resolve. The system that America runs on for their judicial system has got to be more simplified if we ever want to get anything done in a timely manner.

Even worse, with the overlapping jurisdictions of federal and tribal sovereignty, it means that Native Americans that commit a crime can be punished twice for the same offense: once under the federal jurisdiction and then again in tribal court. “Aside from cases of domestic violence, tribal courts are not allowed to try major crimes as defined under the Major Crimes Act” (NoiseCat). What that means in simpler terms: suspects in most of the felony cases are prosecuted in federal courts. In federal courts, the sentencing of criminals tends to be more severe.

There does seem to be a bright side to things to end this post on. In February of 2015, the Huffington Post reported that “building off the momentum of Black Lives Matter, the Lakota Peoples’ Law Project released its “Native Lives Matter” report” (NoiseCat). It basically gave an overview of every inequity faced by the Native Americans in the criminal justice system. It has been ignored in the growing national conversation about policing and criminal justice reform, but at least it exists and there are people backing these issues facing out native people. It give you somewhat a glimpse of hope on the horizon.

Sources

“Julio De 4.” US Historians, 3 July 2013, ushistorians.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/julio-de-4/.

NoiseCat, Julian Brave. “13 Issues Facing Native People Beyond Mascots And Casinos.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 31 Aug. 2015, www.huffpost.com/entry/13-native-american-issues_n_55b7d801e4b0074ba5a6869c.