Improving public safety on Indian lands by restoring Oliphant and providing robust funding

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tribal officials from South Dakota gave testimony at the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee listening session on public safety in Native American communities on March 20, 2024. None of the testimony given regarding the difficulties of policing vast areas of land were new as this crisis has been ongoing for decades. Many Tribal leaders talked wearily about the same issues that they have talked about for decades – federal jurisdiction preventing tribes from charging non-Indians, underfunded agencies that don’t have authorization to respond to federal crimes, short-staffing, positions left unfilled, lack of communication, uncompetitive wage structures, etc, and is now an acute crisis.

But their pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Governor Kristi Noem has spent much of the last year accusing the tribal members and leaders of trafficking drugs. In August of 2023, she told an audience that all the reservations in the state are hotbeds for drug cartels. She repeated those words in Texas, according to KELO, where she has been fomenting anti-immigration sentiments and making a production of sending the South Dakota National Guard to guard the border at the cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers.

In early March, during two town hall meetings, Noem accused Tribal members of “standing in her way”, of failing Native youth and benefiting from drug cartels. In recent weeks she stepped up her rhetoric accusing tribes, Biden and Democrats for the condition of public safety on reservations. The most recent tribe to ban her is the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. On Tuesday, the Tribal Council voted unanimously to forbid her from coming onto their lands, because of the false allegations she has made and the lies she told at a town hall meeting, according to Chairman Ryman LeBeau.

Instead of reaching out to the Tribes, as she did days ago saying in a letter to one of the tribal presidents whom she had offended last year (“I am reaching out to you with a handshake from my heart)” Noem immediately demanded that the Tribes “ban” the cartel.

Kristi Noem does not have a track record of improving any of the issues plaguing Indian Country, despite being a state legislator, a Congressional representative and now Governor. One of her first acts as Governor was to deny requests from the Tribes to protect water and land from the danger of oil and gas pipeline pollution and attempted to create new laws favoring TC Energy to prevent people from exercising their right to peaceful protest and never consulted with the Tribes.

While there is no way to gauge what kind of influence Noem’s support of Donald Trump and his criminal activities have had on the overall crime rate, Noem’s false messaging coincides with that from Trump who on April 3, 2024 said that the crime rate is on the rise under Biden. The FBI reported that violent crime and reported property crime all dropped in 2023. That’s a significant difference from 2020, the last year of the Trump presidency when the FBI saw a dramatic rise in violent crime, and an almost 30-percent increase in the murder rate which has since declined. But violent crime overall has dropped since the 1990’s and the 2023 crime rate may be the lowest since the late 1960’s.

During the listening session, OST President Frank Star Come Out said that when the federal government fails to fund them, crimes go unaddressed because their resources are so thin. He said that the FBI, BIA drug and MMIW task force are over 90 minutes away and none of them are funded or even authorized to be responders to a federal crime. “Yes, they all help out when they can and we have a good relationship with them. They simply are over an hour and a half away and that is not helpful when someone on our reservation is firing a loaded gun.”

Chief of police for the OST, Chief Algin Young who has more than 23 years in law enforcement in Indian Country said that the Pine Ridge Reservation is the third largest in the nation. “The Tribe has an enrolled membership of about 51,500, a service population of 43-thousand spanning throughout 52 communities. As a result of illegal guns, drugs including fentanyl, meth, heroin and violent crime can only be described as shocking and dangerous.” He said nothing has changed since he testified last year.

The Vice Chair of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Ira Taken Alive said that many of the speakers were echoing the same issues. He said they were talking about the same issues in 2007. “I am here again with the same issues. Today, lack of law enforcement creates, promotes and ensures a safe haven for these criminals. In 2007, Standing Rock had less than 6 officers to police 2.3 million acres of land.” He spoke of officer burn-out. “Our reservations are surrounded by state lands which means that non-tribal lands are having the same issues.” Leaders talked about not being able to retain officers because of they aren’t eligible for the federal pension.

Mark Morcaro, President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) testified that “one of the fundamental solutions is the restoration of our own sovereign governments to protect our citizens in our own homes and on our own lands. And this means that Congress needs to pass a legislative fix to the Supreme Court holding in Oliphant until that happens our public safety crisis will continue. Restore Oliphant and create new robust funding levels to get the job done. Stop tinkering around the margins with a little bit of funding. “ He said that every session of Congress should have an Oliphant bill until it get passed.

The Supreme Court held in the Oliphant V. Suquamish Indian Tribe case from 1978, that the tribes lost authority to try non-Indians when they became dependents of the United States. A review of the literature and case law found that the decision was political and without legal basis.

Noem did not attend the listening session and instead attended the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture to give testimony regarding the danger that China poses and their efforts to “control our food supply”.

The Senate Committee is accepting written comments until April 12, 2024 and can be sent to testimony@indian.senate.gov.

(Contact Marnie Cook at staffwriter@nativesunnews.today)

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