$82.7 Million Provided to Tribal Communities for Law and Justice System Improvements (Reuters)

The Department of Justice todayannounced more than $82.7 million in grant funds and assistance to tribalcommunities for law enforcement and justice system improvements in fiscal year2007. These awards include funds for tribal courts assistance, alcohol andsubstance abuse prevention, juvenile and mental health programs, victimassistance, and developing responses to violent crimes against Indian women.”We recognize that tribal communities face many challenges today. Although themost effective and locally appropriate solutions to their diverse problemscome from the tribes themselves, the federal government is committed to beinga full partner in their efforts to improve public safety,” said AttorneyGeneral Michael B. Mukasey. “These grants will help tribes develop andimplement their own law enforcement and criminal justice strategies.”    read more

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Path to justice unclear (Denver Post)

On a bitter February morning four years ago, a well-armed federal SWAT team rolled across the cheat-grass prairie of Montana’s Blackfeet reservation on a mission to re-establish order in a lawless land.

They started by firing the entire tribal-run police force – such as it was. In truth, the tribe’s slipshod police had long ago ceased to be much of a deterrent. Serious crimes routinely went uninvestigated. In one notorious incident, a prisoner released from jail unsupervised to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting instead went to the house of a former girlfriend, where he beat and raped her.

Promising to hire more officers, modernize the jail and enforce the rule of law, the takeover of police powers by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs was cheered by many residents on this 1-million-acre reservation.   read more

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Professor blasts how U.S. handles Indian crimes (The Durango Herald)

When a Navajo man killed his brother in a drunken-driving accident last year on the Southern Ute reservation, the driver was not charged by the Utes or the Navajos; rather, he was prosecuted 340 miles away in Denver by the federal government.

This is modus operandi for serious crimes that occur on the two American Indian reservations in Southwest Colorado. But to Kevin Washburn, a leading expert on Indian law, it violates basic American values of justice.

“It’s not public in any real way, because it’s not public to the community that’s affected by it,” Washburn said. “It’s hidden away in some other city. It’s a very distant application of power.”

Washburn, a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, shared his views last week on the Southern Ute reservation, where 14 U.S. attorneys gathered to discuss criminal justice as it relates to tribal lands.    full story

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Five U.S. Indian men indicted for hunting whale (Reuters)

SEATTLE (Reuters) – A federal grand jury indicted five Washington state American Indian men on Thursday on three misdemeanor charges each for their involvement in an illegal hunt of a gray whale last month.

The five members of the Makah tribe, frustrated over lack of progress gaining federal approval to resume a tribal whale hunt, shot a 30-foot (9.1-metre) whale at least 16 times with a high-powered rifle before it died.

The Makah, a tribe of about 1,200 members in western Washington, has been waiting since 1999 to resume its gray whale hunt after a federal court ruled that the tribe needs to secure a waiver from the Marine Mammal Protection Act.   full story

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Indians told not to wait for aid (Rocky Mountain News)

COLORADO SPRINGS – Arizona state senator and former Navajo Nation President Albert Hale called on tribal leaders Monday to take ownership of the issues troubling Indian people, saying they cannot wait for the federal government.”It is time to save ourselves, to save our children, to save our nation,” Hale said.

Hale’s comments came on the first day of the Four Corners Indian Country Conference, scheduled through Wednesday in Colorado Springs.    full story

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