Only one tribe, the Little Shell Chippewa, does not have its own reservation. The Crow Reservation is home to the Crow tribe, traditionally known as the Apsaalooke. Located in southcentral Montana, the reservation is bordered to the south by Wyoming, with the city of Billings just to the north. The reservation is the largest in Montana, comprising 2. It spans , acres, with about 4, enrolled tribal members residing on the reservation. The Fort Peck reservation, located in the northeastern corner of Montana, is home to 6, members of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.
The southern border of the reservation is formed by the Missouri River, with Canada lying about 50 miles to the north. The ,acre reservation, located in northcentral Montana, was created in The tribes also manage a head buffalo herd. It is the smallest reservation in the state, covering a little less than , acres.
The Blackfeet Reservation is located in the northwest Montana, with Glacier National Park to the west and the Canadian border to the north. The reservation encompasses 1. The reservation has a population of about 10,, including 8, enrolled Blackfeet. The 1. The new law authorises the Montana Department of Justice to assist with the investigation of all missing persons cases, regardless of the age of the victim, and requires the agency to hire a missing persons specialist to oversee data collection, liaise with families, and work with other state and federal agencies.
Tribes are frequently hamstrung by a series of historical, federal and non-tribal local laws, often enacted under the guise of providing protections to tribes, which usually disempower their members and exploit their resources to the benefit of the non-tribal governments.
This matrix of overlapping laws, enacted over centuries, leaves a conflicting legal framework that is nearly impossible to navigate. The Treaty with the Crow Tribe of is one of the few friendship treaties between the US and a land-based tribe, and is widely interpreted to provide a NATO-like agreement of mutual defence, between the Crow tribe and the federal government.
It is an agreement that the Crow have upheld from the Battle of Little Bighorn in to the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a treaty that some Crow members say should carry reciprocity, and that military-like support is what is needed to combat the issues on the reservation. The Major Crimes Act, passed in , grants jurisdiction to federal courts, exclusive of the states, over Native Americans who commit any of the listed offences, regardless of whether the victim is a Native American or non-Native American.
Those offences include murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, burglary, among others. Before , any crimes committed by a Native American against another Native American were tried in tribal court.
In , following the first world war, in which many Native Americans fought alongside federal troops in Europe, the US government passed the Indian Citizenship Act. Public Law , enacted in , transferred law enforcement jurisdiction for crimes committed on tribal lands from the federal government to the state. In Oliphant v Suquamish Indian Tribe , the Supreme Court ruled that federally recognised tribes had no authority to criminally prosecute non-tribal offenders, even for crimes committed on reservations.
This meant tribal lands offered a sort of free-for-all for the worst offenders, who, in many cases, even today, get away with murder.
The reauthorisation of the Violence Against Women Act VAWA , signed into law six years ago, attempted to close some of these loopholes by allowing tribes that met specific conditions to prosecute some cases of domestic abuse and assault by non-tribal citizens. The VAWA also does not address several of the underlying issues with law enforcement on tribal lands, including the shortage of officers and the high costs of detaining offenders.
Something would happen. According to families, authorities also suggest that many missing indigenous people are simply leaving the reservations without telling anyone, but Pease and CJ Stewart rejected that argument. The FBI is responsible for investigating kidnappings and homicides that occur on tribal lands — two of the main reasons people vanish in Crow country and elsewhere — but proving someone has disappeared for those reasons and not just wandered off, or died of exposure from being left on a mountain, can be difficult without witnesses coming forward or immediate evidence suggesting foul play.
Because of this, most people call the BIA first when someone goes missing, but that, too, comes with its own frustrations. Her statement was echoed repeatedly by tribal members on multiple reservations in Montana. Twenty-five percent of the time, they lack officers. We are a 2. We have six officers. They cite the lack of motivation to respond to a call in the far reaches of the reservation, when a crime might be committed on one end but the jail is on the other, and the paperwork needs to be delivered to a third location.
Most of the officers are in Billings and the impression among tribal members is that most are content to stay there. Brandi Bends, a BIA officer based in Billings who is half Crow and half Cheyenne and whose family is from Lodge Grass, said the biggest barrier to solving the cases is a lack of law enforcement resources.
The drug epidemic has changed life here and made policing more difficult. To combat the epidemic, Fox, who is also running for governor, recently implemented a Missing Persons Indigenous Task Force, announced he will hire a Missing Persons Specialist to work with the task force, and held joint training for local, state, federal, and tribal law enforcement agencies aimed at greater collaboration on missing persons cases in Montana, with an emphasis on Native Americans.
We do eventually locate people and they may be deceased. Outsiders may ask how this can be fixed, as though there is a magic formula that will erase centuries of discrimination, as though enough funding, enough training, enough economic opportunities will end systemic violence and death.
The members of the Crow are patient with such a question, more patient and tolerant of an outsider asking questions than anyone would expect, when outsiders asking questions has not always ended well for the tribe. No one cares. But they have the answers, every one: Allow the tribes to manage their own economic development. Remove restrictions on the tribes prosecuting non-tribal offenders. Honour the mutual-defence intention of the friendship treaty.
Reaffirm tribal culture to counter the decades of shame that forced family separations, negative media depictions and sexual objectification of tribal women have wrought. Be a partner in finding solutions. And if not, get out of the way. For Pease, making people aware of the sheer magnitude of the problem is its own challenge.
This happens in Hayes, this happens in Fort Peck, this happens in Browning. It also happens in land-based tribes throughout the country, down the wide, open stretches of highway that connects them, and beneath the same expansive sky. By Molly McCluskey.
0コメント