Part of the problem is that the tribes still aren't very good at playing politics. If they had lobbyists more useful to them (*cough*abramoff*cough*) they could win s'more pork and have these problems taken care of.

This attitude is kind of scary. I'm part native myself :/ This kind of stuff shouldn't be condoned, but with Bush as the President, I can't see how he would care what happens on Tribal lands let alone want to take preventative measures or allow the natives to write their own laws and punishments.

I think Hazar hit it on the head. It's no secret that, to the government, importance isn't determined by magnitude so much as public opinion and maintaining power. Best thing you can do is talk about it where people who make decisions will overhear.

EDIT: I don't think giving the tribes more autonomy is going to solve anything. If they can't generate the tax revenue to take care of their basic social services, they're definitely not going to generate the tax revenue to open a fully staffed CSI lab on every reservation.

It's not what you know, it's who.

Exactly.

Please, this situation has been around since at a minimum the 60s. Clinton didn't do anything to help the situation either.

Why are you trying to politicize it? That's just wrong. It's EVERYBODY'S fault. I don't hear the bloody Democrats talking about it, I don't hear the Republicans talking about it. It's just silence. The federal government, no matter who's in charge, is indifferent.

THAT'S the problem I'm complaining about, not the administrations.

As someone who's not American, and doesn't really understand the whole reservation/tribal history, this strikes me as pretty awful. Having said that, you should check out the treatment of indigenous Australians over the last hundred years - it's a lot worse than this. Go wiki the phrase "stolen generation".

Actually, Kharaen was politicizing it. Perhaps you didn't read what he quoted?


This means that, even if it is a felony someone commited, the tribe gets to decide which cases it'll prosecute.

I'm not condoning it, but technically the federal government has no say in the legal matters on reservations. We can pass laws that make certain acts felonies, but they can decide what to do.

That's not true. Federal law applies everywhere. State law does not apply on reservations.

Its actually more complicated than that.

Federal laws can apply but tribal laws trump them. But only for Tribal members. For non tribal members, the tribal laws only trump federal law if congress makes a statement agreeing with the laws. (not the same as a law itself, more like resolution I think.) Also, its a federal law that State laws must create an opening for a tribal law to be valid. So in the case of casinos, in states that there is no lottery, reservations can't have casinos, because they don't have "gambling of any kind."

This is basically the same situation you have in Washington D.C, or you have on government land within a state. (Such as a national park)

Its all very messed up, and why I was suggesting that they be given more autonomy, and they can take out bonds and loans like states do when they don't have enough taxes to pay for specific things.

Seems like it would be a good idea to just go right ahead and abolish Native American territories. Any legal system so ludicrously baroque is doomed to cause injustice; the special legal status of Indian reservations is just another legal crack for criminals to slip in through.

I can see many problems with this approach, but I'm not sure the benefits don't simply outweigh them.

The United States is trillions of dollars in debt. Money doesn't exist for ANYTHING, really. We just decide that we can't pay it back quite yet and free up some here and there, or borrow more, or mint more, or do whatever we have to scrounge it up.

We cut funding to some programs because we're short on cash, but then we suddenly have hundreds of billions to fight a war? Must be nice pulling money out of your ass like that. If we want it badly enough, we have the money, apparently, but otherwise it's not there.

Again, it doesn't work like that.

The cost of a war often is allready spent money, and the cost refers to the cost of replacing the weapons used.

Sometimes money is traded for laws, or tarfis between countries and that money can only be used on certain things.

Just for example, while America gives tons of foreign aide to Israel, that money must all be spent on U.S. products. It mostly accounting shenanigans.

programs that the government cuts, usualy don't have the money to pay the sallaries, and so they really don't have the money. But not all goverment money is spent on things which has to be paid off so urgently.

I live in the middle of the Seneca/Cayuga land claim area in Central New York. I have known many Native Americans as friends and who have married into the family (albeit technically different tribal groups then those pressing the land claim).

These sort of things occur because jurisdiction over NA lands is a political hot potato. Neither state nor federal governments want to be responsible to the natives and non-natives involved for want of angering the voting public or the hassle of enforcing the law. The natives do not have the resources to fund a dedicated lobby. Those that do so only have it do to gambling and sales tax free business. That again leads to jurisdiction issues between municipalities, counties, and states. It is one giant cluster $%^&.

for the record, I DO care that these people are being treated poorly, I just have no idea whether or not I can do anything about it

Indian reservations are not under the full jurisdiction of the US. It's like asking the United Kingdom to prosecute crimes done in Canada. There was an interesting case in the Supreme Court that stated children of Indians who were citizens of a reservation did not get auto-citizenship because the 14th Amendment states that citizenship path only applies to people "under the full jurisdiction" of the federal government. The court ruled that the reservations have some of sovereignty and therefore the people there are only under partial jurisdiction of the US. (For foriegners today, I think their insta-citizenship is due to Congressoinal laws, not the 14th Amendment.) It's a weird legalistic thing, but it sort of sounds to me like how Canada is a protectorate of the United Kingdom. I don't know if this is related to this issue, but it's important to bear in mind that the federal government's roll in a reservation is very different elsewhere in the US territories.

And really the federal government usually doesn't do much in the way of crimes like rape, murder, theft, etc. They are more involved in financial fraud cases, drugs, and activities that cross into our nation from other nations. States, counties, and cities typically handle cases of sexual assault, murder, etc. And on a reservation, those political entities don't exist. A reservation in New York state, for example, technically is not a part of New York state. These sorts of crimes just aren't things anyone in the federal government does even for America, so it's tough to expect them to do it for the Indian nations. Even if they do attempt to fulfill that role, I'd expect them to be incompetent since it's not what they train to do. What I think they would need to do is make sure their tribal laws are in order regarding murder, sexual assault, etc. since they can't rely on state laws for the same due to being independent nations. Then they could make treaties with the state governments that surround them to get local sheriffs and so forth involved in enforcing tribal laws. This would require some concessions from them in the areas of taxes so they can fund the paychecks of this law enforcement and earn the goodwill of the other taxpayers who fund the local sheriffs. (I believe casinoes and gas stations, etc. on reservations typically cannot be taxed by state governments, for example. At least that's what I saw driving through Seneca territory.) Or they could just hire private security firms to do enforcement and arbitration if they prefer to remain more isolated. Either of those is probably going to get better results than federal agents, who are trained to do drug raids and track down international money laundering schemes.

I think that autonomy would help, actually. I forget where I saw it, but some guy on TV (yeah, yeah, I know about believing what you see on TV...) did a review of the various tribes. He found that the most well-off tribes tended to negotiate more autonomy. There was one (Choktaw??) that pretty much told the feds to go away and in return they would take little to no handouts from the government so as to avoid all the strings the feds attach to the money. They then opened up some manufacturing plant that was so productive that they had to hire outside the tribe to staff it. Contrast that to the typical image hear about of impoverished welfare ghettos! I think you will find that the less autonomous a tribe, the more impoverished it is. Because the feds puts so many strings on their handouts, there isn't much tribes can do to help themselves when they get into that system. (Plus a free check usually demotivates people to work even if they could earn more wealth in doing so.)

As for abolishing this system, it's what the tribes negotiated. So you can't eliminate it without tribal approval. I'm pretty sure that a tribe could dissolve itself as a nation if its members saw an advantage in doing so just as the Vatican could if it wanted to formally become part of Italy. I'm also pretty sure it's easy to leave the reservation if you don't want to live under that sort of jurisdiction. I've known some who just picked up and left, even some who remained members (like my step-grandma) and lived productive lives under the American legal system instead of the tribal legal system.