On Native American Issues

By Lillian Jones
Contributing Writer

Native Americans have much more to deal with than worrying about being further degraded for decades to come with a mascot depicting a fierce male warrior looking back. The image and the issue should take a back seat and rest altogether. The issues facing Native Americans are more pressing and call for much more deserved attention. I could go into the mascot issue, but I’ll sit on that a moment in favor of a bit of education for the readers of this publication. I attended the North Dakota Human Rights Commission’s Summit on Oct. 29th here in Fargo, sacrificing a commitment to decorate the Fargo Davies gymnasium for a Halloween party. I encountered a group of dedicated, passionate folks concerned with justice and equity in this lovely state of ours. The participants rounded out the day by voicing the most pressing concerns elicited from small group discussion and “Native American” issues became an echo throughout the room. I heard the words, but I felt a need to fill a void because I believe Native American issues should be among the crest of those to be addressed by and within our State.

We, as North Dakotans, present to the rest of our beloved nation that we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation; that our crime rates are low; that we value education and as such, graduate nearly 80% of our children from our high schools; that our State operates with a budget surplus and that our predominantly two-parent, two-income families are safe. We pride ourselves on being inclusive, responsive and attentive to those in need, pulling together to take care of “our own”.

Education

Native Americans, young and old, represent less than 6% of North Dakota’s population according to the 2010 census. Not all North Dakota Native American school age children live on reservations, nor do they all attend Bureau of Indian Education or Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. They attend public schools along with representatives of the various and diverse population that comprises the majority of the remaining North Dakota school age children. According to a combined study of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and Penn State’s Center for the Study of Leadership in American Indian Education, The Dropout/Graduation Crisis Among American Indian and Alaska Native Students: Failure to Respond Places the Future of Native Peoples at Risk (January 2010), North Dakota held the nation’s highest overall graduation rate for its high school students at 79.2%. For Native American students attending public schools in North Dakota, the graduation rate was 37.9%. That is a problem.

According to the legislative report card delivered during the NDHRC summit by JoNell Bakke, the Indian Education issue, in the form of SB2130 “Related to providing a Director of Indian Education position in the Department of Public Instruction”, was perceived as a BIA matter. The disparity between the graduation rates of Native students when compared to their non-Native counterparts is a Native American issue that needs immediate attention. More than that, it’s a North Dakota problem that must be addressed and the State has a sufficient budget to ensure a position in the Department of Public Instruction to address this gap. I can’t believe that my fellow North Dakotans can be made aware of this and find it acceptable. It would be in our collective best interest to ensure the educational success and employability of our young people within this state and thereby alleviate disparities in employment options, creating a larger job market that the people and businesses in our State can easily sustain.

Women Victims of Violent Crime (Mothers, Sisters and Daughters)

Victimization of Native American women is another issue that must be addressed. We are all familiar with the “Take Back the Night” marches. I would like to take back some dignity, respect and basic humanity for my Native sisters! Native American women are victimized at rates that should make the general public physically sick. According to the Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics, 3 in 5 Native women are and will be victims of domestic violence; 70% of their abusers are non-Native and the majority of those abusers will go unpunished; 1 in 3 Native women are raped; 86% of the perpetrators of rapes of Native women are non-Native and Native women are murdered at 10 times the national average for any other race or ethnicity in the United States. These are figures that cannot be ignored any longer. They are also figures conveniently omitted from mainstream media, because they “don’t apply” when the victim is an indigenous person of this continent. This should make you sick, I know it makes me ill and propels what I do in my “leisure” time.

The reader may say, “that’s Indian country”, or “that applies to reservations”. These statistics do not reflect crimes committed against Native women in Indian Country, aka on reservations. Reporting tools and data collection systems are often inadequate, costly and limited budgets restrain already challenged law enforcement staff when compared to the areas they have to cover with skeletal personnel. Further, jurisdictional issues are a literal maze when it comes to prosecutions, adding yet another layer of “protection” in a system that has been created to essentially foster criminal behavior perpetrated upon Native Americans, in what should be their safe and secure lands. I will not address issues specific to reservations at this time, but maintain discussion as pertains to State.

Native women victims of domestic violence are often revictimized by systems that should be in place to ensure their safety, as they ensure the safety of their non-Native counterparts. Instead, Native women have difficulty ensuring valid orders of protection, better known as Domestic Violence Protection Orders, are enforced by state, county and city law enforcement agencies when those orders are issued by a Tribal Court. Native women, like any sane woman 3 seeking to ensure the safety of her children and self preservation, flee to areas where she will be free from her abuser and persons who pose a direct and immediate threat to her safety and the safety of her children.

I am all too aware of the realities Native women face when they present an order for protection that is scoffed at by law enforcement because it doesn’t bear a state court seal or header. This problem was to be addressed with the enactment of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which granted full faith and credit to domestic violence protection orders (protection orders) that met criteria set forth in the act which is consistent in those orders issued for enforcement by all jurisdictions. “Any protection order issued that is consistent with subsection (b) of this section by the court of one State or Indian tribe (the issuing State or Indian tribe) shall be accorded full faith and credit by the court of another State or Indian tribe (the enforcing State or Indian tribe) and enforced as if it were the order of the enforcing State or tribe.” (18 U.S.C. Section 2265) Nowhere in the language of VAWA was a protection order required to be presented to another court for a stamp of approval before it is enforceable. However, for Native women, this is not common practice.

Conversely, when a call for help is issued, and a valid order, consistent with the requirements to ensure full faith and credit is presented to a responding officer, the order is disregarded and at a minimum, the offender may be removed.

Child Custody

For that same Native woman victim of domestic violence who has reached out and called state, county or local law enforcement under the impression that her order will be enforced when her abuser finds her, encounters compounded problems if she has children. She is more likely to receive the attention of local social service child protection departments and her children are more likely to be removed from her care, control and custody due to her “exposing them to criminal activity”, maintaining an unsafe environment for the children (by being a victim of domestic violence, or homeless living in a shelter). She will then encounter problems ensuring her children are returned to her. Classes she will be required to take will cost her time and money; she will most likely be deemed a “flight risk” because “she’s a member of a reservation”. Not a member of a federally recognized tribe, a citizen of the United States of America and or North Dakota, eligible for provisions for safety that most Americans take for granted. Rather, her rights are more frequently trodden on, and she is looked down upon when despair pours out from her countenance. To whom does she turn?

The children, once removed, are to be protected under the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which was enacted to ensure the safety of Native children and ensure their placement with Native families in state initiated child removal actions. These federally mandated protections under ICWA were to operate to counter past American practices of child removal from their Native homes and communities along the lines of “save the man, kill the Indian”. ICWA actions are commonplace in the Dakotas, and the Native children that reflect a portion of the less than 6% of the total Native American population within the State of North Dakota comprise 37% of children in the State’s foster care system.

So yes, I believe Native American issues are something that must be addressed in our State, by our people and for our children. We pride ourselves on being family focused, holding Christian values at the center of our collective missions. I want that same heart of compassion and justice meted out to the underserved and over trodden: the authentic Americans of our beautiful State. And I believe that we live in a time and in a place where we can rise above the challenges of the past and work collectively to educate, inform and reform. I would love to share more with you down the road on history and the impact that history has on current practices, perceptions, misconceptions 5 and I look forward to contributing the same in the coming weeks. If you all would like to research independently, I encourage you to look at the Maze of Injustice (2007) by Amnesty International, which used the USDOJ’s own statistics to call attention to the lack of adequate protections for Native American women, along with the (2008) follow-up report, both available online (just “Google” it). I would also recommend the Harper’s Bazaar article, “Tiny Little Laws” (Feb. 2011), which is remarkably eye opening and stark reading. Those are only a couple quick references but something I believe we could all use to acquaint ourselves with the realities of the lives of people living right beside us, not on the other side of the planet.

[Editor’s Note: Lillian Jones is a paralegal at Jones Legal, a public interest law practice in Fargo. Lillian is a cultural competency facilitator for NDCAWS, adjunct faculty for the National Tribal Judicial Institute at the National Judicial College in Reno, NV and a consultant for the Criminal Justice Center for Court Innovation at FVTC in Appleton, WI. Locally, she serves on the Native American Council, the Native American Commission; the First Nations Wellness Conference planning committee; the Women’s Network of the Red River Valley; the Prairie Folk and Traditional Dance Institute; the Fargo-Moorhead Urban Indian Health and Wellness Center board of directors.]

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