I am a white US Citizen and have spent most of my life on the East coast, where there are very few reservations and none close by, and I’ve never been to one.
From my perspective, what are the main legal differences if I physically tried to go to a reservation? Do I need tribal permission/“visa” clearance to enter? To live? To work? To buy land?
I can’t answer beyond visiting, but you can freely enter and leave reservation land without permission. All that I have visited or passed through have modern roads, and in some cases actual highways pass through. In many states, casinos are only legal on reservation land, and fireworks can be sold on reservation land even if fireworks are illegal in that particular state.
As far as buying land, I believe (don’t know for sure) that you might be able to rent or lease property, but the land itself remains tribal property in perpetuity. I know some people of Native American descent who own land, passed down from original allotments generations ago, but their properties are not on current reservation land.
There is private land on reservations. There are non-tribal members who own some of it. There are also many non tribal members who get jobs on reservations, including in tribal government. Tribes, do, by and large, have “Native Preference” policies in hiring. The private businesses on reservations can hire anyone they want.
A friend of mine (who is a non-Native American) works for the housing administration of a tribe up in Wisconsin. It was challenging for him to get the job in the first place, and even more challenging for him to get a promotion, because the tribe places a strong preference on hiring (and promoting) tribal members, but his qualifications were apparently much stronger than any of their tribal applicants.
When visiting or passing through a reservation, particularly those in Florida, it is well to remember that Native Americans have their own police departments. Speed limits are sometimes rather dramatically reduced on reservations and speeding fines are often dramatic in and of themselves. This is simply an observation and not a statement on reservation practices. I have heard of several vacations that were adversely impacted by speeding fines.
Personal experience has taught me that buying gasoline at reservation operated gas stations can be more expensive than anticipated. Certain practices may have been curtailed, but I won’t take the chance.
I live a few miles from the Flathead Indian Reservation in NW Montana, and a good friend of mine has a horse breeding operation well within the boundary of the reservation. He is not a native American, and purchased the land many years ago. Tribes sell off land to non natives in order to generate cash that they can then spend on tribal things. Since they had 1 million acres to start with, and the tribe only has 2000 members, selling off a few hundred acres now and then really didn’t make much difference. In this case, the tribe has no casinos so they are constantly selling off chunks of the reservation to generate income.
No special permission is needed when entering the reservation, but a special tribal permit is needed for hunting or fishing on tribal lands. We ride horses on the reservation so they made us buy a special permit to do that too, as is their right.
If I, as a non native, were to get picked up by the tribal police for some kind of serious infraction they would call the local sheriff and hand me over to them. Likewise, if a native American gets picked up outside the reservation for some kind of serious infraction the sheriff would call the tribal police to deal with it. It sounds kind of strange, but it works best for all concerned.
I fully understand the rest of that post; however, this bit doesn’t strike me as accurate. Why would the sheriff hand the prisoner over to the tribal police?
Reciprocity. Tribal justice can be quite severe, so the sheriff’s dept. apparently made a deal with the tribal authorities to turn over accused non-natives to them and in turn they would turn over native americans to the tribal authorities.
I don’t think this applies to someone accused of murder, but it means that native americans are dealt with by tribal authorities and non-native americans are dealt with by US justice, which apparently benefits both parties.
You wouldn’t happen to have a link to anything about that, would you? It still strikes me as strange.
It certainly might happen this way, but is it legal? Each department has its own jurisdiction. How could they prosecute for a crime committed outside of their jurisdiction?
You said ‘serious infraction’. Did you mean ‘minor infraction’?
Yes, I meant minor infraction. I am not in law enforcement, but as I understand it the reservation, while an independent nation (I don’t think the members of the tribe pay any government taxes), still lies in the county’s jurisdiction. So the sheriff could be called out every time a native american is accused of a crime that happens on the reservation, but instead they have this reciprocity agreement worked out between the county and the tribe. It seems to work well for all involved.
What Dolphinboy is talking about is a common system utilized in some reservations (at least in Montana), where the jurisdiction is “shared”. If a Tribal Member breaks the law inside the reservation they are under the authority of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) or tribal police. If non tribal member breaks the law on the reservation will usually be under the authority of the local sheriff’s department of a county that is part of or close to the reservation. These agencies usually work close together, backing each other up on calls, assisting in investigations. This courtesy does not often extend outside the reservation however. If a Tribal Member leaves the reservation and commits a crime in a surrounding city or county, they are usually charged, and sentenced by that jurisdiction (in my experience at least). Keep in mind, this is for misdemeanor offenses, felony offenses are a different matter. Felonies on the reservation go to Federal court (BIA is a federal agency after all).
So what would happen if a Native American said he didn’t live on that reservation, whether he did or didn’t?
Cite, please, for the claim that “tribal justice can be quite severe”.
To give some background to the above, most of the western reservations started out with all land being owned communally by the tribe itself. From the 1890’s through early-1930’s, the process of “allotment” started whereby the BIA started carving up the reservations and giving each member of the tribe title to a certain amount of land (comparable to what was given to white settlers under the Homestead Act) in order to “cure” them of their nomadic lifestyles. Once all the tribal members had gotten their allotment, the remaining land was opened to white homesteading.
When this policy was ended, the non-natives who already had homesteaded or bought land in the reservation could stay and, while they were ostensibly in the reservation geographically, they generally weren’t subject to most tribal rules. Today, if anyone sells land within the reservation they’re supposed to give the tribe the first crack at it and for a time the federal government had some funds allocated for the purpose of buying back alloted tribal lands. These days though, none of the tribes I’m familiar with are particularly keen on rebuilding their land base, so unless they have an eye on a particular chunk of real estate for some reason, they’re perfectly happy to let non-members sell land to each other. Like dolphinboy mentioned, they’ll also sometimes sell tribal land to outsiders to generate income (the Flathead Res. includes about half of Flathead Lake, which is some very hot real estate at the moment).
Some tribes were more affected by allotment than others. Some, like the Navajo, successfully resisted it and their reservations are by and large intact and there aren’t that many non-tribal land owners there. That’s probably the reservation that feels the most like a different country when you’re there (they also resisted the governmental reforms pushed by the BIA in the post-allotment era that set up the shared jurisdiction on most reservations, so they do have jurisdiction over non-Indians as well as a unique and strongly-established system of government). Many other reservations were partially alloted but remained mostly intact because they weren’t on very desirable land and so few non-Indians settled there there before allotments ended. The Flathead Reservation mentioned above is unique in that, then as now, it is on very desirable land (in addition to being a good place for a vacation home, it’s some of the best farm land in the state) and so when they started allotments it was a veritable land-rush and today it has a very large non-tribal population (only about 20% of the population are enrolled members). That’s why the system of shared jurisdiction works pretty well there-- there’s enough of a non-tribal population to support robust non-tribal local authorities.
But on the reservations that are almost all native and which have a shared-jurisdiction scheme (most do), but where local non-tribal authorities are weak or non-existant, non-natives are for all practical purposes subject only to federal law enforcement. Since there isn’t really an applicable federal organization that does low-level policing, this means there’s sometimes near-anarchy with regards to non-tribal members doing smaller crimes. This has been a big issue recently with non-native drug smuggling gangs setting up shop in reservations where it’s very difficult to prosecute them for simple drug offences. Likewise, domestic violence is near-epidemic on many reservations and if the abuser is non-native, they’re not under tribal jurisdiction and the Feds don’t really have the resources (or arguably the desire) to deal with it.
You’d be surprised how many tribes are working on expanding their land base. Of course they want more land; the whole continent used to be theirs, and they’d like to get as much back as they can. Those who have strong economic development are quietly buying up rural land, mostly outside of, but contingent to, the reservation. Others may be buying back some of the private land within the rez, but I haven’t heard of that. Sounds like a good idea, though. Non-private tribal land is owned by the federal gov’t. The tribes can’t sell it without arranging with the feds to take it out of trust status and make it private. I’ve never heard of that, I’m not even sure the feds would allow it. But maybe there have been some cases of that, somehow.
Tribal courts can only try tribal members, by federal law. Non-Natives who commit crimes inside the rez fall under state jurisdiction, unless they commit a federal crime, then the FBI steps in. The 7 Major Crimes Act puts Natives under the FBI’s jurisdiction for the most heinous crimes: murder, attempted murder, rape, attempted rape, and 3 others. Tribal justice actually tends to be lax by non-Native standards, and follows Native custom. For example, a tribe near where I live tried a guy who had molested two little girls. Since the crime involved non-Natives, he was first tried in state court, and found not guilty due to lack of evidence. The tribe got hold of him, tried him, and required him to take over the spiritual duties of his elderly father. The perp was next in a lineage of ceremonial leaders, so the tribe made him learn everything he had to learn to carry out the ceremonial traditions, and take over his father’s duties. Amazingly, it turned him around. He really mellowed out.
The US Constitution doesn’t apply in “Indian Country” (that’s a legal term). Indian preference hiring is required even off-rez, in any situation where federal funds earmarked for Indians are used. If a university professor gets federal funds to research some Indian-related issue, and wants to hire a grad student to help, he’s required to give first consideration to Native grad students. If none are qualified, the position can go to a non-Native.
Non-Natives living inside the rez, even if they own land, aren’t allowed to vote in tribal elections. Only tribal members can vote. (Non-member Indians also can’t vote.) But the tribe can tax them.
The tribes have the power to exclude people from the rez. Technically, they could require visas and set up immigration check-points, but that’s very expensive, nobody can afford it. But if a non-Native really ticks the tribe off, like an author in NM who published a stupidly stereotypical and insulting book on the tribe, they can be banished for good. On the other hand, if they like you, they’ll hire you, Indian preference hiring law nothwithstanding.
There are lots of books on Federal Indian law. Check it out–it’s fascinating.
Which tribe is this that once owned the entire continent?
He was convicted of molesting children… so they sentenced him to being a priest?
:eek:
Just anecdotally, I knew a guy whose work took him into the Arizona reservations pretty often, and he said some of them are run as virtual fiefdoms. As a non-Indian, he was very careful to obey the law while there.
Not so. The U.S. Constitution applies throughout the nation. Indians are U.S. citizens, may vote in Federal elections, must pay Federal income tax, are subject to conscription in a national emergency, can only enter and leave the country using U.S. State Department-issued passports, etc. Indian tribes have limited sovereignty and certain powers and rights that state governments and other garden-variety local authorities do not, however.
For more info: Frequently Asked Questions - Native American Rights Fund
We have several Indian areas, most with casinos, in my area and I have never heard of anyone getting a speeding ticket or other interaction with the Tribal Police, so I have always wondered what they were like.
On the one hand, this talk of it being ‘severe’ doesn’t seem reasonable since you wouldn’t want to scare away your casino customers with a bunch of expensive B.S. speeding tickets for people going 5 mph too fast, but on the other, people tend to get drunk and belligerent in casino environments and have to be dealt with somehow…
So do those Tribal Police folks have jails, or are there BIA jails at the Federal level? If I was an Indian and murdered another Indian on my reservation, was guilty and did so with overwhelming evidence, is there a whole separate Indian court system, jury, death penalty, etc.?
The fact that the Constitution doesn’t apply on reservations doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy all the rights of citizenship. It was a federal Supreme Court decision that declared that the Constitution doesn’t apply, by virtue of Indian sovereignty. That meant that the Bill of Rights didn’t apply. That caused another court case, so Congress passed legislation creating “The Indian Bill of Rights”. But anyone in tribal court can’t base their argument on Constitutional grounds.
RE: the molestation case: yes, they sentenced him to devote his live to spirituality, as a way of turning him around. Of course, they monitored him all the while. The sentence worked; he was a changed person. Native traditional justice works on completely different principles than non-Native justice. They’re not so much into incarceration and punishment. They have a more humanitarian orientation.
RE: “fiefdoms”–it’s true. Abuses happen. It’s not like that everywhere, it depends on the leadership. Sometimes police abuses happen, too, but many tribes have gotten training for their police force to correct that problem. The system isn’t perfect, there are still bugs to be worked out. (Think about that bit regarding non-Natives not being subject to tribal law; what if your community/county/state didn’t have jurisdiction over one or another ethnicity? Lawlessness would result. Does result. IMO that’s a bad law, but one could argue it either way, as the comment on “fiefdoms” indicates. It’s a difficult issue. As someone noted earlier, on some reservations this problem is dealt with by “cross-deputization”: the state police give Native police state deputy status, and visa-versa, so the Native police can act as state deputy police if they need to arrest a non-Native, rather than call state police and wait an hour or two for them to show up in a remote location, by which time the perp may have fled.)
The entire Western hemisphere used to be the exclusive preserve of Native Americans/Indigenous people, not just the US. (Hello?)