I recently hung out with a tribal officer ( friend of mine) that told me if I get pulled over by state troopers or city officers on tribal trust land, I could say " You don’t have jurisdiction over me" , and ask them to call tribal police. Is this true?
What are the rules for Native Americans pulled over by local city or state authorities on trust land
A really good question. (Obviously you can say it; what you’re really asking is, if you do, is the cop obliged to act as suggested? I suspect that it’s a case of it being technically legally true, but observed in the breach much of the time.
There might also be the question of whether the land is:[ul]
[li]Reservation land guaranteed to your nation by treaty;[/li][li]Recovered land, ceded by treaty to the U.S. but successfully reclaimed by your nation in recent court cases; or[/li]Repurchased land, duly ceded to the U.S, but bought back by a nation from its income in a business capacity, e.g., profits from tax-free sales or casinos.[/ul]
If it is federal reservation land, the state has no jurisdiction. The city and does only if it is located within the reservation, but then cities don’t have jurisdiction out of the city limits either in most states. Tribal or BIA police are applicable on federal reservations. What could happen though is that non residents may be detained by tribal police and then turned over to local off-reservation authorities, as the non-resident or non-Indian may not be answerable directly to tribal authority. The case law is very complicated in this last instance.
I will have to pull a cite, but I thought that things that were criminal/prohibitory in nature (murder, rape, armed robbery) were allowed to be enforced by state law on tribal land. Things which were regulatory in nature (speed limits, smoking laws, gambling*) were the exclusive jurisdiction of the Tribe.
*with exceptions
This site might help.
How would the city have jurisdiction if the state doesn’t? ETA: Or do tribal authorities establish cities too?
I would imagine that local law enforcement agencies of cities, townships, etc. that are on reservations are de facto tribal entities. In which case, as indicated by the chart linked to by Captain Amazing, it depends on the type of crime and parties involved whether the state has jurisdiction.
Unless non-tribal law enforcement is in hot pursuit, why would they be on tribal land to begin with?
Returning from buying cigarettes?
State authorities still have jurisdiction over people who live in the boundaries of the reservation but aren’t enrolled members of the tribe. On some reservations, only a fraction of the people who live there are actually tribe members. Also, (perhaps relevant to the OP), state authorities usually have jurisdiction over anyone on highways running through reservations. Also, since most traffic stuff is not a criminal matter, the tribal cops can still issue speeding tickets to whomever.
Usually on reservations with lots of non-Indians on them, the two law enforcement agencies work together reasonably well, and whoever is closest can respond to emergency calls and just wait for the other agency to show up if they don’t have jurisdiction to actually haul someone in or issue citations. So what your friend said is more or less correct, but in practice it’s really not that dramatic-- usually they’re not going to be pulling you over in the first place if they don’t have jurisdiction and if there is some sort of jurisdictional issue they will call the other agency without you having to ask them.
Where this patchwork of jurisdictions really becomes a problem is with non-Indians living in reservations that don’t have big non-Indian populations. In theory, they’re under the jurisdiction of federal authorities, but there isn’t really a relevant federal agency that does low-level policing. This has especially become a problem with things like domestic violence where if one of the parties is non-Indian, the tribal authorities don’t have jurisdiction, but it’s not like they’re going to send the FBI out. Some reservations have also become big drug production and distribution centers because if non-Indian gangs can stay under the Federal radar there’s basically nothing the local authorities can do. There have been various attempts recently to expand tribal jurisdiction to solve these problems, but I don’t know what the current status of those are.