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Whiteclay, Nebraska, population 14 (more or less) has been called the “skid row of the plains” for its four liquor stores, which all do brisk business — approximately 12,000 cans of beer a day. The visitors buying the beer are from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation — less than 200 feet from the town line — where alcohol is illegal and alcoholism has ravaged the community.

In a New York Times op-ed, former South Dakota Democratic senator James Abourezk recently called for President Obama to restore the town land of Whiteclay to the Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge, which would effectively render alcohol sales illegal. In the late 1800s, President Chester Arthur, issuing an executive order, created a 50-square-mile buffer zone on the reservation’s southern border, in Nebraska. Its intent was “to prevent renegade whites from selling guns, knives and alcohol to Indians living on the reservation.” Teddy Roosevelt, with the liquor industry in his ear, overturned the order in 1904.

Abourezk argues that Whiteclay’s liquor sales contribute to “murders, spouse beatings, child abuse, thefts and other undesirable consequences of the free flow of alcohol into the reservation.” His op-ed came a few months after the release of Battle for Whiteclay, a documentary that follows a group of activists as they try to abolish alcohol sales in the town. The film’s website states that the liquor stores regularly flout Nebraska laws by “selling beer to minors and intoxicated persons, knowingly selling to bootleggers who resell the beer on the reservation, permitting on-premise consumption of beer in violation of restrictions placed on off-sale-only licenses, and exchanging beer for sexual favors.”

Abourezk ended his column by writing that “President Obama could right a century of wrongs by re-establishing the buffer zone. It would alleviate the overwhelming social ills that result from easy access to alcohol, and help end the violence tribal members too often visit on each other and on their families.”

While it is indisputable that the liquor stores are preying on a vulnerable population, the problems at Pine Ridge go beyond drink. There are, for example, the reservation’s crushing poverty, sky-high unemployment rates, dismal health statistics, and treatment options (or lack of) for those suffering from addiction. Would presidential redress that restores the buffer zone be enough to “right a century of wrongs”? And while it may be a start, is it the right one? Read more

The president’s 2010 budget for the Indian Health Service, the organization that provides federal health services to American Indians, tops $4 billion. This includes an increase of $454 million. But Kathleen Sebelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the IHS, said in a June interview that that’s not enough to provide the agency with what it needs. This was after she called our efforts in American Indian healthcare a “historic failure.”

One day before Sebelius’s interview, another AP piece detailed the shortcomings of the painfully underfunded IHS. Operating with half the necessary funds, some understaffed clinics can’t provide preventive care services, and others can’t handle the high disease rates. Patients recount what they rightly see as subpar care: clinicians dismissing a patient’s pain from advanced frostbite until she threatened suicide; being unable to make appointments; diagnosing a five-year-old who had complained of stomach problems with depression. (After many months, several more clinic visits, and a collapsed lung, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer at a Denver hospital and died weeks later.)

The dismal statistics of American Indian health disparities are well documented (go here, here, here, and here for starters). President Obama cites a couple of the more startling ones on his website, including that men living on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations have the second-lowest life expectancy in the western hemisphere. The health disparities are, as Sebelius says, “unconscionable.” But so are the funding disparities. Read more

Watson’s Atlas Map of Indian Territory (1886)

A startling 1 in 3 American Indian women will experience rape in her lifetime, according to the US Justice Department. Yet only federal attorneys can prosecute felonies like rape committed on tribal land – attorneys that are also responsible for terrorism and drug cases. The result: US attorneys decline to prosecute 75% of American Indian rape cases every year, according to NPR. Even if tribal authorities were able to prosecute rape cases, they would still only be able to prosecute members of federally recognized tribes. This poses a severe dilemma, since 86% of assailants are reported to be non-Indian. To address these issues, Congress is now attempting to strengthen the control of tribal authorities and increase the accountability of responsible federal agencies with the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2009.

While tribes maintain sovereignty through tribal police departments and tribal judiciary systems, the federal government holds the purse strings, and federal law still preempts tribal law in civil rights and criminal jurisdiction. Tribal law enforcement officials can’t prosecute non-Indian offenders, and even if a crime is committed by an American Indian, they can’t prosecute felonies like rape. Underfunding has also led to inadequate tribal law enforcement; in 2007, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation had only 5 Bureau of Indian Affairs officers patrolling an area the size of Connecticut.

This may change — if the new bill passes. Introduced by a bipartisan group of senators, the bill would increase the authority of  tribal police by allowing them to make arrests for all crimes committed on tribal land, and to transfer prisoners to the Bureau of Prisons where the tribal government reaches an agreement with the Bureau.  It would also increase the accountability of federal agencies by establishing an “Office of Indian Country Crime” dedicated to enforcing federal criminal law committed on tribal land, among other provisions.

The bill specifically addresses the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault in that it would require the Indian Health Service (IHS) to implement policies and procedures for victims, establish concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute sexual assaults at the request of a tribe, and require the development of victim training programs for law enforcement and IHS personnel. The bill may not be a panacea, but giving tribes the authority to arrest non-Indians for federal crimes such as rape is an essential step in the protection of American Indian women against sexual violence.

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