Sovereignty Archives » Native Voice One

Supreme Court

June 14, 2021 By Bob Petersen

A recent Supreme Court decision made clear that police officers from tribal nations can hold non-Indians if there is a “reasonable belief” that state or federal law has been violated.

Trahant Reports · TR061421SupremeCourt

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The good news is that it was a 9 to 0 decision — unanimous. And it overturned a lower court ruling that defied common sense, a decision that a Crow police officer should not have held a nontribal member who had drugs and weapons in his truck.

As Indian Country Today’s Kolby KickingWoman reported: The case, United States v. Cooley, involved Joshua James Cooley, a non-Native man parked on the side of Highway 212 that runs through the Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana. Crow officer James Saylor approached the truck and found “watery, bloodshot eyes” and two guns lying on the front seat of the vehicle.

After ordering Cooley out of the truck and a subsequent patdown search, Saylor saw a glass pipe and plastic bag containing meth inside the truck.

A federal grand jury indicted Cooley on drug and gun offenses but he moved to have the evidence found by Saylor suppressed claiming that it was found during an illegal search.

The Supreme Court said that the lower courts’ rulings would “make it difficult for tribes to protect themselves against ongoing threats.”

The Supreme Court said previous rulings support “the general proposition that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe … yet, it said, it is not an absolute rule.”

Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the opinion for the unanimous court, noted that there are two exceptions to that rule, one of which “fit like a glove” in this case. Those are actions to protect the health or welfare of the tribe.

“To deny a tribal police officer authority to search and detain for a reasonable time any person he or she believes may commit or has committed a crime would make it difficult for tribes to protect themselves against ongoing threats,” Breyer wrote. “Such threats may be posed by, for instance, non-Indian drunk drivers, transporters of contraband, or other criminal offenders operating on roads within the boundaries of a tribal reservation.”

There is a lot of complexity in criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country. That’s because when federal policy changes … the law often does not. So some laws support tribal sovereignty while others undermine that same idea. In the 1950s a number of laws that Congress passed undermined tribal jurisdiction over to state governments, because Congress wanted tribes to go away. That policy, called termination, ended more than 50 years but many of the laws that were passed in that spirit never went away.

And that’s how a common sense decision is a “bare minimum standard” for law enforcement in a tribal nation.

I am Mark Trahant.

Sovereignty

January 29, 2018 By Bob Petersen

Opening night: Mary Kathryn Nagle author of the play, “Sovereignty.” (Arena Stage photo)

Indian Country needs a canon of stories. A collection of Memory that every child knows growing up. A reference guide to our shared history — as well as a reminder about what the fight is all about.

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Mary Katherine Nagle’s new play, “Sovereignty,” is one of those stories.

“Sovereignty” is now at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Think of it this way: It’s a Native narrative on the nation’s stage. All too often we get excited when we see a movie or a TV show that has one Native American character worth remembering. That’s cool. But we should really get excited about a work of art, in this case a play, when the author, the cast, and often the audience is Native.

“Sovereignty” tells two Cherokee stories, one historical, one modern. The first story is about the Cherokee Nation in the tribe’s homelands and the actions of Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot (a nephew of Ridge) and Chief John Ross (as well their fictional descendants). This was a time of war: The state’s military, the Georgia Guard, was evil, violent and determined to strip the Cherokee people from their homeland. The Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the Cherokees but the government of Georgia ignored that. The state’s primary mission was annihilation.

Nagle is literally an heir to this story. This is her family. But there is another angle for Indian Country and it’s why I think this story must be in our canon; the power of dissent. There are two great stories about why dissent is important to Indian Country: That of the Ridges and Lucy Covington’s fight against termination. (She followed around a pro-termination Colville tribal council at public events to counter their narrative and then stirred up support for new leaders.)

The Cherokee leadership — led by Chief John Ross and the National Council — wanted their homeland no matter the cost, including giving Georgia absolute authority over the Cherokee Nation. Boudinot wrote Chief Ross: “What is the prospect in reference to your plan of relief, if you are understood at all to have any plan? It is dark and gloomy beyond description. Subject the Cherokees to the laws of the States in their present condition?”

The Ridges and Boudinot argued for a future Cherokee Nation. That meant signing the Treaty of New Echota and setting the stage for what became the Trail of Tears and the move to Oklahoma. Major Ridge knew the price of this dissent. He said at the time: “I have signed my death warrant.”

Nagle’s play captures those powerful themes but it also does something that only an artist can do. She brings the Ross and the Ridge families back together. She shows through the power of story how we’re all in this together. Still.

I am Mark Trahant.

Trahant Reports – Dangerous Phase Begins At Standing Rock

October 25, 2016 By NV1

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A dangerous moment at Standing Rock.

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A line of trucks and commercial vehicles on North Dakota’s Highway 6 Saturday was a speeding train. One vehicle after another. Traveling too fast and too close. Then, still on track, the entire train turned left and began racing down a rural dirt road.

This is where the Dakota Access Pipeline is on a speedy timetable. As the company has testified in court it wants the 1,170 mile, $3.8 billion project up and running by January 1, 2017.

Yet the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and several hundred people camped nearby are determined to slow down that train, protect the waters of the Missouri River, and ultimately, help the country begin the most important conversation of this era about energy, climate and survival.

And North Dakota is acting as the trustee for the company, using what it considers the powers of state, to make this project so.

How far will North Dakota go?

Look at where it has been. The state has been an ally instead of a referee. Helping to craft a regulatory approach that avoided regulation. There is this crazy notion that the company did everything it was supposed to do so leave them alone. Yah. Because the plan was to avoid pesky regulation. It’s so much more efficient to be governed by official winks instead of an Environmental Impact Statement.

How far will North Dakota go?

They’ve already tried intimidation, humiliation, and the number of arrests are increasing. Pick on protectors, elders, journalists, famous people, anyone who could make the state appear potent. The latest action is a road block on a state highway and the reclaiming of land that the tribe retained in its Treaty.

Action. Reaction. The idea of civil disobedience is that there are unjust laws (or in this case, rigged laws) and there are people willing go to jail to highlight that injustice. The state lost its moral claim when it moved the pipeline route away from its own capital city to near the Standing Rock Nation.

Again, the question is, how far will North Dakota go?

Is the state ready to arrest hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And then what? The illogical conclusion to that question is too terrible to think about.

Yesterday a call went out from the camps for more people. People who, as Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network said, are willing to get arrested. People who will interrupt their lives so that this pipeline will go no further. It’s a call to a higher law than the one that’s codified by North Dakota. And for every water protector arrested, there will always be someone else ready to be next.

How far will North Dakota go? The military-style law enforcement base at Fort Rice sends its message: Whatever it takes. And, yes, that’s frightening.

Except. There is an antidote to those fears. It’s found among the people at the Standing Rock camps who continue to use prayer as their status quo.

I am Mark Trahant