Israel's Undeniable Right to Self-Defense
Floor Speech
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on occasion there are some things that happen in this Chamber that get precious little attention but represent very good news. Last evening, with virtually no attention, a piece of legislation was passed by the Senate unanimously, a piece of legislation, called the Tribal Law and Order Act, affecting Indian tribes across this country. It was bipartisan. My colleagues and I, as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, working with Republicans and Democrats, Senator Barrasso, and Senator Jon Kyl especially was helpful in recent days, and on our side, Senator Tester and Senator Udall and so many others--have gotten a piece of legislation through the Senate, which we hope will get through the House and be signed by the President, dealing with law and order on Indian reservations.
Lewis and Clark spent the winter in North Dakota on their expedition in 1805. When they came through North Dakota, there were Indian villages and settlements in North Dakota that had been there a long time. They were farming on the banks of the Missouri River. That is true all across the country. When new people exploring our country came upon Indian tribes, they had been there for a long while. They were the first Americans, and we displaced them, and we have sad chapters in American history that are described as ``Trail of Tears,'' the ``Massacre at Wounded Knee,'' and I could go on for a great length of time.
Native Americans were, in many cases, rounded up, placed on reservations, and then the Federal Government, for taking their property away from them, said: We will sign agreements with you. We will make deals with you. We will have treaties. We will accept a trust responsibility. We will educate you. We promised that since we have taken your land away, we will provide for your children's education, we will provide for your health care, and we will provide for your law enforcement.
It is what the Federal Government signed to do in treaties and the Government has systematically avoided the responsibility of meeting those conditions ever since.
I have talked at length on this floor about Indian health care and Indian education and Indian housing. In many areas on Indian reservations, it mirrors what we consider Third World-country conditions: people living in overcrowded housing, if they have housing at all; sending kids to schools whose desks are 1 inch apart, with 30 kids to a classroom, in a dilapidated building; people going hungry; people having very serious health care problems and not able to get adequate health.
We passed in this Chamber the Indian Health Care Improvement Act as a part of the health care reform bill. I am enormously proud of having done that. It is the first time in 17 years this Congress did something on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. We worked and worked and worked. I am proud it is done.
This is another significant piece of work. We have had I believe 14 hearings on this subject in the Indian Affairs Committee. Twenty-two Senate colleagues cosponsored my legislation, Republicans and Democrats.
If anyone doubts the need for this legislation, let me demonstrate just in this week with three headlines, one in Indian Country Today. ``Rape on the Rez'' is the title.
The mother tries to be strong, looking at the photos of her dead daughter's beaten and bruised face. She tries not to cry, but eventually the images prove too much. ``That's what they did to her,'' the mother says.
Marquita Marie Walking Eagle died November 1, 2009, the victim of a violent sexual assault. The 19-year-old Rosebud Sioux woman's alleged killer: a 17-year-old classmate from St. Francis High School in South Dakota.
Just one headline, but, we also have studies. One in 3 American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped and sexually assaulted in her lifetime--1 in 3; not 1 in 10, 1 in 3. Think of that. Think of the violence on too many of these Indian reservations.
Another headline from this week: ``Addicted On The Rez,'' about drug abuse and crimes that are infiltrating the reservation. Another headline this week: ``Indian reservations on both U.S. borders are becoming drug pipelines,'' conduits for Mexican drug cartels and others to move drugs into this country and particularly addict young Indian children on those drugs and have them become carriers. Those are three articles from this week sitting on top of a mountaintop of other articles.
In my home state of North Dakota right now, on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that actually is on the border of North and South Dakota--it is an area the size of the State of Connecticut. They had nine law enforcement officers for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week coverage. Well, that means
that very often there would be no more than one law enforcement officer patrolling an area the size of the State of Connecticut. So a women being raped, sexually assaulted, a burglary or a robbery in progress, a violent crime, a gun crime, and a plea and a call, a frantic call, might mean that 3 or 4 hours later--maybe not until the next day would someone in a police car show up to investigate that crime. That is what they have been facing.
On the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the year before last, the rate of violent crime wasn't double what most Americans experience; it wasn't triple; it wasn't quadruple; it was eight times the national average--eight times the rate of violent crime on the Standing Rock Reservation. There has been some improvement. In 2009 it was simply five times worse than what most Americans experience.
The question is, What can we do about those things? One Bureau of Indian Affairs officer on the Standing Rock Reservation--again, as I indicated, an area the size of the State of Connecticut, with nine law enforcement officers--what he said was: ``I felt like I was standing in the middle of a river trying to hold back a flood.'' He said they were forced to ``triage'' rape cases. He said: We only took a rape case if there was a confession; if not, didn't happen. This is not a Third World country. This is in America on Indian reservations.
Last summer, the Department of Justice issued a report to our committee. I am quoting now:
Native gangs are now involved in more violent offenses like sexual assault, gang rapes, home invasions, drive-by shootings, beatings, and elder abuse on Indian reservations.
This is on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a photograph that was brought to a hearing I held on increased gang activity on reservations. This is another photo from the same hearing. These are very serious problems.
We have a war on terror and a war on drugs, and all too often across this country, Indian reservations are left to their own, told ``you do it,'' despite the fact that this country promised to provide law enforcement assistance. This entire system isn't working. It is the courts, the jails, law enforcement--it doesn't work.
That is why, with 22 colleagues, we introduced this legislation and now last night, thankfully, have passed it through the Senate. This does a number of very important things. It forces the BIA to consult with tribal leaders on joint law enforcement.
It says to the U.S. attorneys--by the way, U.S. attorneys are the ones who are relied upon to prosecute felonies on Indian reservations, and all too often it is part of the back room of the U.S. Attorney's Office: You know what, we don't have time; we are not going to do it. The declination rate--that means declining to prosecute--the declination rate for murders is 50 percent, according to Department of Justice information we received in the committee. The declination rate, that is, declining to prosecute, for rape and sexual assault is 70 percent. So 70 percent of the time, they don't prosecute because they are working on something else. It is on an Indian reservation. Hard to investigate, they say. Well, this legislation will change that.
This legislation will add the necessary tools to enable tribal governments to better fight crime locally. It will give police improved access to national criminal databases. Judges on reservations will have added authority to sentence violent offenders in tribal courts. Can you imagine that judges in tribal courts, under current law, can sentence to no more than 1 year for an Indian offender? No more than 1 year. Rape, murder, armed robbery--1 year. That is absurd.
The fact is, we have put together a bill that finally offers the tools to strengthen this justice system, that also works to cross-deputize Indian police in the Federal criminal system so that Indian reservations and those who patrol on the reservations can work hand-in-hand with those in the adjacent counties, the county sheriffs, police chiefs, and others.
This bill will reauthorize and improve existing programs designed to strengthen the tribal justice systems, prevent alcohol and substance abuse, which is the No. 1 cause of violence on reservations, and improve opportunities for youth on the reservations.
I am very pleased and proud that we have been able to get this done. We have worked long and hard. If this Congress completes its work having done the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and now the Tribal Law and Order Act, if in one Congress we will have made that kind of stride to address the issue of health care and crime and justice on Indian reservations, we will have done something very significant.
I ask people who think, well, this is just something that is out of sight, out of mind: Go to an Indian reservation and take a look at the condition of the housing. Go visit with the kids in school. I have done that. Go sit around, if you can, with 10 or 12 kids and ask them about their lives. Where do they get hope and inspiration and belief that they can be part of something bigger than themselves, that they can get educated, that they have an opportunity to do whatever they want to do? Where do they get that? The fact is, we have created circumstances, abysmal circumstances and broken promises, and it has lasted for a couple of centuries.
You know, we have been trying now for almost 6 months to get the Cobell settlement through the Senate. The Cobell settlement is a group of plaintiffs who are Indians whose property and land and resources from that land have largely been stolen from them for a couple of hundred years. The Interior Department has been managing the trust of these Indians for well over 100, 150 years.
The other day on the floor of the Senate, I showed a picture of a woman who had six oil wells on her land, and she lived in a little bungalow and never had anything all of her life. Well, why didn't someone who had six oil wells on her land have anything? Because the U.S. Department of the Interior was managing it, and she never got the money. That has been going on for 150 years. And now there is a court action that has gone on for 14 years and finally an agreement to settle the court action, and the judge gave us 30 days in Congress to settle this after it had been agreed to by the Interior Secretary, by the plaintiffs. Finally some justice after 100, 150 years, and the judge has had to extend that deadline now three or four times and we have still not gotten it done. It is in this underlying bill, the one that is being objected to by the minority.
The reason I mentioned that is there are so many injustices in this country to the people who were here first. The first Americans deserve better. The first Americans deserve to have this government keep its promise at long, long last. And this is but one: the providing of law enforcement. How many Americans would like to live in an area where the rate of violent crime is 5 times, 8 times, or 10 times the national average? Well, there are a whole lot of young men and women, young boys and girls, and elders living exactly in those circumstances in this country. And that violence exists every day.
We need to do something about it.
One final point. I have talked to the BIA at great length. There are some things happening right now experimentally to try to move some additional resources into tribal lands to promote greater law and order. It is true on the Standing Rock Reservation and others as well. But the Tribal Law and Order Act, which I have reason to believe will now be passed by the House as well, is a big step forward. We not only negotiated that in the Senate, but we worked very hard with Members of the House as we put this legislation together with their ideas as well. If we do this, we will be able to say this country, at long last, on this issue at least, kept its promise and began the long effort to make sure we are meeting our trust responsibilities to those who were the first Americans.
I thank many of my colleagues who helped us achieve this goal, and end as I began, by saying there is plenty of reason to be concerned about the lack of getting things done in this Chamber, but this is a good piece of legislation. Good news doesn't sell quite as well as bad news these days in our system. I hope all of us will be able to take some satisfaction in doing something that represents the public good for people living in this country who certainly deserve it.
I yield the floor.
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on S. 797, the Tribal Law and
Order Act of 2010. I offered the text of this bill to H.R. 725, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act Amendments, and last night, the Senate passed this bill as amended by unanimous consent.
As chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, I have presided over 14 hearings relating to public safety on our Nation's tribal lands over the past three years. These hearings revealed a longstanding crisis of violence in many parts of Indian country. Indian reservations on average suffer rates of violence more than 2.5 times the national rate. In my home State of North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation suffered 8.6 times the national rate of violence in 2008. In early 2008, there were 9 police officers patrolling this 2.3 million acre Reservation, which meant at times there was no 24-hour police response service. As a result, victims of violence reported waiting hours and sometimes days before receiving a response to their distress calls. With this level of response, crime scenes can become compromised, and justice is not served to the victims, their families, or the community.
Our hearings found that violence against Indian women has reached epidemic levels. The Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than 1 in 3 American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped in their lifetime and more than 2 in 5 will be subject to domestic or partner violence.
The broken and divided system of justice in place on Indian lands that was devised by dozens of Federal laws and Federal court decisions enacted and handed down over the past 150 years is not well-suited to address the violence in Indian country. Because of these laws and decisions, responsibility to investigate and prosecute crime on the reservation is divided among the Federal, tribal, and in some locations, state governments.
Based on this authority, these governments should be diligent in preventing and prosecuting these crimes. Thus, one of the primary purposes of the bill is to ensure that the United States upholds its treaty promises and legal obligation to investigate and prosecute violent crimes on Indian lands. Our Nation made treaty promises, and enacted laws--specifically the General and Major Crimes Acts--that provided for Federal criminal jurisdiction over Indian lands. At the same time, the United States limited tribal government authority to punish offenders in tribal courts to no more than 1 year for any one offense.
The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 takes steps to hold the United States to these solemn promises, and will address the restriction on tribal court penal authority over defendants in tribal court where certain protections are met.
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Mr. DORGAN. That is correct. The phrase that jurisdiction ``shall be concurrent among the Federal Government, State governments, and, where applicable, tribal governments'' is intended to clarify that the various State governments that are currently subject to Public Law 280 will maintain such criminal authority and responsibility. In addition, this provision intends to make clear that tribal governments subject to Public Law 280 maintain concurrent criminal authority over offenses by Indians in Indian country where the tribe currently has such authority. Nothing in this provision will change the current lay of criminal jurisdiction for state or tribal governments. It simply seeks to return criminal authority and responsibility to investigate and prosecute major crimes in Indian country to the United States where certain conditions are met.
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