WASHINGTON – A quarter of a century ago, the Justice Department had few meaningful relationships with Native American tribes.
Although the federal government worked with police and state and local courts, tribal justice systems did not have the same level of recognition, said Tracy Toulou, who oversaw the department’s Office of Tribal Justice from 2000 until its recent reform. “They were essentially invisible,” he said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Toulou transformed the office from an idea into an “institution within the Department of Justice.”
Its relationships with the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes are important, in part because federal authorities investigate and prosecute a range of serious crimes on most reservations.
Public safety statistics reflect the serious challenges. Native Americans and Alaska Natives are twice as likely to be victims of a violent crime, and Native American women are at least twice as likely to be raped or sexually assaulted compared to others.
For Toulou, a descendant of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation based in Washington state, part of addressing these harsh realities is expanding the power of tribal justice systems.
Tribes were prohibited, for example, from prosecuting non-Natives under a 1978 Supreme Court ruling even if the crime occurred on reservations, making it more difficult to seek justice in many cases. That changed somewhat in 2013 with a federal law that allows tribes to prosecute non-Natives in a limited set of domestic violence cases. The authority was expanded in 2022 to include cases such as violence against children and stalking.
“This was a fundamental change…tribes were now seen as participating in the justice system on a more or less equal basis with everyone else, which should never have changed,” said Toulou, who was a federal prosecutor in Montana at the beginning of the your career.
Still, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Police and tribal courts are overwhelmed and grapple with conflicting jurisdictional issues and underfunding, leaders told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in a session last month that drew more than 600 comments.
Police Chief Algin Young of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota said he has six to eight officers to patrol nearly 4,700 square miles (12,200 square kilometers) against an “influx of weapons, illegal drugs, including fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin, and violent crimes that can only be described as shocking and extremely dangerous.”
“Our people don’t feel safe in their communities and neither do our visitors,” he said.
The challenges arise against a historical backdrop of injustices committed by the federal government against Native Americans, including massacres, forced assimilation of Native children into abusive boarding schools, and the removal of many tribes from their ancestral lands.
One of Toulou’s personal regrets is that he does not speak his tribe’s language because his grandparents were sent to boarding schools, breaking the ties that would have passed it down from generation to generation.
“We have a unique responsibility to Indian tribes,” Toulou said, in part because of obligations the U.S. has assumed in treaties, through Congress and other acts. “There is a moral responsibility that is supported by these treaties to support these tribal nations and interact with them. on a government-to-government basis.”
In recent years, this has meant responding to calls to resolve the crisis of indigenous peoples who have been killed or disappeared. Thousands of these cases remain unsolved, hundreds have been closed due to issues such as jurisdictional conflicts, and many families say authorities do not regularly communicate about the status of pending cases.
Toulou was a leader in the effort to create a federal strategy to respond to violence against indigenous peoples in 2022, following the passage of the Non-Invisible Law and the Savanna Law.
He also helped develop legislation such as the Safeguarding Tribal Heritage Objects Act of 2021, which aims to prevent the removal of historical archaeological remains, and the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010. This law improved data collection and reporting of native crimes, increased sentences. authority of tribal courts and allowed tribes such as the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians in Minnesota to expand their policing powers.
“It really makes a big difference,” said the tribe’s chief executive Melanie Benjamin. “We have the experience, we have the commitment from our own tribal members and members of our community who want to be a part of public safety to protect and serve.”
Working within the federal bureaucracy can be like “pushing a big boulder up a hill,” said W. Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state. two decades, he said.
“Tracy played a key role,” Allen said, citing Toulou’s help in educating federal lawyers about Native culture, from restorative justice to traditional land management.
The Justice Department also participates in civil litigation involving tribes, including environmental cases and hunting and fishing rights.
Replacing Toulou as interim director is Daron Carreiro, a career attorney in the Division of Environment and Natural Resources who is also familiar with laws and policies related to tribal communities, sovereignty and public safety.
As he begins his retirement in Montana, Toulou hopes to see improved communication between federal authorities and victims’ families and more natives working at the Department of Justice.
Garland said “Toulou’s legacy will be felt in the Department of Justice and tribal communities for generations to come.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
