DOJ task force: Tribal justice funding needed to shield kids from violence

The Department of Justice's task force on violence against Native American children calls for additional funding for tribal courts and improved cooperation among federal and Native agencies in a report released Tuesday.

The 258-page report, which will be presented to Attorney General Eric Holder, implores Congress and the White House to hand over more authority and jurisdiction to tribes and tribal courts, provide training for law enforcement, social workers and judges and require agencies to collaborate. It also calls for a new staff position in the White House to address the effects of violence on Native American children.

According to the 2009 National Sur­vey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, more than 60 percent of all Native children are exposed to violence. More than 40 percent of children experience two or more acts of violence, and often those children experience post-traumatic stress disorder at a rate that rivals that of soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

Among other recommendations in the report are required training for federal employees on tribal sovereignty and government and the impact of historical trauma and colonization on tribal nations within the first 60 days of their job assignment.

The list of recommendations is the final say of the 13-member advisory committee to the attorney general’s Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence, which spent a year gathering testimony in Arizona, North Dakota, Florida and Alaska from tribal leaders, community members, educators, victims and advocates.

The members said witnesses described how a lack of funding has led to negative effects on housing, law enforcement, child welfare, juvenile justice, health care and education on reservations, ultimately hampering efforts to address violence.           

“We listened a great deal … I believe that of all the people left behind in this country, Indian children remain ranked at the top,” said former Sen. Byron Dorgan during a conference call with media on Tuesday. He co-chaired the task force with musician and Iroquois Nation member Joanne Shenandoah. 

At the heart of the report is a recommendation for a substantial increase in funding. It calls for ending the competitive, grant-based system of tribal funding through the Department of Justice and the start of a congressionally authorized permanent recurring base funding system for tribal law enforcement and justice services for the country’s 566 federally recognized tribes.

“Competitive grants, by nature, are administratively burdensome,” said task force member Valerie Davidson of Alaska. “If we want to do this well, if we want to do this right, we need to get resources to tribes and communities with directed funding.”

Dorgan said there’s no way around the need for more money. “The enduring recommendation of the report is that if you think these things need to be done, and we do, then we need the funding to do it,” he said.

The testimony during the last year painted a vivid picture of the current situation, Shenandoah and Dorgan write in their opening remarks in the report.

The report says that two significant issues on reservations — the need for accountability for the federal government to adequately address the needs of Native children and a lack of collaboration and trust among the U.S. government, tribal courts and leaders and supporting agencies — would be addressed if the Native American Affairs Office employed an expert specializing in Native children exposed to violence. The report recommends the position be created by May 2015.

But without an estimate of what those recommendations could cost and Republican majorities in the Senate and House in the next term, action on the part of Congress and the president is uncertain, Dorgan said.

“None of us know what is going to happen,” he said. “I just don’t know. The serious recommendations in this report, we hope, will fall on the ears of Democrats and Republicans in the same way.”

The task force also calls for sweeping changes to how victims of domestic violence are treated, recommending that children be removed from them only as a last resort for failure to protect and if a child is unsafe.

The recommendations endorse 2013 Indian Law and Order Commission Recommendations that called for Congress to repeal Section 910 of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which would permit Alaska Native communities and courts to address domestic violence and sexual assault committed by tribal members and nonnatives, as in the lower 48.

Besides a serious commitment of funding, Davidson said, the resounding truth of the final report is the need for collaboration among tribal, state and federal governments.

“We all have to come together to make this work,” she said.