Imagine someone you loved being murdered and killed, but when the police investigate, they don’t have the time or resources, and in the end, the case is dropped, leaving you and your family concerned and confused. Well, this does happen, and according to the New York Times, almost half of murder cases and about two-thirds of sexual assault cases on Native American reservations are dropped or not investigated properly by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Native American reservations are areas of land partially self-governed and managed by federally recognized tribes. On Native American reservations, they struggle with many unemployed citizens, high crime rates, and not having those crimes dealt with and investigated properly. These problems are complex, but Congress can build a better relationship and communicate with reservation and native community leaders to better control funding. In addition, the justice department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office should properly investigate and treat crimes on the reservation like other counties, racial minority groups, and towns in the United States.
Native American reservations face unemployment and high rates of crime. The article “Unemployment on Native American Reservations” from the Ballard Brief< says, “Native Americans face the highest rates of joblessness among racial minority groups … [with a] $9,000 income difference between Native American reservations and adjacent counties.” This shows that Native Americans on reservations endure extreme poverty compared to other minorities and small or underprivileged counties near reservations.
A story from The Red Road Project about Gina, a retired Army veteran and single mother, explains that after her brother’s death, she became a tribal cop on her reservation. Unfortunately, they don’t have as much jurisdiction or receive as many resources to solve crimes and cases compared to the rest of the United States. In other words, Native Americans on reservations have to follow the rules and laws of the United States, but sometimes don’t get to enforce them or bring justice, even when it comes to murder. Additionally, these cases can sometimes be completely ignored, like a number of dismissals by the DOJ. To summarize, Native American Reservations struggle deeply with things they can and can’t control, and do not get a lot of recognition, even though real people live there, including children, adults, and seniors, all living their lives.
Congress and the DOJ should address the three big problems of high crime rates, unemployment, and injustice on Native American reservations. To address unemployment and high crime rates, funding towards schools and education resources, such as libraries and programs to help criminals and prisoners, can help. However, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, billions of dollars are funded by Congress specifically for reservations but never reach them because of communication issues. To fix this, we can improve communication and relationships between Congress and Native communities receiving the funds. Having designated representation to their Congress person for multiple reservations could be a good way to communicate. Also, the problem of investigations of murder, sexual assault, and kidnapping being dismissed by the government can be solved by the U.S. Attorneys listening to and valuing tribal police’s ideas and actually looking at them from the community’s perspective. This can be proven by the article “DOJ Efforts to Address Murdered or Missing Indigenous Persons (MMIP)”, which says Native women and girls face an abundant amount of sexual- and gender-based violence. At the same time, men experience more violence compared to other communities. So the solutions to these problems on Native American reservations are to form representation in Congress and work on communication to control funds, and for U.S. Attorneys and investigators to actually listen and value Native communities’ input.
As you can see, Native American reservations face injustice and unfair problems compared to the rest of the United States. Native American reservations face problems like joblessness, high crime, and poor handling of crimes. Congress should work more closely with Native leaders to improve funding, and the DOJ needs to treat reservation crimes like any others in the United States. In the future, it would be astonishing if the federal government treated reservations, racial minorities, and towns identically, to the point that surrounding and non-surrounding communities could see the difference.
