Justice Bolger noted that collaboration can really focus on the strengths of each system; the Kenaitze tribe has access to services and tribal justice system that the courts do not and the courts have short term response resources.
Question: When a tribe is trying to deal with state of Alaska, they are hoping that they can work together without a waiver of sovereignty requirement; there is a proposal that is sitting with AG’s office to establish a working agreement for local peace officers to work with the local district attorneys, officers and local troopers. While the state doesn’t have the resources to support probation, court and other agencies and tribal justice agencies are there to help, there is still a road block to in allowing that to happen. What is it going to take to move that forward?
Justice Bolger: Hopefully we can find common ground to partner together. Justice Bolger highlighted the Bureau of Juvenile Justice because they seem to understand how to do the collaboration and he is hopeful that can extend to adult system.
Mr. Kauffman commended Justice Bolger and other state leaders for their involvement. He noted that he facilitates these trainings all around the country and it’s rare to get Supreme Court justices or state leaders to attend and in addition, share phone numbers.
Liz Medicine Crow, President and CEO of First Alaskans Institute. Ms. Medicine Crow shared that she is originally from the Village of Kake where Tlingit people maintained a clan system. Her uncle and father were magistrates and she is familiar with circle sentencing: Like many people, Tlingit people are matrilineal and she received her “cool last name” from her husband. She appreciated Justice Bolger’s comments and that the courts are establishing equal partnerships with tribes. However, at the meta-level, the need for formal recognition of the tribes by the State of Alaska comes up at all events hosted by First Alaskans whether it’s related to voting or health.
1) Advancing Native Dialogues on Racial Equity (ANDORE): ANDORE is a statewide project that aims to initiate, foster, and grow racial healing by meaningfully engaging in conversations in communities across Alaska on race, racism and racial equity; in order to move people into a place of understanding, healing and growth. ANDORE is a project initiated by the Alaska Native Policy Center at First Alaskans Institute and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
She noted that there is a need for formal recognition of tribes by the State of Alaska that includes everything they need for formal recognition by state of respectful engagement—as equals—not as lessors or people who have things forced upon them. For example, asking Alaskan Natives to sign away sovereign immunity is not respectful.
She shared that she has been impressed by the current administration and highlighted the intergovernmental collaboration team in place during the transition.
Within the state level there are connection points with voting and the political voice of Alaska Native people. One of the things identified were the silos within departments that have caused inequity; who will represent them and how does it impact departments?
2) Community Dialogues: The Department of Social Services and Office of Children’s services have been looking at what is happening around treatment of native children. Alaskan Institute recently hosted a dialogue with community members on solutions that are making a difference for kids. Some tribes are doing some wonderful things to build and sustain prevention programs and supportive resources.
They also held a reconvening of the rural governor’s commission at the end of 2014 and brought original members of commission and people around the state. They asked attendees: “Since you did this work 17 years ago, what has changed?” The response was that essentially, “we have not made progress.”
3) Building Culture Knowledge: The three different levels of Federal, State, Tribal government need to work together. There is a need to build cultural knowledge and invite and engage clan leaders in discussions to help address problems. She appreciates Alaska Natives who are bringing traditional ways of doing things including language learning, customary harvesting, and dance back into the forum. Some Alaska Natives are building clans back. Clans have traditionally had responsibility for making sure members are healthy, safe, fed and able to do work within their community. A lot of problems can be addressed with the clan including addressing conflict before it gets to the level where it rises to serious conflict.
4) Alaska Institute Magazine: First Alaskan Institute also publishes a magazine that is distributed to 40K people. She encouraged participants to share the good things going on in communities through this magazine.
Gary Folger, Commissioner from Alaska Department of Public Safety: As a commissioner, Mr. Folger participates in the Western States Information Network where counterparts from Washington, California and Alaska meet three times a year. They work together to address problems. The last and present Alaska administrations see establishing relationships and Agreements between the State and Alaska Natives as a good thing. They are going to solve problems through relationships and respecting sovereignty issues.
Walt Monigan, Retired Law Enforcement, shared his tribal family lineage and noted that “Each of everyone one of us, regardless of where we are from need: 1) acceptance and 2) acknowledgement.” He is hoping through this training that everyone has a chance to get to know, acknowledge and accept each other.
Working with Stakeholders and Tribal Partners
Brian Kauffman noted that Stephen Covey, Inspirational Speaker and Author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, said “You can’t separate who you are from what you do.” That is why so critically important when developing relationships to pay attention when getting to know someone. In all aspects we are going to talk about, think about personal aspects. “You have to build the personal element that has to go to support what you’re going to try to do.”
Mr. Kauffman asked everyone to think about “What are the things that are important to you and your tribal community—what ends are you trying to accomplish.” He shared a quote from Plato: States are as the men, they grow out of human characters. Everyone in a public service job needs to be either all in or all out. What are your consequences for failing to act? Lives are at risk.
Mr. Kauffman shared a movie clip from Facing the Giants and distribution of the Challenge Coin.
Chief Rogers shared his background; he has been in law enforcement in some form for 40 years in positions that included Captain, Under-Sheriff and Chief of Police of both Tribal and Non-Tribal Police Agencies. He served as Chief of Police for the Makah Nation in northwestern Washington and as the first Chief of Enforcement for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Enforcement unit which provided service to the four Treaty-Tribes (Nez Perce, Yakama, Warm Sprints and Umatilla Tribes) on the Columbia River which included two states and eight county jurisdictions. He also served as a Probation Officer and Court Commissioner for the District Courts of Clark County in Vancouver, Washington. He retired from the Multnomah Sheriff’s Office in Portland and then worked with the Western Community Policing Institute and Fox Valley Technical College. He has been able to travel and work with 350 tribes across the country. After his last retirement, he went back to work as the Chief for the Nez Perce Police Department in North Idaho. Almost universally, whether in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, tribal police need to coordinate with Sheriffs.
The Nez Perce Indian Reservation is 1,200 square miles within the exterior boundaries of the 1863 Treaty. However the Dawes Act reduced tribal land ownership within the boundaries to approximately 144 square miles and opened the remaining 1,056 square miles to non-tribal settlement. Tribal lands and communities are scattered throughout the region in all five counties, including Idaho County which is the second largest county in America. This event created the extremely complex jurisdictional issues that the tribe, counties, and state are facing and placed public safety at risk.
In Idaho, and in other areas of the country, they face a serious methamphetamine problem and the crime that goes with it. The product is coming out of Mexico; cartel traffickers are going south of MT and coming across highway 12 which is completely on their reservation to get to WA. The other aspect to that is the gang members are coming on the reservation to sell drugs; the Sureños and Norteños gangs are working in the same area and there have been retaliation types of killings. One of the things that they haven’t had to deal with yet is the Native Youth Gang on the reservation and they are doing everything they can to try to keep that from taking place. Unfortunately, they face serious challenges trying to get sheriffs to work with Nez Perce Tribal police. They have resources they are willing to share with non-tribal counterparts but the leadership will not collaborate. As an example, The Nez Perce Tribal Council is very against drugs and spent to $25K to pick out great dog, and he and handler finished top in class at K-9 schools in nation. They took $180K of drugs off the street. The Idaho Sheriff will not allow use of their dog to assist the Sheriff’s Department.
Chief Roger’s goal is to eliminate all excuses to equality for achieving equality for his officers. “We just want equality—to be equal peers.” E.g. One of the complaints was that they don’t hire qualified people or provide the right training. Nez Perce Police get more training than other officers and attend the same training at the state level but instead of receiving a certification of completion, they receive a certificate of attendance. Under TLOA officers have to be adjudicated and get special law enforcement commissions—full background, lie detectors—they have done all of that but still deal with turf issues, racism and issues of trust.
Regardless of the problems you are facing (drugs, gangs, sex crimes, domestic violence, etc.) you will need to involve and collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to address them. Who you need to bring into the circle to address the problem will change depending on the issue.
Collaboration is based on relationships vs processes, protocols and procedures such as Legal Agreements or MOUS. In the process of working with others, establishing relationships and understanding and respecting the expectations and values of the people involved is extremely important. When we use words like trust, values, sovereignty they can mean different things to different people. When interacting with other people, it is important to understand what they mean by trust and respect because these things can be interpreted in many different ways and you can inadvertently damage relationships if you are not aware of that.
Participants read the Harvey story (page 29 and 30 in workbook) and discussed who was responsible for the tragedy and why.
Exploring Tribal Justice Problems and Challenges
Attendees participated in breakout group and discussed tribal justice problems facing their jurisdictions and reported out to the larger group. See Appendix 2.
Chief Kevin Mariano provided background on some of the collaborations he is involved in as Chief of the Isleta Police Department in Albuquerque. The Isleta Pueblo is centrally located in the Rio Grande Valley; the Pueblo of Isleta is 15 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The pueblo covers more than 329 square miles and has a diverse geographical terrain that ranges from forests in the Manzano Mountains in the east to the desert mesas of the Río Puerco in the west.10 The government of the Pueblo of Isleta was formed in the 1930s, and the pueblo is home to 3,980 enrolled members with a total population of 4,853. The Isleta Police Department is a 638 self-governing Bureau of Indian Affairs contract agency.
The Isleta Police Department along with behavior health and other community representative participated in a Tribal Community and Police Problem-Solving Teams (TTEAMS) training in 2009. Attendees in the training included law enforcement, natural resources, behavioral health, and a community business. In addition, representatives from the Jicarilla Apache Nation public safety and health and human services; the Mescalero Apache Tribe resort and casino security; and Pueblo of Sandia law enforcement attended the training. As a result of the TTEAMS training, the tribe adopted a comprehensive approach using collaborate partnerships to address critical issues, including substance abuse, affecting the tribe. Their strategies and accomplishments are highlighted in a Successful Tribal Community Policing Initiatives Report that can be found here. They have also established successful collaborations with the New Mexico State Police and other local law enforcement agencies. They have established MOUs they can share.
Participants discussed and selected one issue and developed a story or scenarios describing the problem (what the problem looks like). Teams further identified traditional and non-traditional stakeholders and their roles for addressing the problem. Teams also identified what it will take and next steps to address the problem (pages 31-39 in workbook). Participants reported out to the full group. See Appendix 3.
Recommendations for Training and Technical Assistance
Brian Kauffman asked attendees about training and technical assistance needs; “What are you missing in terms of training or resources that would help you in your villages?”
• Ongoing Mentoring: One topic that arose during the discussion was the issue of sustainability. Granting agencies will provide a training and technical assistance provider and help you with a mentor during the plan development process but what is also needed is a mentor to help through the implementation phase. The issue of sustainability and what is it going to take to make this initiative last is another component that needs to be addressed.
• Data Collection: Need training on data collection.
• Training for judges: Very short on tribal judges for wellness court. They have to rely on grants of funding to bring someone up or down for tribal court training so they can become a justice. One court only has four judges and need to have two available at all time.
• Training for computer access in the court room. Many tribal jurisdictions don’t have a facility to actually run a wellness court. They would like more information.
• Ethics training for tribal law enforcement
• Hold Focus group in the spring with people from LE and others who could help address problems identified.
• Compile a synopsis of federal and state agreements that exist around law enforcement. Provide information about what currently exists that either allow or restrict tribal law enforcement agreements
Closing Comments
Ozzy thanked the trainers and all attendees for their participation. He shared that he sees a common theme that things are happening; tribes are taking on responsibility and moving forward with services that are operating well. He shared that he was really happy to see the state folks participating in the training as well; it provided an opportunity to hear what the problems are and background for potential solutions.
There is a suggestion that tribal members may want to think about developing a statewide tribal police or justice association to help tribes negotiate with the state similar to the tribal health consortium. It is apparent there are a lot of common issues that have to do with dealing with the state. “…we may have better results dealing as one voice.” There was agreement that everyone’s contact information would be shared and participants can start exchanging information and begin to identify the most important issues for the tribal police.
Walt shared that he really enjoyed the training sessions, networking with others and exchanging ideas with one another. “Hopefully when you hear others with same type of problem, you know you are not alone.”
