In Indigenous America, human rights and justice take on added significance. The special legal status of Native Americans and the highly complex jurisdictional issues resulting from colonial ideologies have become deeply embedded into federal law and policy. Nevertheless, Indigenous people in the United States are often invisible in discussions of criminal and social justice.
 
Crime and Social Justice in Indian Country calls to attention the need for culturally appropriate research protocols and critical discussions of social and criminal justice in Indian Country. The contributors come from the growing wave of Native American as well as non-Indigenous scholars who employ these methods. They reflect on issues in three key areas: crime, social justice, and community responses to crime and justice issues. Topics include stalking, involuntary sterilization of Indigenous women, border-town violence, Indian gaming, child welfare, and juvenile justice. These issues are all rooted in colonization; however, the contributors demonstrate how Indigenous communities are finding their own solutions for social justice, sovereignty, and self-determination.
 
Thanks to its focus on community responses that exemplify Indigenous resilience, persistence, and innovation, this volume will be valuable to those on the ground working with Indigenous communities in public and legal arenas, as well as scholars and students. Crime and Social Justice in Indian Country shows the way forward for meaningful inclusions of Indigenous peoples in their own justice initiatives.

Contributors

Alisse Ali-Joseph
William G. Archambeault
Cheryl Redhorse Bennett
Danielle V. Hiraldo
Lomayumptewa K. Ishii
Karen Jarratt-Snider
Eileen Luna-Firebaugh
Anne Luna-Gordinier
Marianne O. Nielsen
Linda M. Robyn

Native Americans are disproportionately represented as offenders in the U.S. criminal justice system, particularly in the southwestern and north-central regions. However, until recently there was little investigation into the reasons for their over-representation. Furthermore, there has been little acknowledgment of the positive contributions of Native Americans to the criminal justice system—in rehabilitating offenders, aiding victims, and supporting service providers. This book offers a valuable and contemporary overview of how the American criminal justice system impacts Native Americans on both sides of the law.

Each of the fourteen chapters of Criminal Justice in Native America was commissioned specifically for this volume. Contributors—many of whom are Native Americans—rank among the top scholars in their fields. Some of the chapters treat broad subjects, including crime, police, courts, victimization, corrections, and jurisdiction. Others delve into more specific topics, including hate crimes against Native Americans, state-corporate crimes against Native Americans, tribal peacemaking, and cultural stresses of police officers. Separate chapters are devoted to women and juveniles.

The well-known scholar Marianne Nielsen provides a context-setting introduction, in which she addresses the history of the legal treatment of Native Americans in the United States as well as a provocative conclusion that details important issues for current and future research in Native American criminal justice studies. Intended to introduce students to the substantive concerns of a range of disciplines that contribute to Native American Studies—among them, criminal justice and criminology, law, sociology, and anthropology—Criminal Justice in Native America will interest all readers who are concerned about relationships between Native peoples and prevailing criminal justice systems.

Sovereignty unfolds over two parallel timelines. In present-day Oklahoma, a young Cherokee lawyer, Sarah Ridge Polson, and her colleague Jim Ross defend the inherent jurisdiction of Cherokee Nation in the U.S. Supreme Court when a non-Indian defendant challenges the Nation’s authority to prosecute non-Indian perpetrators of domestic violence. Their collaboration is juxtaposed with scenes from 1835, when Cherokee Nation was eight hundred miles to the east in the southern Appalachians. That year, Sarah’s and Jim’s ancestors, historic Cherokee rivals, were bitterly divided over a proposed treaty with the administration of Andrew Jackson, the Treaty of New Echota, which led to the nation’s removal to Oklahoma on the infamous Trail of Tears.
 
A direct descendant of nineteenth-century Cherokee leaders John Ridge and Major Ridge, Mary Kathryn Nagle has penned a play that twists and turns from violent outbursts to healing monologues, illuminating a provocative double meaning for the sovereignty of both tribal territory and women’s bodies. Taking as its point of departure the story of one lawyer’s passionate defense of the rights of her people to prosecute non-natives who commit crimes on reservations, Sovereignty opens up into an expansive exploration of the circular continuity of history, human memory, and the power of human relationships.