Policing the Rez: Keeping No Peace in Indian Country

Abstract

watching our blood its journey into plasma bags laying still on tables hearing the coughs and restless movements of people bleeding for some dollars that send us out again able to face looking for something this deep red fluid that propels our hearts war is money the blood spilled to the earth blood appearing suddenly with no warning from wounds that we inflict on one another the blood is the currency by which we trade our destinies propels some to be takers on this world... No one left untouched yet some remain silent not told that our blood is currency OH, WHAT TANGLED WEBS WE WEAVE, AND NONE WERE SO CONFUSED AS THOSE woven around the issues of policing Indians. American Indian peoples and their homelands are increasingly entangled in a web of legal jurisdiction even as they reassert their ancient sovereignties and seek to define their own polities. [1] Reservations are characterized as internal colonies, many times without a deeper analysis of the institutions, relations, and narratives in play that make that colonization real. The extension of U.S. legal jurisdiction over Native people's land and their lives continues the founding narrative that naturalizes the American nation-state itself and its continuing hegemony over the country's land. Jurisdiction, a Western concept for the establishment of law and order, is at the heart of any modern practice of sovereignty. Native communities operate in mazes of law and policy well beyond those visited on other racialized peoples in the U.S. Of all the current peoples inhabiting the United States, only Amer ican have an aboriginal interest and title in the national land base. Because the United States is legitimated by a legal abstraction created by and for colonists from other countries, it must keep Native peoples embedded in law in a manner particular to no other people in the nation. American Indian communities are currently caught in a double bind where they are restrained from asserting their own jurisdictions and customs to combat racism, violence, and deteriorating social conditions while the surrounding, non-Indian community is free to criminalize Indians' proactive responses. Because U.S. law polices, but does not protect, Native communities, U.S. legal jurisdiction actually contributes to the social violence and ill health that plagues many reservations and urban Indian communities. The extension of this jurisdiction into Indian country in the 21st century may be the last battlefield of the Indian wars. Although an inordinate amount of attention is placed on the treaty relationships between Native peoples and the United States, the reduction of the myriad original American peoples into Indians is also part of the creation and formation of the U.S. as a racialized state. The Constitution initially acknowledged both Blacks and as other than citizens. Although this status was later altered, these initial categories necessitated a legalized range of differentiated treatments for these noncitizens. The U.S. as a state has recognized race as a primary category since its conception. The Labyrinth: Who's in Charge of Indian Country? It is Friday night. A carload of non-Indian youths from off-reservation has driven into the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana to party. By midnight the youths are very drunk. They begin vandalizing homes and smashing car windows. The tribal police do not have the authority to arrest non-Indians and the county and state police have no authority to enforce law on the reservation (O'Brien, 1989: 279). A woman who lives a mile outside the Jicarilla Apache Reservation has called the tribal police department. She can hear someone breaking into her house. …

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