As fentanyl addiction and overdose deaths ravage Native American communities, some tribal leaders want Indian law enforcement to take drug enforcement more into their own hands.
“We can’t wait anymore,” Jamie Azure, chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in November. “We are very close to losing a generation to an opioid, to a synthetic drug.”
Tribal leaders testified about an insufficient response by state and federal law enforcement to the drug traffickers who bring fentanyl onto reservations. Azure said his tribe was moving ahead with its own “tribal drug task force.”
But tribal law enforcement is limited in what it can do. Because of the landmark 1978 Supreme Court ruling Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, tribal courts are not allowed to prosecute non-American Indians for most crimes — including drug trafficking.
But it’s also within a state and part of a state. The Native Americans want their own rules and laws that the rest of the states law enforcement can’t do anything about when on their land. It’s why Indians have had casinos when states don’t allow them, and why they want non native Americans to show on their land.
They’re trying to pick and choose and have things both ways. Making Americans abide by two sets of state laws with different rules and court proceedings and punishments and rights violations isn’t an acceptable solution. The Native Americans allow outside people on their land because they want them there. They don’t have to allow the public on their land.
This whole dispute gave an example of a discrepancy between tribal law and state law over what you can be arrested for. Stuff would get dicey for a lot of people pretty quickly if a tribe had some unusual laws and punishments on the books that they arrest people for after getting them to show up on their land. It’s just too messy to do that way.