Presentation examines tribal government history, structure
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PABLO — If you’ve ever wondered whether a non-tribal-member can be ticketed for speeding by a tribal police officer, you’re not alone. That’s just one of many questions people have about tribal government, attorney Dan Decker explained Friday during a presentation sponsored by the HeartLines Project at Salish Kootenai College. (The answer, by the way, is yes.)
“Most of our officers are cross-deputized these days, and our officers can stop virtually anybody,” he said.
But the officers do have to double as state police, as tribal governments don’t have jurisdiction over non-members. However, tribal governments do have jurisdiction over members of other tribes, Decker explained. Having a sovereign government within the boundaries of another sovereign government is a complicated issue, just like the issue of state sovereignty, he pointed out.
Things weren’t always so complicated.
“Indian people have governed ourselves from the beginning of time,” Decker said.
Tribes have always had their governing leaders, spiritual leaders and, “we’ve always had our warrior societies,” much like any society with rulers, religious leaders and a military.
In the late 1700s, American founding father Benjamin Franklin commended the Iroquois League — a group of five tribes in the Northeast — for their ability to govern themselves.
“All their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force; there are no prisons; no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment,” Franklin wrote.
“Indian nations controlled their nations by consent of the people,” Decker explained.
As history progressed, “there was a recognition there had to be a transition from traditional leadership,” he said.
Through a treaty-making era, reservation era and assimilation (or allotment) era until present-day, tribal governments have continued to evolve. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were first in the country to embrace the policies of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Decker said, adopting a constitution that states CSKT is sovereign over tribal people, but its laws are to be “… not inconsistent with federal, state and local laws.”
With the transition into more organized government came a whole slew of problems similar to those in federal and state governments, from how to divide tribes into districts for tribal council elections to whether tribal governments should separate their powers into executive, legislative and judicial branches. And each tribe has the right to address these issues for themselves, just as, “each of us as nations have the absolute right to determine who our citizenship is,” Decker said.
While federal court rulings and acts of Congress continue to influence how far tribal governments can reach, it’s really up to each tribe to assert its rights, he explained.
“Your sovereignty is only as strong … as how your exercise it. The more you exercise those rights of self government, the stronger your government’s going to be,” Decker said.
