#WakeUp
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Transcript NACDL the association of the nation's criminal defense are [Music] you I want to thank my ancestors all that have gone before me to bring me here today to speak to you I want to thank dr. Holliday for acknowledging the people the indigenous peoples of California and this land I think it's important to invoke their honor as we go forward I want to thank the people that put on the conference and those who invited me Cynthia Roseberry and those that are interested in Native American issues this is critical because my talk today is about racism and oppression and it starts with invisibility it's not just the idea that people are racist or discriminatory against natives it's the willful ignorance it's the erasure of native presence and that includes all of us I am from heinous Pueblo it's one of the most beautiful places in the world it is a caldera it is a spiritual land it's one of the 19 pueblos in New Mexico and it's very rural it's about an hour outside of Albuquerque Native Americans in the criminal justice system are about both rural and urban oppression this says warning traditional Indian will not reform we're talking about racism and white supremacy we're talking about natives in the criminal justice system what I want to talk about are not the negative statistics I don't want to talk about how many women have been sexually assaulted we can look up the Amnesty International report that discusses Native women who are sexually assaulted at four and a half times more or two and a half times more than non-native women we can look at the over incarceration rates we can look at the tribal issues Advisory Group report from the US Sentencing Commission that talks about natives yet longer sentences and are less likely to get a downward departure and just by virtue of being in federal court they have longer sentences because they're subject to the federal sentencing guidelines and not eligible for parole what I want to talk about is dignity and respect I want to bring dignity and honor to my people I want others to see them as worthy as dignity being dignified and worthy of respect I'm hoping to impart to you some cultural literacy some tools that you can use in your cases whether you work with natives or not to work across cultural cultural divides cultural barriers and cultural obstacles I hope to impart some federal Indian law to you and expose the historical background where these negative statistics have been used as social control and oppression for Native Americans that continues today that allows Native Americans to be subjected to incarceration without the right to counsel natives live in a post-apocalyptic world they have experienced all of the negative things that come with having your land your tribal traditions and customs taken from you removal boarding schools but what I would like each of us to do is to combat willful ignorance about native peoples in our society today and the historical oppression that brings us to the criminal justice system first I want to start with Indian identity what is an Indian tribe who is a tribal person and who gets to it decide all of these issues are rooted in white supremacy and racism there are over 500 tribes in the United States that are federally recognized we're talking about a recognized tribe we're talking about a government-to-government relationship between the tribal sovereign and the United States as a 23rd 2018 the bureau has to publish a list of federally recognized tribes in the Federal Register from the Bureau of Indian Affairs so the United States recognizes tribal sovereigns this is an inherent sovereignty that is held by the tribal traditional nations it's not one that was given or handed to tribal nations it was one that is recognized as always existing Indian identity is based in origin stories natives have their own tribal traditions that tell us where we came from from the earth or from the water from the land it's also a connection to the land who is an Indian who gets to decide is it a personal feeling is it the color of your skin or is it your historical ties to your people your tradition your language is it the recognition of your people of you as a native person this is crow dog this is a case one of the cases that decided by the Supreme Court in the 1800s that gave us some idea of what tribal people and dispute resolution was like in 1800 crow dog killed spotted tail spotted tail was an Indian agent what's an Indian agent an Indian agent is someone who is paid by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to act as a jailer a vice-principal a teacher on the reservation as a measure of social control they had vast amounts of money that came across their desk they also had vast amounts of power it's important to the Indian agent that there was on the reservation that there was enough control to allow for the business of removal or the business of reservations to go on so Indian agents could be a white person from Washington it could be a plum job where they are sent out to live on or near the reservation and decide the fate of tribal people or it could be a Native American within that community that had decided to assimilate and become one of the white governmental actors in this case crow dog and spotted tail burr of the the Brule Sioux killing of another on the Indian Reservation was a crime an unwanted behavior within the tribal people and it was punished by the the decision-makers of the tribe so crow dog was subjected to the traditional ancestral criminal justice system and in that system he was found guilty for lack of a better word and he was sentenced his punishment was he had to provide provisions for the family of a spotted tail that included horses blankets provisions and money the oral history is that crow dogs family was also banished from the reservation for a number of years that's the ultimate sort of the the death penalty like punishment in this particular case because it was an Indian agent when word got back to the Bureau of Indian Affairs that spotted tail had been killed they wanted to be a prosecution and so the federal prosecutors wanted to show the natives what civilization was like in fact in the 1800's reservations were thought of as civilized places to school the Indian and to remove the Indian astute them become more like white people and if they were going to be more like the civilized nation they needed to have a criminal justice system and that needed to include the civilized way of punishment which was what in the 1800's the death penalty so subjecting crow dog to federal court jurisdiction in the Dakota Territory meant that he would be subjected to the death penalty the case was litigated in the United States United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court justices found that there was no jurisdiction that in fact the federal government didn't have any power to punish the Indian for an Indian against Indian crime on the reservation those decisions were previously made by treaties for that government-to-government relationship that the United States had with the tribal nations these are the same kinds of trees that the Dutch and the French had that decided who could move in and among the tribal lands and if there was some altercation or crime who got to punish who and so the treaty said that if it was an Indian against Indian crime on the reservation the tribal nation the local law of the tribe would prevail the trade and intercourse acts at the time also said the same thing that Indian on Indian crime on the reservation was a specifically a traditional a tribal local law jurisdiction and so the Supreme Court declined were rejected the idea of federal court jurisdiction over native people who are native people the historical references show that who gets decide who is an Indian also meant what is an Indian the papal bulls the Spanish religious documents that allow the conquistadors to go out and find souls there was a debate during that time period and whether native people were human whether they were souls to be saved or whether they were more like the flora and the fauna and a commodity to be exploited there was a debate with between Sepulveda and Bartholomew de las casas on whether they should be saved as Souls or whether they should be enslaved as labor in case you are thinking that maybe this is just one of these historical references and the conquistadors are a long time ago this carried on this idea is a native person is a native Indian a person in cases in the Pueblo swear I'm from the United States versus Joseph in the United States versus and of all had to the district court had two very different ideas of what a Pueblo Indian was and Joseph the decision was were these Indian people because they wanted to know if this federal law applied to this this land and in order to decide what it was tribal land they'd need to decide whether the Pueblo is were tribal people the plebs were different because they had come to the United States under the Spanish crown and then under Mexico and then Lincoln recognized their own sovereignty so they were under three separate sovereigns the Spanish the Mexican and the United States and each one of those sovereigns recognized the pueblos as being a tribal nation but the the district courts needed to decide whether the Pueblo were Indians or some other category and so the district judge looked at what they looked like how they acted and what they believed and in Joseph the district court judge found that well they were peaceable the pueblos had stopped worrying many years ago they were farmers they had accepted the Spanish and the Mexican acequia in the corn they grew made them to be more like assimilated people they'd accepted Christianity accepted Christianity under the Spanish conquistadors po'pay was one of the Pueblo leaders who fought against the Spanish my people were some of the Pueblo leaders that fought against the Spanish and they were severely the Spanish were severely run out of New Mexico in the 16 1600s for about 12 years but it was a bloody battle so they accepted Christianity and also they spoke some Spanish and they were mostly well-behaved and so that meant that they weren't Indians because they were good honest people good honest farmers a few years later the United States versus and of all the same question comes up well we know that the United States District Courts already looked at Joseph but that notwithstanding now we're looking at the pueblos and they're mostly lazy their [Music] reports of Indian agents which are white men talking about the Pueblo people as practicing these religious dances and speaking their own language and having plural marriages within their own traditions and so they're not Christian and so therefore they're Indians in well in Joseph they said they were Indians in faith only but in sand of all they were Indians because they were so degraded and so dehumanized when we're talking about tribal nations were talking about these separate sovereigns this nation to nation government we have federal and tribal so for Native people you would be subject to a criminal justice system within your own tribe that could be a tribal justice system that was created by the sovereign in the pueblos as they have governors in the plains they would have elected presidents I worked in the tribal court in Warm Springs where they had a tribal judge we had regular trials they had a tribal Jail and that's separate from the federal cases where we would say the defendants went over the mountain that means the case didn't just stay on the reservation they were subject to double jeopardy they'd be punished both at Warm Springs and then if they went over the mountain they would be called to be prosecuted in the district court in Portland so they would get two kinds of punishment there isn't a double jeopardy prohibition because we have the separate sovereign doctrine in the same way that we're looking at state and federal have separate sovereigns tribal federal are also separate sovereigns why is this important because this idea of who is an Indian what is an Indian tribe led to a debate in the 60s during the civil rights era when Congress was trying to define the conscience of the nation to decide how it treats its own people and some very well-meaning people in Congress decided that Native Americans maybe should be looked at to see whether they're being mistreated if anyone knows this person senator Sam Ervin from the great state of North Carolina the liberal bastian bastian of civil rights was looking at to turn away from what he saw as the nation facing the wrong way and looking at the civil rights of blacks and african-americans and said well what about the Indians was his idea a pure one and wanting to take care of the Indian it was a simply trying to deflect attention away from the african-american rights to Native American rights he became the champion so to speak of Indian civil rights he's held hearings throughout the nation and in Washington debating on whether natives were subjected to a different set of civil rights what he found were they same kinds of policing brutality that we hear in the in the news today the same oppression the same rejection of justice for Native Americans Native Americans testified that they were being routinely rounded up and thrown in jail when they didn't speak the language they weren't given interpreters they weren't allowed to call attorneys and in some cases in dacotahs they were marched out to the edge of town and left there in the dead of winter to die or to walk back yes that's that's the right reaction Congress heard these ideas over seven years and then decided to turn its attention to tribal people visa vie their own tribe so they didn't pass any legislation that specifically targeted or protected Native Americans under the Constitution instead they looked at native tribes under the Constitution so under the the larger body of the United States Constitution they found or they learned that tribes are sovereign tribes are separate nations and that they predated they pre-existed the United States and so weren't encompassed within the constitutional protections because of some decisions in the 1800's that said tribes were outside the Constitution and so this concern some of the Senators and they decided that they were going to pass a bill of rights called the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 that applied specifically to Native people on the Indian Reservation that meant giving tribes sort of a floor at which they had to have in order to have a tribal court they had to provide some protections it carries on most of the Bill of Rights with some really important distinctions the first is there wasn't a prohibition against religion meaning tribes are many many tribes are theocratic they can be theocracies there could be an establishment of religion the second was there was a right to a jury trial upon request he didn't say if you were facing a certain time or not the third was there was no right to counsel so in tribal court you could face a jury trial and incarceration for any length of time with no right to counsel this is still true today for up to one year so the bill of the Indian Bill of Rights provided this protection with by giving this adversarial system to the tribes and then not providing any of the basic fundamental rights that we know has in due process especially the right to counsel this has a historical oppression story as well in the 1880s after crow dog was decided Congress wasn't appreciative of that decision and so they immediately passed the Major Crimes Act very swiftly 18 USC 1151 1152 and 1153 are the federal statutes that say any serious crime that happens on the Indian Reservation by a Native American it only applies to Native Americans goes to federal court and these are the this was the originally seven Major Crimes Act right murder rape robbery assault those kinds of things now it's pretty expansive serious crimes that happen on the reservation it only applies the natives goes to federal court so native people unless you are in a public law 280 state like California is have are subject to jurisdiction both in their own tribe and in federal court in a public law 280 state which is an exception to the Major Crimes Act tribal people are subject to the state law of California in Oregon the state is a public law 280 state but with an exception Warm Springs was carved out because they had a pretty strong white attorney at the time that argued before Congress no during the public law termination area Warm Springs was intact it was strong it was economically viable they shouldn't be terminated in Oregon let them continue and they continued their sovereignty is a separate entity so tribal people can be subject to their own courts whatever that might look like but in the 1800 that wasn't enough the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided that there was a gap in justice that they needed to create Bureau of Indian Affairs courts also known as codes of federal regulation courts or code of Indian offenses courts and that last term code of Indian offenses courts is really important because that's exactly what it was the BIA director a white man just started writing down things that he thought were worthy of punishment those included dancing your own religious dances speaking your language having plural marriages theft they were trying to Christianize the natives as well as teach them to respect property in the in the proper ways and so punishments for this code of Indian offenses included hard labor having your rations taken away fines and incarceration but the most important part that teller who was the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the time put in there was a prohibition against attorneys no attorneys allowed these were simple courts they were there to civilize the Indian and so the Indian agent would be sitting in judgment of the Native American subject to this Court of Indian offenses and they would decide who was guilty and who was innocent and what the punishment would be well fast forward into the different period of Indian Affairs where tribes are creating their own tribal courts the Bureau of Indian Affairs kept that law on the books until 1961 when it came up during these hearings on the Civil Rights Act and when the BIA agents or the agency their representatives were speaking they were asked what is this prohibition against attorneys why why aren't why are defense attorneys disallowed are prohibited in these federal instrumentality courts for natives only and the BIA really didn't have any answer it had gone on for decades and decades and decades without any without anyone even caring or looking at the books but the person that from the BIA that was testifying said well first of all we don't know of any Indian attorneys well there's actually a couple but they're busy and so who wouldn't be these native people that would come and represent Indians and second of all who would pay for it and in fact Indians would just get in the way attorneys would just get in the way because these were courts where we had to you know expediently civilize the Indian today the courts of Indian offenses the CFR courts are the opposite they took away that that prohibition against attorneys and they have there are federal instrumentality so under the US Constitution they have to have provide counsel so this isn't true when in the opposite in the tribal courts or tribes get to decide for themselves whether they can afford or provide counsel the other thing that happened during this after this time of passing the Indian Civil Rights Act was a decision that I think was really important because it's a civil case not a criminal case but it really informed the decision with regard to who is an Indian what is an Indian and how we can treat Indians as a separate race what Morton versus Mancari was about was tribal employment having a tribal Indian a preference for people who are working in the Bureau of Indian Affairs a non-indian sued because tribal people were preferred under the Indian preference Act to work in the Bureau of Indian Affairs because they were going to be subjected and impacted by the laws and policies of the rules and policies promoted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs the Supreme Court decided in 1974 that there wasn't invidious racial discrimination in Morton that there could be a tribal preference for employment because tribal status was a political status and not a racial classification and so this is an important case for tribal people and tribal sovereignty because we saw it as one that was upholding tribal self-determination allowing tribal people to work in the BIA to make the decisions that were then going to be determining tribal decisions in the future the problem with Morton V Mancari it was that was it a positive law but it's been used in criminal defense cases to say oh it's it's okay to treat Native Americans differently because it's not racial it's political status and so one of the things that I want you to take away is that debunk this myth there's nothing in our law the United States Constitution and nothing in tribal law that would support the notion that natives can be and should be treated differently or less than under the Constitution but we'll see in a few minutes that the Supreme Court doesn't agree with me the the other idea that this is about white supremacy comes from the 70s in Oliphant versus Suquamish this is justice rehnquist yes not a fan of Indians justice Rehnquist wrote the decision in Oliphant the case that came out of Washington State and those who might be from Washington might know Chief Seattle days it is a tribal celebration on the Suquamish Indian Reservation where outsiders and tribal people live and work together in checkerboard area checkerboard area is a term of art that means both tribal land and non tribal land together in in a certain Indian area Oliphant and another non-indian committed some crimes during chief seattle days specifically they got drunk and drove around led the siwash police and a chase and they crashed their vehicle into a police car they were to be punished in tribal court as non-indians and they objected the case went directly up to the district court and to the Supreme Court immediately and Rehnquist found that tribal courts don't have any jurisdiction over non-indians and he said that this was true because he made up a term called implicit divestiture everything in Indian country is about explicit decision-making because Congress has the power to decide the fate of Native people under these treaties but Rehnquist said there's a judicial term called implicit divestiture by nation by virtue of the nation being conquered by the United States that tribes are divested of any jurisdiction over non-indians and the late great professor rice is an Indian law scholar said Oliphant is really just the decision that brown people can't punish white people the important thing that we need to know as Indian law scholars is that Rehnquist this decision has been soundly taken apart and shown the many fallacies in his in his facts that there was always jurisdiction for tribal people over non-indians and there this this is a decision that is really at odds with in the federal Indian law so after the Indian Civil Rights Act in 1968 and the decision in Oliphant versus Suquamish we have a two different justice systems maybe even three different justice systems one in which tribal people can't punish white people that come on the reservation and commit crimes but tribal people can be punished both in their own courts without an attorney and in either federal or state court without a double jeopardy prohibition the Indian Civil Rights Act shows us that Native Americans live in a pre Gideon world they live in a Betts V Brady world even where the US Supreme Court has looked these decisions and decided that maybe attorneys aren't that necessary even when tribal people go to jail in the Indian Civil Rights Act there is no right to counsel up to one year incarceration and under the Violence Against Women Act that was promoted as a really big victory in Indian country in 2013 there is erected constitutional effective counsel for any non-indians that are prosecuted in tribal court we don't study Betts V Brady because it's not the law Gideon decided that when you're facing a crime you're entitled to an attorney the tribal Law and Order Act in 2010 under the Obama administration was touted as a victory because Native women were being subjected to assault and sexual violence at greater rates than non-indians what we don't know what we aren't told is that native men are also subjected to higher violence than non-native men the tribal Law and Order Act was a comprehensive bill that was going to overhaul criminal justice on the Indian reservations and it had many different moving parts some of which were regarding coordination between the DEA the Bo P the Bureau of Indian Affairs the Department of Justice but the important part for our purposes is to look at the tribal Law and Order Act enhanced sentencing provisions that said tribal courts up until 2010 just had either six months or up to a year that they could meet out as punishment for tribal people and remember these are only around people or only Indians that can be subjected to this and there is no right to counsel but the tribal Law and Order Act said well there might be times where tribal courts might want to give a longer sentence and for certain crimes might be equivalent to a felony you can give up to three years and then you could stack those crimes on top of each other up to nine years provided that you do provide a right to counsel so provide a criminal defense attorney that you publish your laws you record your hearings and you make your your judge a lot rain'd licensed in any jurisdiction judge the reason for this was the sexual violence against Native women this is Lisa ioad who gives a if you look at the tribal Law and Order Act signing on YouTube gives a really impassioned and tearful introduction to the Act she said she was raped in front of her children and President Obama comes up behind her and and comforts her while she's telling her story the what we don't know is who the perpetrator was when she tells her story and this is really important not to take away from the importance of or the severity of that sexual violence but because the Department of Justice's own report shows that Native women when subjected to the sexual violent the perpetrators are more than likely a non-indian this means that non-native people were preying on Native Americans either in the Alaska Natives or in Indian country and actually falling through that true gap of justice because they weren't allowed to be punished on the Indian Reservation so with the tribal law and order it acted it gave longer sentences to Indians on the Indian Reservation but still the white guys who were in their own Department of Justice report we're going scot-free without any punishment I should say the bow WA 2013 proof Indian provisions were meant to close this gap and say that tribes could punish non-indians only in domestic violence cases and only if they follow the tribal Law and Order Act and only if they gave the white men the right to counsel and effective assistance of counsel as we understand it under the United States Constitution so now we have a racial disparity in that in their own tribal courts tribal people aren't entitled to an attorney but white people are you can't you can't get any more racially impactful than that in 2006 the law to combat sexual violence and these are really important this is these are statistics that you see over and over Native women are subjected to sexual violence at greater rates and Ginsburg even cites to this in in her decision where she upholds this law that says natives can be prosecuted and these crimes without an attorney and then that can be used against you in federal court for an even greater federal domestic violence charge so this is the statute passed in 2006 designed to combat domestic violence section 107 makes it a federal crime for any person to commit a domestic violence within Indian country if the person has a final conviction of on at least two prior occasions state tribal or federal so what's wrong with this picture if it's a non-indian he's going to have the right to counsel it's a very rare case in which a non-indian in tribal I mean in state or federal court has a plea or a guilty verdict without an attorney and if that's true it's one that can be challenged as infirm but in tribal court there most of the people have convictions without the right to counsel this leads us to a case that you'll have in your materials that I provided a synopsis for called United States versus bryant's it has the convergence of Indian Civil Rights tribal sovereignty and racial justice under the US Constitution so the facts of this particular case mr. Michael Bryant is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe he was the poster boy for this particular statute and I'm pretty sure he was pre-selected as the person to uphold this law he had prior convictions in tribal court for domestic assault they were really ugly pulling his girlfriend out of bed by her hair kicking and beating her up in those cases he had no representation and he did do jail time in the Northern Cheyenne tribal court he was then later prosecuted in federal court under this federal domestic violence assault statute now they're in the Supreme Court arguments that kept calling this an enhancement it's not an enhancement we know what enhancements are right we know what aggravated part of the statute is this is a separate statute that just targets Native Americans and subjects them to federal jurisdiction outside of the Major Crimes Act for no other reason other than they want to get the Indian so Mr Bryan had these prior convictions it is an element of the crime that you have to have the the multiple convictions the question presented to the Supreme Court was whether reliance on these uncounseled convictions in tribal court could be used to prove an element of the offense could they be used as predicates no look at focus on the word valid the federal defender in bryant conceded that they were valid that made a big difference the United States pounced on that because they were valid under the Ikra and the Indian Civil Rights Act of he wasn't entitled to an attorney they could go into federal court and before the Supreme Court and say these are valid convictions there was a split in the circuits of course in 8th in the 10th in Shyvana and Cavan shavano and Kavanaugh found that uncounseled tribal court convicts can be used as an element of an offense and in the Ninth Circuit the Bryant case uncounseled convictions cannot be used because they offend the sixth amendment they offend the Constitution this is a picture of mr. Bryant that was posted in the Billings Gazette and it's important to note in federal court he got a longer sentence longer than he would have gotten if he had been charged with assault with serious bodily injury so the constitutional quandary for me at the time of the Bryant case was that the US Constitution has this right to counsel this fifth Amendment right to counsel this due process right to counsel this fundamental right to fairness involving an attorney and we were going into federal court trying to uphold these tribal convictions that were a mix of bad tribal law and bad federal Indian law under the Indian Civil Rights Act he had a right to counsel as own expense if he could afford one or if you could find an attorney that knew Northern Cheyenne law he could get the Legal Aid Society who didn't take criminal cases to come on the reservation unless it was enhanced he wasn't entitled to an attorney at all and we know the Supreme Court jurisdiction jurisprudence on this right Powell versus Alabama Johnson V Zerbst Gideon versus Wainwright arthur singer versus Hamlin Scott v Illinois I'll say what have a right it's a fundamental right it is a human right under Powell V V Alabama and Burchett versus Texas said that uncounseled convictions can't be used subsequently the exception was US v Nichols which was a sentencing enhancement case overlay that with what we've learned in federal Indian law ex parte a crow dog the Major Crimes Act Talton B Mays that said that the tribes aren't subject to tribal sovereigns aren't subject to the US Constitution passage of the Indian so Rights Act Oliphant the tribal Law and Order Act and Ginsburg decisions came up with no council no problem the decision that was written by Ginsberg starts with a laundry list of these horrible statistics that we've been talking about and being traumatized by that Native women are subjected to violence at a greater rate and so need the protection of the United States government again they didn't cite the the dude DOJ statistic that said non-indian men are more likely to be the perpetrators in a domestic violence against Native so it was this patriarchal this protected this guardianship that the United States Supreme Court was citing to this need to bring in this law of domestic minds to protect Native women from their own savage Indian husbands and boyfriends the person that argued for the United States was 80 a white woman the person that argued for mr. Bryant was a white man the federal defender versus the United States solicitors Office and the US Solicitor the Assistant Solicitor was really articulate calm and confident so almost unnaturally so and it wasn't until later that I figured it out she was Ginsburg's law clerk a few years earlier and so had that natural talent as well as the confidence to to speak to the court the federal defender as I said conceded that the the convictions were valid and I would argue that they're not valid and what I want you to take away today is that Native prior convictions without the right counsel should be challenged at every turn so what we were left with were the constitutional violations are Indians entitled to less due process are they entitled to less protection under the US Constitution it's important for me to talk to you about how these historical documents cases and instances relate directly to the court seeing the native as a savage someone who needs to be incarcerated it's okay to treat them worse then it's a the invidious discrimination aside that we just all accept this that it's the over incarceration and the longer sentences are somehow warranted earned by the by the Indian so when we're looking at our clients who might have a prior conviction we need to know that there are underlying collateral consequences for a Native American who pleads guilty to a domestic assault case if the if your tribal client has any uncounseled convictions there is a right and the Indian Civil Rights Act that provides for habeas corpus review under 25 USC 1303 this is different than 2255 and 2254 s because the a edpa doesn't apply and so it is your straight habeas corpus the unfortunate thing is the courts don't understand this stuff either and so what has happened is the United States federal district courts have said it's too complicated they haven't endeavored to figure this stuff out in fact Scalia came to the law school at the University of New Mexico and said you know what we're just making this stuff up when it comes to Indian law we already knew that as Indian law scholars but for him to say that blatantly and think it was funny or just accurate and get away with it was really offensive so what I'm asking you as leaders in the community as public Defenders is to endeavor to help figure this out criminal justice criminal jurisdiction in Indian country is called a crazy quilt or a maze of injustice that allows us as really smart people that's a part of the one-percenters to just say oh it's too complicated or someone must understand this I don't this is incomprehensible it should not be that natives can go to jail without an attorney that those those convictions can then be used against them and they can go to jail longer without an attorney there should be some equal protection arguments anytime a native is subjected to a more prosecution or a longer sentence right so I'm asking people that work in tribal courts and working in state court to know that these collateral consequences and in federal court to challenge these laundry lists of tribal convictions I'm asking also to bring back dignity and respect this is Johnny tall bear who was one of the only Native Americans that I know of that was exonerated by the Innocence Project based on DNA he's a member of the Iowa tribe asking you as leaders in the community as leaders as and public defenders to know the history learn the history of indigenous peoples in your state in your community even if your state has killed off all your Indians no who lived there first where they come from no your urban Indian populations and internationally no strong Native communities have some proximity as Brian Stephen says with native people native women these women Cherise Davis and Deb Holland Ho Chunk nation and the Pueblo of Laguna are our representation in Congress federal court Dianne a human Toa judge in Arizona again representing Native people healthy strong Native people were not just the caricature knowing remember that tribal people are both are rural people who are connected to the land and they're also an urban people who are working in and among the cities
