Supreme Court affirms tribal police authority over non-Indians | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court affirms tribal police authority over non-Indians

theconversation.com

I don't normally get on THIS soapbox, but there is a difference between "Indians" and "Native Americans".

Indians are from the country of India. Native Americans are the original inhabitants of the America's. And the subject of this article.

The US government still uses "Indian" in a lot of places, like the "Bureau of Indian Affairs"; "Federally recognized Indian tribe" is a specific legal term still, hence its use in the court decision.

My understanding is that many in the Native American community self identify as ‘Indian’. Or have historically, I’m sure the younger generation is moving away from it.

While there is some amount of controversy, Indian does mean original inhabitants of the Americas. Check any dictionary in America.

One absurd name vs. another. "Indian" is the result of a mistake by an outsider, which probably isn't that unusual if one goes digging into the names for various ethnic groups. "Native American" feels artificial, but more importantly isn't accurate either. The native Americans would be the descendants of the American colonists, the founding people of a nation; not those who were conquered by these people. The people we call Native Americans might better be described as aboriginal, or as in Canada "first nations".

Isn’t this disregarding that The America in Native Americans are not for the country but for the continent(s) (some nations lump two Americas as one)

Kind of, but there's only one nation called America. You can't separate native-ness from nation-ness. If the US called itself something else, then there would be no Native Americans.

Doesn't the US call itself the 'United States of America', and not just 'America'?

I misspoke when I said the US, I meant the people of the US (i.e. the nation, not the state).

Anecdotal, but I was told some original treaties are between 'usa and indians', so to change names may place those treaties in jeopardy.

Take that up with Christopher Columbus. He's the one who bumbled his way to the New World, saw brown people there and decided he must have found India.

The article is a little confusing to me.

> Now, with this latest ruling, the court has clarified that tribal police can search non-Indians suspected of state or federal crimes in Indian country and detain them until handing them off to federal or state authorities.

Non-Indians who commit crime on the reservation I grew up around are already searched and detained by tribal police until state police arrive. Crimes there do not go unpunished. The article claims this is a new policy, but a look at the syllabus seems to indicate that it's just an affirmation of existing policies that were being challenged in this case.

> As a “general proposition,” the “inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe.” Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 565. The Court identified in Montana two exceptions to that general rule, the second of which fits almost like a glove here: A tribe retains inherent authority over the conduct of non-Indians on the reservation “when that conduct threatens or has some direct effect on . . . the health or welfare of the tribe.” Id., at 566. The conclusion that Saylor’s actions here fall within Montana’s second exception is consistent with the Court’s prior Montana cases. See Strate v. A–1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 456 n. 11; see also Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley, 532 U.S. 645, 651. Similarly, the Court has held that when the “jurisdiction to try and punish an offender rests outside the tribe, tribal officers may exercise their power to detain the offender and transport him to the proper authorities.” Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676, 697. Ancillary to the authority to transport a non-Indian suspect is the authority to search that individual prior to transport, as several state courts and other federal courts have held. While that authority has sometimes been traced to a tribe’s right to exclude non-Indians, tribes “have inherent sovereignty independent of th[e] authority arising from their power to exclude,” Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 492 U.S. 408, 425 (plurality opinion), and here Montana’s second exception recognizes that inherent authority. In addition, recognizing a tribal officer’s authority to investigate potential violations of state or federal laws that apply to non-Indians whether outside a reservation or on a public right-of-way within the reservation protects public safety without implicating the concerns about applying tribal laws to non-Indians noted in the Court’s prior cases. Finally, the Court doubts the workability of the Ninth Circuit’s standards, which would require tribal officers first to determine whether a suspect is non-Indian and, if so, to temporarily detain a non-Indian only for “apparent” legal violations. 919 F.3d 1135, 1142. The first requirement produces an incentive to lie. The second requirement introduces a new standard into search and seizure law and creates a problem of interpretation that will arise frequently given the prevalence of non-Indians in Indian reservations. Pp. 3–7.

> Non-Indians who commit crime on the reservation I grew up around are already searched and detained by tribal police until state police arrive.

My reading of this decision is that different circuits had resolved this question in different ways (a classic reason for the SC to accept a case) and in particular the ninth circuit (not where Oklahoma is) had resolved it in a particularly poor way. So in this case a plaintiff in Oklahoma, convicted of some particularly serious charges, tried to use some lack of clarity in the law to get out of them (and TBH why shouldn’t he?). Fortunately the SC declared that throughout US territory, the sensible and, really, the only practical way, is how things should be.

I suspect the sensible path was already the default even in jurisdictions where the matter was unsettled or even wrongly settled (the Ninth circuit’s case, apparently). After all despite the dreadful headlines, most sensible policing is just what was at the root of this case: the cop stopped to see if someone needed a hand. It didn’t start as a “jurisdictional” case and if the cops had to think of that every time they’d never get anything done.

> [until 2021?] non-Indians have been able to commit crimes in Indian country with impunity

Wow. Is a strange country, for sure. The more you know the more you have this feeling. They seem in the path of trying to solve some of this problems, at least.

How the hell do you decide who is non-indian?

Each tribal government decides for themselves. One common method is "blood quantum[0]."

[0]https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261...

If they are a tribal member or not.

The "non-indians" wouldn't have tribal ID for that nation/reservation or be on the enrollment lists based on their identification. So is this person a member of this tribe? Yes or no.

Basically the same way that you decide who is a citizen of anywhere.

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