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- By Levi Rickert
In a tersely written letter to the comptroller general at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) said the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ public safety efforts in Montana are unacceptable.
Tester, who is up for reelection for a third term in November, sits on the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and once served as its chairman.
He cites the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) crisis, a fentanyl and substance abuse epidemic, rising cartel activity, lack of adequate detention facilities and overall increase in crime as issues impacting the lack of adequate public safety on the seven Indian reservations in Montana.
“While there are many shortcomings to discuss, none are more clear than the extreme lack of trained law enforcement officers on each reservation,” Tester writes. “Tribal law enforcement officers are being asked to patrol reservations the size of some U.S. states while consistently understaffed.”
Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniih) Nations of the Fort Belknap Indian Community President Jeff Stffarm says Tester’s letter is welcomed and a long time coming.
“This has been a decades-old problem,” Stiffarm said to Native News Online. “We sued the BIA over two years ago because we don’t feel it is doing its job for our reservation.”
Stiffarm, who spent more than 20 years in tribal law enforcement before he entered tribal governance, said the tribe receives only $100,000 more than it did in 1997, which does not come close to the rate of inflation in today’s dollars. The tribe would have to receive more than $2.3 million to simply meet the rate of inflation since 1997.
“Today, we receive $1.3 million to cover over 6,000 acres with seven or eight tribal police officers. Our reservation is the size of Rhode Island. I know how hard it is because I was a tribal police officer,” Stiffarm said. “In 1997, we received $1.2 million dollars. It doesn’t make sense.”
Tester’s letter that voiced the concerns of Stiffarm and other Montana tribal leaders is a known problem that exists in Indian Country. National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President Mark Macarro brought the issue up during his State of Indian Nations address in February. Macarro called for a national public safety and justice summit and said there needs to be deep discussions about jurisdictional and law enforcement needs on our tribal lands and police brutality in our urban tribal communities.
“Unless we get robust funding from Congressional appropriations, this crisis will continue,” Macarro said.
Macarro made testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs during its hybrid listening session, entitled “Public Safety & Justice Resources in Native Communities” in March 2024 on the subject. He testified that there is so much need relating to public safety and justice in Indian Country, he did not know where to start.
Macarro called the situation an acute crisis that has been going on for decades. He blames the crisis on inadequate funding.
Macarro cited the federal standard for officers is 2.4 per 1000 people. The Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota has 0.6 officers per 1000 people.
“There's 56 million acres in Indian Country and given there are a handful of officers on patrol and every call for service — Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) and other series of crimes, such as fentanyl and those committed by cartels — every call for service has an extended response time. It's unacceptable. Every non-Native in any community in the United States wouldn't accept what's happening in Indian Country and something needs to be done about that,” Macarro said.
A month earlier, Stffarm testified before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that dealt with drug cartels on Indian reservations.
“The drug cartels are specifically targeting Indian Country because of a dangerous combination of rural terrain, history of addiction, under-resourced law enforcement, legal loopholes, sparsely populated communities, and exorbitant profits…Profits for these cartels soar the farther they get away from the southern border. A fentanyl pill that costs less than $1.00 in Mexico and southern states, can go for over $100 on our reservation,” Sfiffarm said in his testimony.
Stiffarm told the subcommittee members that cartels target Native women and use homes on reservations as safe houses and distribution hubs.
Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council Executive Director Bill Snell (Crow) told Native News Online he is happy Sen. Tester sent the letter because something has to change because of the need for more officers to deal with the cartels on reservations, not just in Montana, but other reservations in Indian Country.
“There's an even greater need for additional officers to be able to patrol the area because the cartels. The cartels like to target Indian reservations because of the conflict of jurisdictions that occur between the state, the feds and the tribes. So, they like it to be as complicated as possible, which helps them. They tend to focus on the reservations to bring in their drugs and things and hire people, if they can, to distribute them,” Snell said. “As an ex-police officer back way back in the 70s, even then, we had a shortage of police officers on our reservations, at least in Montana and Wyoming, and on Great Plains large land-based reservations. Out here, sometimes you have to respond to calls on a 60-mile by 80-mile reservation.”
Tester said in his letter the lack of officers is not limited to those out on the beat. He cited the lack of sufficient detention facilities and detention officers must also be reviewed.
The Department of the Interior, which oversees the BIA, responded with a “no comment” when asked for a comment on Tester’s letter.
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