Mark Trahant is a Kaiser Media Fellow examining the Indian Health Service and its relevance to the national health care reform debate. He is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and writes from Fort Hall, Idaho. Comment at www.marktrahant.com. His new book is “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s trite to say, “everything is connected.” It’s a phrase that comes up in the context of family, the environment, or perhaps, philosophy. When the subject is reservation violence, however, that same notion could be rewritten as a blunt question: Docs or cops?

Cops are getting most of the attention after the signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act. At a White House ceremony on Thursday, Lisa Marie Iyotte introduced President Barack Obama. She is an enrolled member of the White Clay People, her father’s tribe, but grew up and lives as a Sicangu Lakota or Rosebud Sioux. She had the most difficult task: Describing her own brutal assault and rape that was witnessed by her children. The attack was never prosecuted because of the jurisdictional maze that complicates criminal justice in Indian Country.

“All of you come at this from different angles, but you’re united in support of this bill because you believe, like I do, that it is unconscionable that crime rates in Indian Country are more than twice the national average and up to 20 times the national average on some reservations,” the president said. “And all of you believe, like I do, that when one in three Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes, that is an assault on our national conscience; it is an affront to our shared humanity; it is something that we cannot allow to continue.”

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Here’s the full story from the Associated Press:

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — President Barack Obama has signed a bill he says will address the unique public safety challenges facing American Indian tribes.

Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act on Thursday.

The measure provides for the appointment of special U.S. attorneys to ensure violent crimes in tribal communities are prosecuted. It also revamps training for reservation police, expands the sentencing authority of tribal courts from one to three years, addresses jurisdictional issues and improves the collection and reporting of Indian crime data.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who authored the bill, says millions of American Indians have lived far too long with unacceptable levels of violent crime.

Tribes hailed the signing as a reaffirmation of the federal government’s trust responsibility to ensure their communities are safe.

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Rob Capriccioso of Indian Country Today takes an in-depth look, here, at the Tribal Law and Order Act just approved by Congress and expected to get President Obama’s signature.

Obama called the bill “important step to help the federal government better address the unique public safety challenges that confront tribal communities.”

And the bill was one of the top priorities for Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who spoke of the “crisis” in law enforcement on many reservations.

Capriccioso details some of the bill’s provisions:

Under the bill, tribal courts will be allowed to impose sentences of up to three years, but their authority is affected in some ways, like being required to follow U.S. court system procedures.

Also, tribes prosecuting individuals for crimes that could land them in jail for more than a year must provide defendants with the same right to a lawyer that they would have in state or federal court. …

Under the new law, when a tribe provides a defendant a lawyer, he or she must be licensed in either federal, state, or tribal court, and that court has to have “appropriate professional licensing standards and effectively ensures the competence and professional responsibility of its licensed attorneys.” Similarly, tribal judges have to have “sufficient legal training to preside over criminal proceedings” and also be licensed in federal, state, or tribal courts to practice law.

However, the story notes that the bill will end up costing some tribes as they implement its standards.

Gwen Florio

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Jails on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation are badly in need of an overhaul. But that need ran right into the reality of this year’s recession.

The result? Ten fewer corrections staff people than the previous year, Andrea J. Cook of the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reports here:

Adequately housing and supervising the more than 17,500 adult prisoners admitted to jails on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation over the past year was a bigger problem than the prisoners themselves, according to Jean Whirlwind Horse, captain of corrections for the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Department of Public Safety.

Whirlwind Horse supervises the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s corrections system, which includes a 144-bed adult offenders facility in Pine Ridge, the 24-bed Medicine Root Detention Center for adults in Kyle, and the KiYuksa O’Tipi Reintegration Center, a 32-bed juvenile facility in Kyle.

Staffing isn’t the only problem. Conditions are so bad at the Medicine Root center that prisoners had to move back and forth when heating and cooling systems failed. Offenders awaiting trial and sentencing were held in the Pine Ridge jail until the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed it in August 2008, ruling it was unsafe.

“The bottom line is that conditions at the jail would never be tolerated under federal and state laws,” says Department of Public Safety attorney Patty Marks.

Improvements could come in the form of the Tribal Law and Order Act, which would increase funding for law enforcement and ustice programs on reservations. The only problem? Congress has to fund it.

Gwen Florio

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