A federal district judge has ruled the U-S government has a treaty obligation to support law enforcement on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but isn’t ready to say whether the Oglala Sioux Tribe is entitled to as much funding as it’s seeking.
The tribe sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs and high-level officials last July, leading to a 2-day hearing in February where the BIA denied having any such obligation and asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
Judge Roberto Lange the “express language” of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, when read with other treaties and federal laws, “imposes some duty on the United States to provide law enforcement support on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.”
He went on to write, though, that “the contours of that duty is a more difficult question,” which is why he needs more time and information before deciding the required level of funding and manpower.
OST leaders see the ruling as a victory, saying the important point is that Lange confirmed a duty to fund policing on the reservation. They also like that he ordered federal officials to meet with them “to work together promptly to figure out how to more fairly fund tribal law enforcement.”
The tribe contends it’s entitled to federal funding for 120 full- equipped officers for the sprawling Pine Ridge Reservation, a level the federal government disputes. Judge Lange wrote that while the government “has a treaty duty unique to the Tribe,” the tribe hasn’t proven at this point that the support should be for 120 officers.
Lange directed the BIA to help the tribe refine its funding requests “as soon as practicable” to reflect its treaty obligations, and to reevaluate its census-based population estimates for the reservation.
The OST says 40,000 live on the Pine Ridge Reservation while the BIA estimate is only 19,800 to 32,000 – which the judge said likely represents an undercount.
Lange’s ruling gave a dire depiction of crime on the more than 5,400-square-mile reservation, which is about the size of the state of Connecticut.
He noted that it’s among the most impoverished places in the country with communities that in recent years have struggled with dangerous and highly addictive drugs and experienced unprecedented levels of violence and threats to public safety with a lack of “competent and effective law enforcement on the Reservation a big reason for the crisis.”
Lange wrote that at any given time over the last several years, the tribe has had only enough funding to employ roughly 33 police officers and 7 criminal investigators to cover all of its 911 calls – nearly 134,000 calls in 2021 alone – but with 8 or fewer available at times.
The result of the lack of officers on duty to response was that many calls were abandoned or not properly investigated, leaving many crimes to go unprosecuted.
The judge wrote that while neither side disputes that crime is “very high” on the reservation and that police there are underfunded, the federal government insists “that the funding is fair, given budget constraints and Congress’s decision to underfund law enforcement services in Indian country generally.”
The outcome of the case could affect other tribes and reservations. The Northern Cheyenne Tribe in Montana has filed its own similar lawsuit. Across the country, Native American tribes have increasingly advocated through the courts for treaty rights, including hunting, fishing and education, with some success.