Routledge Handbook on Native American Justice Issues

Laurence Armand French

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367074760
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429665059
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Law

Native Americans are disproportionately represented as offenders in the U.S. criminal justice system. Routledge Handbook on Native American Justice Issues is an authoritative volume that provides an overview of the state of American Indigenous populations and their contact with justice concerns and the criminal justice system. The volume covers the history and origins of Indian Country in America; continuing controversies regarding treaties; unique issues surrounding tribal law enforcement; the operation of tribal courts and corrections, including the influence of Indigenous restorative justice practices; the impact of native religions and customs; youth justice issues, including educational practices and gaps; women's justice issues; and special circumstances surrounding healthcare for Indians, including the role substance abuse plays in contributing to criminal justice problems.

Bringing together contributions from leading scholars – many of them Native Americans – that explore key issues fundamental to understanding the relationships between Native peoples and contemporary criminal justice, editor Laurence Armand French draws on more than 40 years of experience with Native American individuals and groups to provide contextual material that incorporates criminology, sociology, anthropology, cultural psychology, and history to give readers a true picture of the wrongs perpetrated against Native Americans and their effects on the current operation of Native American justice. This compilation analyzes the nature of justice for Native Americans, including unique and emerging problems, theoretical issues, and policy implications. It is a valuable resource for all scholars with an interest in Native American culture and in the analysis and rectification of the criminal justice system's disparate impact on people of color.

Part I

Historical Antecedents

A Dismal Past

Laurence Armand French

Introduction

The Routledge Handbook on Native American Justice Issues provides an abridged account of one of the most unique chapters in European colonialism and North American geopolitics, one that transcends the mere exploitation of Indigenous peoples and their lands for monetary gain or strategic location in both war and commerce. It has the additional element of both slavery and ethnic cleansing; practices justified under the guise of White Supremacy. While exploitation of the Indigenous peoples of the Americans (also known as Native Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, First Nations, First Peoples, Aboriginals, Inuit/Eskimo, Métis, Mestizo . . .) was common to all the European colonial powers claiming portions of the Americas (Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Russia), the 13 British North American colonies that later became the United States of America were among the worst offenders of Indigenous peoples, imposing a harsh sentence on these original inhabitants based on their extreme version of “White Supremacy” and the prophecy of Manifest Destiny. From this ethnocentric perspective Whites conjured up a negative, demonizing stereotype, one that portrays the American Indian as a savage, dim-witted, primitive subhuman that needed to be eliminated so that good Christian Whites could inhabit the land and make it productive. Americans addressed their “Indian Problem” using both physical and cultural genocide with an array of methods including massacres, destroying their livelihood, outlawing their customs and practices, stealing their lands under false pretense, forced removal, establishing military-run concentration camps, segregation, slavery, and practices that established the foundation for injustices that continue to the present.

1

Pre-Columbian America

Laurence Armand French

Pre-Columbian America was inhabited by millions of people, speaking more than 300 languages, who created complex cultures with their own unique rites, customs, and lifestyles. In many instances, their democratic societies were more equalitarian than that of the Europeans, especially the slave-dominant culture of the United States. Indeed, the pre-Columbian natives of the Americas represented a diversity of cultures and societies from hunting and gathering tribes to horticultural groups and even sophisticated city-states such as those developed by the Aztec, Inca, and Mayan empires of Mexico and Central and South America.

Linguistic Groups and Confederations

The population of pre-Columbian America is estimated to have been between 15 and 80 million at the time of European contact. James Mooney, the noted Smithsonian anthropologist, estimated the Indigenous population within the United States to be over one million at the time of white contact.¹ However, Douglas H. Ubelaker felt this was a low estimate in that Mooney most likely did not factor in massive deaths brought about by epidemics associated with diseases imported by both Whites and African Blacks such as smallpox, measles, and plague.² Based on this recalculation, the pre-Columbian population in the United States at the time of European contact was more than five million aboriginals. The numerous tribes throughout North America were grouped linguistically and, for the most part, geographically. The six major linguistic groups were the Algonquin, Iroquoian, Muskhogean, Siouan, Athapaskan, and the Hohokam/Pueblo tribes of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

Algonquian Tribes

The Algonquin tribes dominated much of Canada into the western Great Plains and east to the Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes as well as the Maritime Provinces, New England and the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States down to the coast of North Carolina. Geographically, the Algonquian peoples occupied the most territory in the New World north of Mexico. Algonquian people are the ones that both the French and British encountered during the initial colonial era. The French explorers and trappers encountered the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq (Mic Mac) in what is now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (formerly Acadia) and the Betsiamites, Atikamekw, Anishinaabe, and Innu further north in what is now northern Quebec province. The British colonist, notably the Puritans, encountered the Wampanoag, Massachusett, Narragansett, Nipmuck, Mohegan, Pequot, Pocumtuc, Quinnipiac, and Tunxis, within the lower 13 colonies and the Pennacook, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy in their northern wilderness territories (New Hampshire and Maine). Algonquian speaking peoples also resided in what is now Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and the Hudson Valley portion of New York and the area now comprising New York City. Algonquian tribes extended south to Roanoke Virginia and the upper shores of North Carolina.

Algonquian tribes also existed along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers such as the Shawnee, Illiniwek (Illinois), Kickapoo, Menominee, Miami, and Sac and Fox. Their first European contact was with the French trappers and traders hence the proliferation of French names in both the north east and midwestern portions of both Canada and the United States, especially along major waterways. The French influence extended to the upper western portions of the United States into Canada with the Ojibwa/ Chippewa, Ottawa, and Cree tribes as well as other Great Plains tribes including the Arapaho, Blackfoot Confederacy Cheyenne, and Gros Ventre.³

Iroquoian Tribes

Most of the Iroquoian tribes also resided in the eastern portion of what are now Canada and the United States, competing with the Algonquian tribes to their east. One of the northeastern Iroquoian tribes, the Huron, often conflicted with the major Five Tribe Confederation – the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk – with the Huron dominating the territory north of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes while the Confederation resided south of these waterways. Pre-Columbian conflicts were common between neighboring Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes but were limited to annual warrior rites rather than devastating wars. The Algonquian Mohican tribe was the closest to the Five Tribe Confederation and suffered considerably when the Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes were forced into the European colonial conflicts, with the former siding with the French and latter, the British/American forces.

The Tuscarora and Cherokee had long resided in what is now North Carolina with the Cherokee Nation extending into north Georgia, Tennessee, and parts of Virginia. The Tuscarora had linguistic links to their northeastern cousins (and later joined the Iroquoian Confederation), the Cherokee’s link to other Iroquoian tribes is lost to history. Even the rich Cherokee lore does not provide a historical link to the tribes in lower Quebec and upper New York. While all the Iroquoian groups, north and south, had successful agrarian cultures, the Cherokee lifestyle was closer to their Muskhogean neighbors than to that of the Iroquoian Confederacy. Indeed, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes had long established permanent agrarian lifestyles prior to white contact, fostering a lifestyle that was the envy of the European colonists that eventually spelled their forceful removal.⁴

Muskhogean People

The tribes of this group share similarities with the Indians of southern Mexico, Central and South America in that their ancestors built pyramid-type mounds and lived in city-type arrangements instead of smaller town-like communities associated with other pre-Columbian non-nomadic Indigenous peoples. European settlers were awed by the mounds believing that they must represent a more advanced (white) society that was overtaken by the savages that now occupied these lands. A common belief was that the original mound people represented the twelve lost tribes of Israel. It took decades of scientific study of the mound people’s ancestors and the groups existing at the time of European contact to determine that they were the same people, American Indians and not some superior early European group. The Mississippian culture peoples emerged as the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes residing in established agricultural villages linked by clan headquarters often known as mother towns. The Cherokee people followed this pattern, also being a matrilineal society. Like their Iroquoian counterparts in the northeast, the Muscogee tribes forged confederacies to combat the intruding white colonists and the disease and hardships they brought in their wake. Interestingly, Chickasaw and Choctaw oral history suggests that they once resided west of the Mississippi River and migrated to the southeastern woodlands. At any rate, they had well established and flourishing villages at the time of white contact.⁵

Siouan Tribes

The pre-Columbian Siouan linguistic groups extended from the east (Cataba, Woccon), through the Ohio River valley (Biloxi); the Mississippi River valley (Mandan, Assiniboine, Dakota and Lakota, Kansa, Omaha-Ponca, Osage, Quapaw, Winnebago, Iowa-Otoe-Missouria) to the west (Crow, Hidatsa). Indeed, the aboriginal Sioux were a large and diverse family, second only to the Algonquians. At the time of white contact they were both neighbors to the Muskhogean tribes and the Cherokee of the southeast but the Athapaskans off to the west. The original Eastern Sioux were Knoll people (mound builders) who resided in the Ohio Valley as woodland natives engaging in hunting and gathering with some horticultural endeavors. Archaeological evidence suggests that the early Sioux migrated slowly from the Ohio/Kentucky region of the United States into what are now the states of Alabama, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois. From this initial migration, four basic groups emerged: the Eastern Sioux, Southern Sioux, Midwestern Sioux, and the northern woodlands/Great Plains Sioux. It is the latter group which history best documents. Anthropologists saw the Great Plains Sioux as nomadic hundreds of years prior to white contact and horse transportation, subsisting on the great buffalo herds that existed during the pre-Columbian era. Once these Sioux migrated from the northern woodlands and crossed the Missouri River their culture adapted. They soon claimed a vast region of the Great Plains from the Missouri River to the Black Hills.

Altogether, 19 distinctive Siouan groups migrated from the northern woodland to the Great Plains. In addition to the Winnebago who initiated from eastern Wisconsin, there were the Hidatsa and Crow. The Mandan, Hunkpapa, Sans Arcs, and Blackfeet (Silila or Sihasapa) also shared the areas in what is now the U.S. state of North Dakota while the Assiniboines resided in the section of Canada just north of the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota. The Mdewkanton, Wahpeton, Washpekute, and Sisseton, collectively known as the “Santee Sioux,” were all from what is now the U.S. state of Minnesota as were the Yankton, Yanktonai, and Hunkpatina. The Brule, Miniconjou, Oglala, and Oohenonpa, on the other hand, were from what is now the state of North Dakota and are known collectively as the “Lacota Sioux.” While there was never a Sioux nation per se prior to white contact, the Teton Sioux (Seven Bands of Seven Fires) did meet periodically to map out their hunting grounds and to reinforce their common culture.⁶

Athapaskan Tribes

The Athapaskan tribes are the ones most likely to have originated in northern Europe and the Arctic having crossed from the Aleutians to what is now the U.S. state of Alaska. Their range of migration extended from Alaska through western Canada and the west coast of the United States to northern Mexico. The contemporary Athapaskan tribes of Canada and the largest U.S. Indian group, the Navajo, refer to themselves as the Dene or Diné. The Athapaskan tribes fall into three basic geolinguistic categories: the Northern Athapaskans; the Pacific Coast Athapaskans; and the Southern Athapaskans. The Northern Athapaskans reside in the Alaska interior and northwestern Canada (Yukon; Northwest Territories) as well as in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba provinces in Canada. The colorful lifestyle and intricately abstractly carved boats and totems distinguished the Pacific Athapaksan, like the Tlingit, from their other relatives. The Pacific Coast Athapaskan tribes occupied the west coast of the United States from Washington to California while Southern Athapaskans resided inland from the Pacific coast in the arid southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico as well as northwestern Mexico. The most famous Athapaskan tribes from this region are the Navajo and the Apache.

While little is known about the western Athapaskan prior to European (Spanish) contact, it is generally accepted that the Navajo, or Diné, and their cousins, the Apache, came from western Canada centuries prior to white contact. There is even controversy over how the Diné, the term that the Navajo traditionally call themselves, came to be termed, Navajo or Navaho. Some claim that this is the term the Zuni called them, signifying “raiders of the fields.” This makes sense in that the Athapaskans were latecomers to the U.S. southwest, often raiding their long-established Pueblo neighbors long before white contact. The Navajo eventually adopted the horticultural ways of their Pueblo neighbors as did some of the western Apache so that the Navajo actually represented a blend of Athapaskan and Pueblo cultures. This blending process occurred some 600 years prior to European influence. Likely the greatest influence came from the Hopi Pueblo which today is surrounded by the vast Navajo Nation. Following European contact, Pueblo refugees fled to the Navajo lands following their defeat by the Spanish in the 1680–1692 war. Hence, following over 1,000 years of interaction, the Navajo/Diné of the United States tend to look more like their Pu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• PART I Historical Antecedents: A Dismal Past
• PART II Contemporary Scene
• PART III Other Voices
• Index