In 2013, The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation implemented a special provision of the Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA). The tribal domestic violence criminal jurisdiction made it possible for federally recognized tribes to prosecute non-Indian offenders who committed acts of domestic or dating violence on tribal lands. They were one of the first three tribes in the U.S. to do so.
Currently, 24 tribes have implemented the special jurisdiction provision, while several dozen others are working to phase it in. Tribal experts, prosecutors, and survivors say it’s made a significant difference on reservations.
“It has been an incredibly impactful law,” said Virginia Davis, senior advisor with the National Congress of American Indians. “It has held accountable perpetrators who have been terrorizing their families and committing crimes with impunity. One of the victims said, ’I wouldn’t be alive if the tribe wasn’t able to prosecute.’ What could be more impactful than that?”
For Native Americans, violence on tribal lands is rooted in cultural and historical trauma caused by discrimination, racist laws, and forced assimilation. Their way of life destroyed, territory taken away, and tribal sovereignty upended, Native Americans have often been treated as second-class citizens or worse on their own land. In the past, while whites were allowed to victimize Indians without punishment, the law held that no black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a white man.
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