The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“INDIAN HEALTH CARE IMPROVEMENT ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2007--Continued” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S1146 on Feb. 25, 2008.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
INDIAN HEALTH CARE IMPROVEMENT ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2007--Continued
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want to pick up where I left off regarding the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which is the pending business before the Senate. As I stated earlier, we will be having a series of votes tomorrow on a number of amendments. One, I think, improves this bill and addresses an issue which is important to me and a number of my colleagues. The amendment is offered by our colleague from Louisiana, Senator Vitter, amendment No. 3896.
If the amendment is adopted, it would codify Federal Indian health care service funds. I hope that is an amendment that will be adopted to the bill. I think that is important to have.
Also, as we consider these final amendments, I hope we can also see action in the other body, the House of Representatives, because the Senate acting on this is long overdue. It is critically important to the tribes I represent that we get an Indian Health Care Improvement Act reauthorization in place. But the fact that the Senate has acted won't amount to much if in fact the other body doesn't also take up this legislation and pass it and enable us to go into conference and get a bill we can put on the President's desk that he can sign into law.
I wish to speak specifically to one amendment that was adopted. Again, I thank my colleagues Senators Murkowski and Dorgan for working with me to have it adopted. It has to do with tribal justice in the Dakotas.
One of the amendments I offered to this bill, No. 4021, goes a long way toward attempting to improve the issue that, in my view, is at the core fundamentally to a lot of issues we are having in Indian country, and that is law enforcement. The amendment simply attempts to help with the process, the analysis of what is happening with regard to justice and law enforcement in Indian Country by having the GAO complete a study within 1 year of the tribal justice systems within North Dakota and South Dakota, two States that have a high incidence of crime on our reservations.
Specifically, I am asking the study to focus, one, on how tribal courts currently function and how they are supposed to function; second, an analysis of the components of tribal justice systems; third, a review of the origins and development of tribal justice systems; fourth, an analysis of the weakness of the tribal justice systems; five, an analysis of tribal leader suggestions to the current problems.
This is where I think it is important that we listen to the elected leadership on the reservations. Last week during the congressional break, I happened to have had the opportunity to travel across my State. I stopped at a couple different reservations. I was up on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation and also at the Sisseton-
Wahpeton Oyate reservation with the tribal chairmen. The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is Ron His Horse Is Thunder, and the chairman of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe is Michael Selvage.
One of the issues that came up in the meetings was this issue of law enforcement. There is, of course, in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe a good example of what I am talking about in terms of the dimensions of this problem. You have 2.4 million acres of land on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation. Yet you have about 10,000 people and you only have about 9 policemen, law enforcement personnel out there, who are committed to that large geographic area. At any given time, you are only going to have a couple of them on duty. So you have all kinds of issues that come up relating to being able to respond in a timely way to calls and to make arrests. I think it is a very difficult challenge that we face on the reservations partly because of the geography but also because of the sparsity that we have today of law enforcement personnel.
I think the GAO study will look at a lot of issues and that will be one component. It will look at the tribal court system, which is also something we need to look at and determine what, if anything, can be done to improve the workings of the system. We clearly have a problem that, if you look at the data, needs to be addressed.
If you don't contemplate or understand the need for this amendment, let me give you a couple of pieces of information. Studies show that one out of every three Native American women will be raped in their lifetime. The Department of Justice has found that American Indian women are 2\1/2\ times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women throughout the rest of the country. Remote reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota have an average of 10 times as much crime as the rest of the Nation.
What this GAO study would do is it would assist the tribes not only in North Dakota and South Dakota but I think assist policymakers in Congress concerning possible solutions that could be used to reduce the higher rates of crime on reservations. Having met numerous times with members of the tribal government, tribal councils, and the chairmen on these reservations, and having listened to the stories of people who live there, there isn't anything we can do that is more important, in my view, than to provide security.
We are talking about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. This is a health and public safety issue. If you don't have that, you cannot have economic development; you cannot have kids learning in a safe and secure environment. They are not going to be able to learn at the very fastest rate possible if they are worried about their security. This is an important issue, one that I think needs to be addressed.
Again, I appreciate the willingness on behalf of the managers of the bill to accept this amendment. I hope as the process moves forward, we will see action by the House of Representatives that will allow us to get a bill passed through the Congress and on the President's desk, signed into law, which will address the serious health care needs on the reservations, but also this important amendment, the GAO study, will allow us to take a close look--for the first time, a sort of outside objective third-party look at tribal justice in the Dakotas.
As I mentioned, it is a very serious need and challenge we face. I got lots of good information during my visit last week from members of the tribal council and the chairmen regarding that subject. I think they are all anxious to get the study under way and anxious to get the results so we can move forward with policies that make sense and that will keep our reservations safe for young people to learn and for those who want to come there and start businesses and have a safe environment in which to do that.
With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.
____________________
