Police brutality against Native Americans
Police brutality is defined as the use of excessive force by law enforcement personnel while performing their official duties in an abusive and unjustified manner.
[6] Authors of the study advocate for the formation of special task forces separate from law enforcement to de-escalate mental health crises: “Reducing encounters between on-duty law enforcement and individuals with the most severe psychiatric diseases may represent the single most immediate, practical strategy for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States.”[6] According to the report “Discrimination Against Native Americans in Border Towns, a Briefing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights” indigenous people are especially victimized by police forces in what are known as “border towns”.
[7] These areas are towns located near or next to Native Land Reservations, such as Flagstaff, Arizona; Gallup, New Mexico; Rapid City, South Dakota; Cortez, Colorado; Fairbanks, Alaska and other communities across the country.
[13][12] On November 15, 1997, a Native American man was arrested for public intoxication and then handcuffed, sprayed with a chemical irritant, and verbally assaulted by two Minneapolis officers.
[13] In April 2000, complaints were filed with the Bureau of Indian affairs accusing the Wagner, South Dakota Police Chief of using excessive force in the arrest of a Native American woman.
[18] On November 20, 2016, members of the Oceti Šakowiŋ tribe and allies were protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
[23] In April 2016, Claremont Graduate University researchers Roger Chin, Jean Schroedel, and Lily Rowen presented a paper reviewing newspaper articles which reported fatal police encounters between May 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015.
[2] In a special report which analyzed the researchers’ data, journalist Stephanie Woodward wrote that the “killings of Native people go almost entirely unreported by mainstream U.S. media.”[2] In June of 2023, after a two-year investigation launched by Attorney General Merrick Garland after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the US Department of Justice determined the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) discriminates against Black people and Native Americans in routine police stops.
[24] On November 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14053 entitled “Improving Public Safety and Criminal Justice for Native Americans and Addressing the Crisis of Missing or Murdered Indigenous People.”[26] The Biden administration intended for the order to help combat disproportionate rates of violent crime and sexual and gender based violence perpetrated against indigenous people in the United States, as well as to support the development of “comprehensive law enforcement, prevention, intervention, and support services,” on Native land reservations.
[31] The project began as a foot patrol with about twenty men, women and teenagers walking up and down main streets in Native neighborhoods within Minneapolis.
[30] Patrollers carried walkie-talkies and watched police squad car activity, occasionally broke up fights, and primarily arranged for drunk Native Americans to be taken home safely; they did not seek to enforce laws.
[31] Advocacy groups such as the Lakota People's Law Project and National Indigenous Women's Research Center dedicate and allocate resources to specifically combat violence and police brutality against Native Americans.
[32][33] The Native Lives Matter campaign was established in 2014 by Akicita Sunka-Wakan Ska (Troy Amlee) from the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux Tribes and JR Bobick from St. Paul, Minnesota.
