By MICHELLE DeARMOND and JOSE ARBALLO JR., The Press-Enterprise  

SAN JACINTO - The federal law that gives states the right to enforce criminal law on Indian reservations is an antiquated rule that should be repealed, Indian law experts said Monday.

The experts addressed dozens of tribal leaders from across California at the Country Club of Soboba Springs as part of a daylong meeting on Public Law 280. The 55-year-old federal law puts reservations in California and a handful of other states under the authority of state and local law enforcement.

“Why do we still have this damn law on the books? Why don’t we repeal it?” said Joe Myers, executive director of the National Indian Justice Center. “It deserves some consideration.”

Myers derided the law as a holdover from the “termination era,” a time when the federal government worked to terminate tribes, eliminate reservations and assimilate American Indians.

“If termination worked we wouldn’t be sitting here today talking about tribal sovereignty,” he said, speaking from the podium at the country club owned by the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians. “Public Law 280 is part of a package, and the package was the termination policies of Congress.”

The tribe, whose reservation and casino are near San Jacinto, organized the forum in response to a running dispute with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department over the law, which the Bureau of Indian Affairs has said is poorly written and confusing.

The tribe requires deputies visiting its reservation’s residential areas for non-emergency purposes to show identification at a guard shack and state their reasons for being there. The Sheriff’s Department has said the policy is illegal and impedes investigations.

Both sides maintain that Public Law 280 supports their position.

Riverside County Sheriff Stanley Sniff did not attend Monday’s forum, but the department’s new tribal liaison, Alex Tortes, was there. Tortes, a Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian, did not address the crowd during the public portion of the forum. Organizers closed the afternoon session, a comment period for tribal members, to the media.

The Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a query Monday about its position on retrocession, essentially meaning California or individual reservations could opt out of the law. In the past, Sniff has said he simply is enforcing the law because he has to.

Sheriff’s deputies study Public Law 280 using a training video produced in 1998 that features police officers, state officials and members of various California tribes to explain the elements of the law and the history of government-tribal relationships and gives several scenarios deputies may face on reservations, Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said.

Experts on Monday said the answer may be to push for retrocession.

Carole Goldberg, a UCLA law professor and expert on Public Law 280, said retrocession has worked in the past in other states where tribal leaders have convinced their legislators to allow it. Tribal and federal authorities have stepped in and taken over law enforcement, she said.

“The tribe has to be prepared to take those things on,” Goldberg said.

Tribal and federal officers, who often are Indians, generally are more connected and accountable to tribes than local law enforcement and greater trust develops, she said.

Goldberg would like to see Congress address the issue, and she said there’s a pending bill that addresses Public Law 280 and could be amended to make retrocession easier for tribes.

“It should not be left to the states to have control over whether retrocession takes place,” she said. “The law is a throwback, I agree.”

Soboba Chairman Robert Salgado said he plans to talk to lawmakers about the idea and would like to look into it. In the meantime, he said he’s sending some of his tribal security officers to get trained and certified as peace officers next week.

Jim Fletcher with the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Inland office said that tribes will still need to work with local enforcement, even if they take over policing their own reservations.

“We need to work together as neighbors,” he said. “Sometimes we fight with our neighbors.”

Reach Michelle DeArmond at 951-368-9441 or mdearmond@PE.com
© 2008 Press-Enterprise Company

Posted on August 11th, 2008 by hunwut
Filed under: Law and Order, Reservations, sovereignty