{Indian} Tribes Revive Ancient Penalty

BELLINGHAM, WASH. -- For generations the Noland family has led a troubled life on the Lummi Indian reservation. They have struggled with alcohol, painkillers and, more recently, crack. Seven family members are now jailed, several for dealing drugs, on and off tribal land.

Their experience has been repeated hundreds of times on the sprawling, desperately poor reservation of 2,000 Lummi, where addiction and crime have become pervasive. It is the reason that the Lummi tribe has turned as a last resort to a severe and bygone punishment, seeking to banish five of the young men in jail and another recently released. It is also the reason for evicting Yevonne Noland, 48, the matriarch of the Noland clan, from her modest blue house on the reservation, because her son, a convicted drug dealer, was listed on the lease.

Banishment once turned unwanted members of a tribe into a caste of the "walking dead," and some people criticize it as excessive and inhumane, more extreme than the punishments meted out by the world outside and a betrayal of an already fragile culture.

But a growing number of tribes across the country, desperate to slow the wounds of drug and alcohol abuse, gambling, poverty and violence, have used banishment in varying forms in the past decade. Tribal leaders see this ancient response, which reflects American Indian respect for community, as a painful but necessary deterrent.

"We need to go back to our old ways," said Darrell Hillaire, chairman of the Lummi Tribal Council, shortly before a recent early morning meeting about the tribe's new campaign against drugs. "We had to say enough is enough."

While the Lummi use banishment to root out drug dealers, other tribes, such as the Chippewa of Grand Portage, Minn., are using it to rid the reservation of the worst troublemakers and to preserve what they say is a shared set of core values. The Grand Portage banishments, which can be imposed on Indians and non-Indians who visit the reservation, may last as long as the tribal council deems fit, even for life.

Being banished can mean losing health, housing and education benefits, tribal rights to fishing and hunting, burial rights, even the cash payments made to members of tribes earning casino profits.

Recently the Lummi have begun evicting the residents of households in which someone is charged with any drug-related crime. That is what happened to Noland, who said she had never been arrested yet was evicted from her home because of her son's conviction for selling painkillers outside the reservation. She is now awaiting a ruling from the tribal court on her appeal of that decision.

Even within the Lummi Tribal Council, there is debate about how far the nation should go in its war on drugs, particularly around the eviction policy.

"Would we propose taking someone's food or water?" said Perry Adams, vice chairman of the Lummi Tribal Council. "It is a human right, and for us to turn housing into a form of policing -- I think we've gone too far. I think we had good intentions, but does the tribe really have the right to take away membership in the nation?"

Tribal leaders estimate that at least 500 Indians on the reservation are addicted to painkillers or heroin and scores of others to alcohol. Guns and violence plague some neighborhoods. Babies are born addicted to drugs. Noland's 15-month-old grand-niece died two years ago of an overdose after eating an OxyContin painkiller pill that was dropped on the ground.

Some Indians say that banishment, while seemingly harsh, must be studied through the prism of tradition: It avoids bloodshed and reflects tribes' community values. It also is a move toward self-governance for bands that have found outside law enforcement to be ineffective.

Even in places like Grand Portage, where violence and drugs are relatively rare, Chippewa leaders have turned to banishment. The tribal lands are policed by county law enforcement officers, but when a crowd got out of hand last summer, people on the reservation demanded more than an arrest by the sheriff, more than criminal charges from a county prosecutor.

"We see ourselves here as kind of a big family, and so we needed to be part of the solution," said Norman W. Deschampe, the tribal council chairman.

Just 350 members of the Grand Portage Chippewa band live on the banks of Lake Superior, in mobile homes and duplexes along roads rarely crossed in the winter except by tourists headed to the casino and truckers hauling loads south to Duluth. Life is mostly quiet.

But one Saturday night in July, a group of people drove up to nearby Mount Maude and wound up talking and drinking and fighting. Along the way, some pulled knives, vandalized cars and made death threats.

Within days, another crowd packed into the ordinarily empty tribal council meeting, demanding change.

No banishment provision existed in Grand Portage, but that night the council unanimously voted to remove a mother, her two grown sons and a family friend in connection with the fight, and began writing a long resolution adding "exclusion" to the band's rules.

John Morrin, a member of the tribal council, said he struggled over the banishments. He had always leaned, he said, toward counseling and repair, not rejection. "This was a hard thing to do if you care about people," said Morrin, who ultimately voted to banish the woman and her family, even though he said he was related to them.

The woman, Jacquelyn Jackson, now lives wherever she can. She sometimes sleeps on a cot in an elderly friend's shabby apartment near downtown Duluth. Other times, she stays in a pile of blankets inside a tent in a dark basement of a relative's girlfriend's house.

Jackson, 43, acknowledged that she behaved terribly that summer night. She was drunk and violent and wrong, she said on a bitterly cold recent morning in Duluth.

But she said the punishment was too severe: losing her subsidized duplex on the reservation, losing her friends, losing her way of life in an isolated, quiet place.

"That's my land, too," Jackson said. "I've never been homeless in my life. I'm never homeless. But I guess I am."

We have an impossible neighbor. A very angry (it seems) single mother of a 5 yr old boy that can do no wrong and is a physical threat to my kids.
We've lived here three and a half years and in that time we've endured many verbal assaults and my kids have had rocks and sticks thrown at them.
We tried witnessing to these folks, inviting them and getting them to church, having the boy over for birthdays and fellowshipping with the woman as an adult, but she is, in our opinion, just a card-carrying nut case.

This summer we decided that we'd just plain break any relations with her/them.

Daily shouts from her back porch lasted about a week and a half.

We've been at peace for about six months now.

Tough Love is a valid psychology IMO.

A couple years back a village we taught at 86'ed a high schooler for bringing a pistol to school; course this kid had been all kinds of problems. Trouble is that they just move to another related village and drink/drug themselves to death there. Pretty sad to see the effects of govt assistance combined with the fact they pretty much have had everything taken from them over the years; and that's the truth.

The alcohol really is killing these people off. We lost another village member last week; froze to death drunk on his 18 mile walk back from package store located off community dry limits. We have lost 4 natives to alcohol out of village of 33 over the last 2 years. Our VPSO decided to confiscate all alcohol he caught on natives. He'd catch them on way back from package store and dump the booze on the road. That really upset the village. Probably be better to just sell beer openly in community and no hard liquor, at least nobody would freeze to death on the walk back from package store.

Ya know, many really decent, respectable, sharing people in all villages. Problem is most of the older tribal members that are todays leaders drank when they were young also. Maybe 1/2 come out of it and the other half died in the process.

Alot of the natives up here were a stoneage people 50 years back. We can't pass laws from our cultural perspective thinking one size fits all will solve the problem; don't work. I think our law enforcement people have to do a better job preventing the alcohol related deaths. Things like taking somebody home rather than arresting them. Working with the village leadership with increased sensitivity to intercept future problems. Banishment might work in some areas, but up here the smaller villages are all inter-related and people just move around and continue to die from alcohol. Most of the natives I see that have really quit the booze & dope have accomplished it through Christ; and I know some that I wish I was as respectable as they have become.

I was raised near Pine Ridge in South Dakota. Alcohol has destroyed the entire Sioux Nation. Unemployment is 90%, alcoholism is 85-90%, fetal alcohol syndrome is 95%, high school graduation rate is around 15%. Drugs are almost as common as drinking.

The Oglala earn no tribal money. They get only Federal checks monthly, their housing is provided and maintained by our tax dollars. During the horrible winters there the people always run out of firewood. So they burn their government supplied furniture, including the doors to the houses. Eventually, there is nothing combustible left. The doors to refrigerators are used for sleds, since the inside of the houses are freezing anyway. The fastest animal there is a dog - very few of them survive. I've seen them captured, then hung from the clothesline and beaten to death in order to "tenderize" them prior to boiling. Commodity cheese, dairy products, and bison meat are the staples for food.

When spring rolls back around, they count their dead from the winter - both from drinking and suicides - and the Feds come rolling back in to rebuild the houses. It is the bleakest existence I have ever seen humans endure. How a person could keep motivated enough to survive that is amazing. The saddest part is that they have brought it upon themselves. When will the Sioux Nation crawl out of the bottle? I'm Cherokee, and it has always eluded me as to how this once proud warrior tribe could become this group of walking dead. I guess it is a microcosm of the socialist Hell that the left has in store for us should they attain their goals. Only problem is that there would be no one to pay the bills - we'd all be dependents of the State.

The only way that the Sioux can be saved would be for them to finally have a war again - they don't really care who it would be against - but peace will be their death.

Have you ever got to thinking that the govt's big plan for natives is either assimilation or death. I'm being serious here. But how can they become part of America when there is no economy, no work ethic being developed, no future, no dreams; just the endless cycle of alcohol related dysfunction & death; that seems to continue from govt money in one way or another.

I'll be the first one to say the natives have had pretty much everything taken off of them. Any white person that has lived near a village will agree. I guess the bottomline is until you have lived in a village, you would never understand.

I know that natives don't get all that much money to live on, but I see so many of the young people with alcohol related problems. It seems that there is plenty of money for the booze. Yet, I know elders that were still had their economic freedom from govt assistance up into the 70's. They trapped, worked gold claims, fished for salmon commercially and were self supporting. Nowadays, very few natives start businesses or are economically free. What happened? I really believe the govt gives them just enough money to get by and drink themselves to death; but not enough to develop a viable economy that would lead to real freedom. Maybe the money goes in the wrong direction at times. One thing I do know is that the natives hate being in this position, they don't like seeing their people die out, but don't know how to get out of this black hole.

I have lived in 3 different Athabaskan villages. One in urban Alaska, my native neighbors there were EMT's & realtors. They had access to jobs; built their own houses, were achieving the American dream. Another was Katie Johns village. Many good people there but also seemed that everyone expected the govt to do do do and there was never much of a thought by but a few village members of attaining a real future for the village. Everything was based on the govt money and grants. Sad, because I truely believe that the dysfunction, child abuse, alcoholism, violence, 80% FAS rates, and on and on were related to this. To me, it seemed that the respectable people there were just plain tired of fighting to stop all the problems. Maybe I am wrong judging anyone. The village we now live has problems but also the leadership takes a stand. Pretty good people here. They have really treated our family well. Still it hurts everyone in our town of 120 whites & 30 natives when another person dies from alcohol; Imagine how the natives feel seeing their community slowly disappear. 25 years back, there were 40 natives & 3 white kids in the school. Today its 3 native kids and 23 white kids. These people don't deserve this.

I guess my white boy perspective could be wrong, but I think the lucky natives are the ones that live in areas where they can find jobs. They can live in both worlds. Then they have real freedom.

When you say proud people, natives up here still practice many of their social/moral traditions. Sharing is the big one; boy I wish all america could learn from natives on this one. Respect for elders, the land, and just the native way of accepting adversity without confrontation. So maybe there is a path out of the problems I am talking about. I just wish our govt did a better job at helping them to learn how to fish rather than giving them fish.

Even as a repub, I think our govt has a responsibility to the natives and their plight. We have created this terrible mess. Got to be a better answer than having entire communities disappear into history. No offense meant here, just my opinion.

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