In January 2021, Crushing Colonialism was proud to sign onto its very first U.S. Supreme Court brief in support of safety for Native women.

The brief from our friends at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center read, in part:

Today, the third leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women is murder, 13 and the murder rates of Native women on some reservations is as much as ten times higher than the national average.

The brief [PDF] added that the “majority of these violent crimes committed against Native women are committed by non-Natives.”

And while the courts of the colonizer aren’t always kind to Indigenous peoples, we are happy to report that the Supreme Court heard our pleas in a case known as United States v. Cooley. By a unanimous vote of 9-0, the justices on June 1, 2021, confirmed that non-Natives can be stopped and searched, if even temporarily, by tribal safety officers.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer observed that non-Natives can engage in activity that directly threatens the health and safety of Native women:

To deny a tribal police officer authority to search and detain for a reasonable time any person he or she believes may commit or has committed a crime would make it difficult for tribes to protect themselves against ongoing threats.

Citing the NIWRC brief that was joined by Crushing Colonialism, Justice Breyer also noted that requiring tribal safety officers to ignore non-Native perpetrators poses a problem “because most of those who live on Indian reservations are non-Indians, this problem of interpretation could arise frequently.”

The ruling is seen as victory for the inherent sovereignty of Indian nations to protect our own from colonizer governments. Here is a statement from Fawn Sharp, President of the National Congress of American Indians, about the decision in United States v. Cooley:

Protecting our tribal citizens is one of the most basic services we can provide, and today every member of the Supreme Court agreed. This 9-0 decision is one of the strongest affirmations of tribal sovereignty in a generation and helps secure Native communities. For too long, non-Native criminals escaped justice from crimes committed on tribal lands, but today’s unanimous decision in United States v. Cooley is monumental in changing that. We applaud this decision and look forward to advocating for our member tribes as they improve safety and security in tribal communities as a result of this new precedent.

Safety for Native women is paramount and only by recognizing the inherent sovereignty of Indian nations can we truly begin to crush colonialism.

Wado (Thank you in Tsalagi) to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center for including Crushing Colonialism in the important brief.