Civil Rights: Equality for the Red Man

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Many of the most important Supreme Court decisions in recent years have afforded minority groups, particularly Negroes, new constitutional protections. Effective as they may have been, the high-court rulings have resulted in precious little improvement for one sizable minority group—the American Indian.

Hindering the Indian's rise to legal equality are many factors, among them Indian ignorance of the law, lethargy, and a reluctance to be completely assimilated by 20th century white society. But the most significant reason is the special status enjoyed—and suffered—by 370,000 reservation Indians. Although these Indians have been U.S. citizens since 1924, the reservations they live on are still considered by the Federal Government to be quasi-sovereign entities entitled to self-government and self-regulation. Thus the reservation Indian has constitutional rights, like any other citizen, but those rights have often been denied him by tribal law and by tradition.

Morass of Jurisdiction. In addition to state and federal law, reservation Indians are governed by sundry legal systems applicable only to them. Federal courts deal with such felonies as murder, arson and armed robbery committed on the reservation. States have jurisdiction over nonfederal crimes committed by the red man off the reservation. More than 50 tribal courts, run mostly by ill-trained Indian officials, decide small civil cases, misdemeanors and some felonies that occur on the reservations throughout the U.S. Complicating this complexity are Indian customs and traditions of justice, which include such warlockery as the divination—by observed hand trembling—of witches and thieves.

A typical battleground in the clash between white man's and red man's law is the 25,000-sq.-mi. Navajo territory (pop. 110,000) of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Philosophically, Navajos see little difference between accidents and premeditated crime; they tend to believe the opposite of "innocent until proven guilty." Because professional lawyers have long been forbidden to represent Navajo litigants in tribal courts, Indian lay counselors, largely without legal training, advise them instead. Indian judges, none of them lawyers, constitute the majority of the judiciary in a court system where few have ever heard of writs of habeas corpus.

Hazy Rights. When a Navajo, or almost any other reservation Indian, is tried in a state or federal court, more often than not he is represented by a white lawyer with little knowledge of Indian customs or attitudes. And, although Congress granted the red man U.S. citizenship over 40 years ago, the constitutional rights of reservation Indians have not always been enforced.