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Federal Enclaves Act
In 1817, Congress passed the Federal Enclaves Act, which asserts federal criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians for crimes they commit on tribal land and over Native Americans for some offenses against non-Indians.8 Under the Act, “the general laws of the United States as to the punishment of offenses committed in any place within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States...[extend] to the Indian country.”9 Consequently, for jurisdictional purposes, Indian land today is treated as -
Assimilated Crimes Act
Congress recognized that some criminal acts committed within federal enclaves went unpunished because no specific federal laws prohibited them, and state law had no force within these enclaves, including Indian country. To address this oversight, in 1825, Congress enacted the Assimilated Crimes Act, which reads in part: Whoever within or upon any [federal enclave] is guilty of any act or omission which, although not made punishable by any enactment of Congress, would be punishable if committed -
Major Crimes Act
Congress passed the Major Crimes Act to address the resolution of cases in which a crime involving two Native American parties occurs in Indian country.13 This Act established federal jurisdiction over seven crimes committed in these instances. The original seven covered by the Act include murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, and larceny. Subsequent amendments to the Act have added seven more offenses: kidnapping, incest, assault with a dangerous weapon, assa -
Dawes Act
began the process of dividing up the reservations by creating individual homesteads for the resident tribal members. In Washington State, the result of this ‘allotment’ was the loss of a great deal of reservation land and the impoverishment of surviving tribal members, since relatively few Native Americans had settled down to become self-sufficient farmers in the way the government had hoped. -
Indian Citizen Act
which made all Native Americans citizens of the United States.[7] The Federal government and the State government were united during this period in their attempts to eliminate the natives as a special class of citizens with a unique legal position -
New Deal
as part of the New Deal’s focus on alleviating poverty, President Roosevelt extended privileges of self-government and special benefits to the tribes. -
Indian Claims Commission
reinforced the special relationship between the tribes and the Federal government. -
Public Law 280
The states affected by the legislation included California, Minnesota (except for the Red Lake Reservation), Nebraska, Oregon (excluding the Warm Springs Reservation), Wisconsin, and Alaska (except for the Annette Islands Metlakatla Indians) after it gained statehood. This law effectively terminated all tribal criminal jurisdictions in the affected tribal area within these states. -
Indian Civil Rights Act
The ICRA imposed most of the substantive restraints of the Bill of Rights upon the tribes. The most important exclusions from the Act include the right to appointed counsel (at the tribal member’s expense) and the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment. -
Tribal Law and Order Act
In enacting TLOA, Congress sought to live up to its obligations by improving law enforcement in Indian country, ensuring tribal criminal justice, increasing tribal sentencing authority, and extending federal authority and responsibility over Indian country