Judge’s Corner: Report from Tribal Judge Charles Randall

Reactivating our judicial system is a major goal of Chief Pechonick and the Council. It is essential that we have a formal functioning court system to ensure the health and welfare of our people, exercise commercial relationship and contracts with nonmembers, and qualify for various grants and programs. Our court system has not been a functioning body since we regained Federal Recognition.

To accomplish this goal, Judges Rick Barnes, Don Mason Jr., and Charles Randall have been working to prepare the building blocks to get our court system back in operation.

In August 2011, our team was awarded travel scholarships from the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Tribes to attend the “Fostering Connections Tribal Gathering” in Oklahoma City. This addressed the problems, goals, action items, strategies, activities, and objectives associated with child welfare. Large numbers of Native Children have been placed in DHS Foster Care that would be better served with a Tribal Child Welfare Practice. The Judicial Guide to implementing the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 provides many Native American children important federal protection and support for the first time by allowing Tribes to directly administer their local programs.

In April 2012, we attended the Tribal Court Training Program for Judges funded by the BIA Office of Justice at the University of New Mexico School of Law Southwest Indian Law Clinic. This course covered all aspects of conducting a court from initiation of a case through resolution. Introduction to Indian Civil Rights Act, the Major Crimes Act, and the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 were covered with concepts of jurisdiction. We were able to participate in exercises to simulate various courtroom activities with seasoned judges (all of the other participants in the program had five to twenty-five years experience as tribal judges).

On June 12-13 we attended the Sovereignty Symposium in Oklahoma City sponsored by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Oklahoma Bar Association, Oklahoma City University School of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law, and the University of Oklahoma College of Law. There we focused on the court’s desire to computerize all state records into a new system which the Supreme Court plans to expand to include tribal courts, the components of the Indian Law and Order Act, the use and impact of social media in the Native American community, the issues associated with Indian trust land acquisitions, and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). ICWA remains a huge Indian issue. No Indian tribe or nation is immune from the problems surrounding child neglect and eventual adjudication. Indian children do end up in a system that is at times overwhelmed. Many of these children are victimized a second time by a system with many flaws. There is a consistent link between neglected children and those minors who end up in the juvenile criminal system. Indian children are much more likely to fall into this category and ICWA can be a tool to help us do something about this problem.

Indian Governments are sovereign and on equal footing with state governments. Sovereignty is important and all Indians should stand together, as a united front, to assert our right to govern ourselves. There remains a lot of work to get our judicial system where it needs to be. Currently we are identifying how and where to establish our court. We are also planning to review our current laws and codes and make recommendations necessary to bring these up to standards that will both meet the needs of our tribe and conform to Federal laws.