[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 30 (Monday, February 25, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Page S1146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    INDIAN HEALTH CARE IMPROVEMENT ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2007--Continued

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want to pick up where I left off 
regarding the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which is the pending 
business before the Senate. As I stated earlier, we will be having a 
series of votes tomorrow on a number of amendments. One, I think, 
improves this bill and addresses an issue which is important to me and 
a number of my colleagues. The amendment is offered by our colleague 
from Louisiana, Senator Vitter, amendment No. 3896.
  If the amendment is adopted, it would codify Federal Indian health 
care service funds. I hope that is an amendment that will be adopted to 
the bill. I think that is important to have.
  Also, as we consider these final amendments, I hope we can also see 
action in the other body, the House of Representatives, because the 
Senate acting on this is long overdue. It is critically important to 
the tribes I represent that we get an Indian Health Care Improvement 
Act reauthorization in place. But the fact that the Senate has acted 
won't amount to much if in fact the other body doesn't also take up 
this legislation and pass it and enable us to go into conference and 
get a bill we can put on the President's desk that he can sign into 
law.
  I wish to speak specifically to one amendment that was adopted. 
Again, I thank my colleagues Senators Murkowski and Dorgan for working 
with me to have it adopted. It has to do with tribal justice in the 
Dakotas.
  One of the amendments I offered to this bill, No. 4021, goes a long 
way toward attempting to improve the issue that, in my view, is at the 
core fundamentally to a lot of issues we are having in Indian country, 
and that is law enforcement. The amendment simply attempts to help with 
the process, the analysis of what is happening with regard to justice 
and law enforcement in Indian Country by having the GAO complete a 
study within 1 year of the tribal justice systems within North Dakota 
and South Dakota, two States that have a high incidence of crime on our 
reservations.
  Specifically, I am asking the study to focus, one, on how tribal 
courts currently function and how they are supposed to function; 
second, an analysis of the components of tribal justice systems; third, 
a review of the origins and development of tribal justice systems; 
fourth, an analysis of the weakness of the tribal justice systems; 
five, an analysis of tribal leader suggestions to the current problems.
  This is where I think it is important that we listen to the elected 
leadership on the reservations. Last week during the congressional 
break, I happened to have had the opportunity to travel across my 
State. I stopped at a couple different reservations. I was up on the 
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation and also at the Sisseton-
Wahpeton Oyate reservation with the tribal chairmen. The chairman of 
the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is Ron His Horse Is Thunder, and the 
chairman of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe is Michael Selvage.
  One of the issues that came up in the meetings was this issue of law 
enforcement. There is, of course, in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe a 
good example of what I am talking about in terms of the dimensions of 
this problem. You have 2.4 million acres of land on the Standing Rock 
Sioux Tribe reservation. Yet you have about 10,000 people and you only 
have about 9 policemen, law enforcement personnel out there, who are 
committed to that large geographic area. At any given time, you are 
only going to have a couple of them on duty. So you have all kinds of 
issues that come up relating to being able to respond in a timely way 
to calls and to make arrests. I think it is a very difficult challenge 
that we face on the reservations partly because of the geography but 
also because of the sparsity that we have today of law enforcement 
personnel.
  I think the GAO study will look at a lot of issues and that will be 
one component. It will look at the tribal court system, which is also 
something we need to look at and determine what, if anything, can be 
done to improve the workings of the system. We clearly have a problem 
that, if you look at the data, needs to be addressed.
  If you don't contemplate or understand the need for this amendment, 
let me give you a couple of pieces of information. Studies show that 
one out of every three Native American women will be raped in their 
lifetime. The Department of Justice has found that American Indian 
women are 2\1/2\ times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted 
than women throughout the rest of the country. Remote reservations in 
North Dakota and South Dakota have an average of 10 times as much crime 
as the rest of the Nation.
  What this GAO study would do is it would assist the tribes not only 
in North Dakota and South Dakota but I think assist policymakers in 
Congress concerning possible solutions that could be used to reduce the 
higher rates of crime on reservations. Having met numerous times with 
members of the tribal government, tribal councils, and the chairmen on 
these reservations, and having listened to the stories of people who 
live there, there isn't anything we can do that is more important, in 
my view, than to provide security.
  We are talking about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. This is 
a health and public safety issue. If you don't have that, you cannot 
have economic development; you cannot have kids learning in a safe and 
secure environment. They are not going to be able to learn at the very 
fastest rate possible if they are worried about their security. This is 
an important issue, one that I think needs to be addressed.
  Again, I appreciate the willingness on behalf of the managers of the 
bill to accept this amendment. I hope as the process moves forward, we 
will see action by the House of Representatives that will allow us to 
get a bill passed through the Congress and on the President's desk, 
signed into law, which will address the serious health care needs on 
the reservations, but also this important amendment, the GAO study, 
will allow us to take a close look--for the first time, a sort of 
outside objective third-party look at tribal justice in the Dakotas.
  As I mentioned, it is a very serious need and challenge we face. I 
got lots of good information during my visit last week from members of 
the tribal council and the chairmen regarding that subject. I think 
they are all anxious to get the study under way and anxious to get the 
results so we can move forward with policies that make sense and that 
will keep our reservations safe for young people to learn and for those 
who want to come there and start businesses and have a safe environment 
in which to do that.
  With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.

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