Here.

An excerpt:

Interestingly, the prospect of enhanced tribal jurisdiction over non-members has raised the issue of racial discrimination in varied and even competing ways. Two recent statements by members of Congress, both of whom have been important allies in tribal law enforcement efforts including the enactment of the Tribal Law and Order Act, illustrate this point. Following passage of the Senate bill, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona released a statement claiming that “by subjecting individuals to the criminal jurisdiction of a government from which they are excluded on account of race,” the tribal jurisdiction provision “would quite plainly violate the Constitution’s guarantees of Equal Protection and Due Process.” Then, during the House Judiciary Committee’s markup of a bill that did not contain the tribal jurisdiction provisions, Representative Darrell Issa of California stated that the lack of such a provision raised questions of race discrimination, since whether an individual will be brought to tribal, state, or federal court for a domestic violence offense under current law depends on whether the defendant is Indian or non-Indian.

While seemingly in opposition to each other, neither one of these statements accurately reflects the current legal and political reality of Indian tribes. Instead, they illustrate how easy it can be for us to slip into a widely employed discourse of race that is not always helpful or relevant in the realm of Indian law and policy. Unfortunately, this mistake can obscure the role that racial discrimination is actually playing in the VAWA reauthorization debate.

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