Fronteras

Laurel Morales

Pascua Yaqui Police Chief Michael Valenzuela said, “We’re a people just as valuable and important as anybody else with a long history of our own judicial system taking care of our own.”

A non-native man pleaded guilty Jan. 12 in a federal court to assaulting a Native American woman on a New Mexico reservation. Until recently, tribal police were defenseless against non-native perpetrators. 

For decades tribal police officers couldn’t do much more than drive an offender to the edge of the reservation and drop him off. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act changed that. It made it possible for non-natives to be prosecuted in tribal and federal court. 

Deandre Lamont Brown, 29, admitted to strangling his girlfriend. And under a plea agreement he will be sentenced to up to three years in prison.

The case is part of a federal pilot project that’s training tribal prosecutors in federal law, procedure and investigative techniques so that violent crimes like this against Native American women see their day in court.

Three out of five Native American and Alaska Native women have been assaulted in their lifetimes, according to the Justice Department.