Task Force to Study Crime on Indian Reservations

NYTimes

A special Justice Department task force will hold a series of public meetings around the country to study the scope and impact that exposure to violence has on Native American and Alaska Native children, the Justice Department said.

The announcement, made by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week, comes amid a surge of violence on many Indian reservations and complaints that federal law enforcement officials, who are responsible for investigating and prosecuting most major crimes in Indian Country, have done too little to address the problem.

A report last December by the Justice Department concluded that American Indian and Alaska Native children “have an exceptional degree of unmet needs for services and support to prevent and respond to the extreme levels of violence they experience.”

On Wednesday, during the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference, in which leaders of the 566 federally recognized Native American tribes met with members of the Obama administration, Mr. Holder told tribal members that the federal government would not “tolerate a world in which nearly half of all Indian women and girls” have been raped, beaten or stalked by an intimate partner.