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“Dollar General has argued that Native American tribes do not have civil jurisdiction over an outside corporation doing business on tribal land. Basically, this means that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Dollar General, outside businesses may be able to commit other crimes on tribal land without fear of a lawsuit.
“For the United States Supreme Court to say, ‘You know what? … Your tribal lands don’t matter. Your laws don’t matter. You can’t protect your people on your tribal land.’ It’s devastating,” said Cherrah Giles, Cabinet Secretary of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
Sexual assault happens to native women at higher rates than any other racial group in the United States. According to the National Congress of American Indians, native women are at least two times as likely to be sexually assaulted or raped compared with all other races.
The Maynard Media Center on Structural Inequality discusses how such high rates show just how underserved native women are when it comes to sexual and domestic violence and how underreported these crimes are. The same is likely even more true for native men.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe that tribal courts did not have the authority to criminally prosecute non-Native Americans through tribal courts. The 1978 ruling has contributed to a culture of impunity of non-Native Americans who perpetrate violence against native women.”
– Upworthy, Why protesters at the Supreme Court today want you to boycott Dollar General.
“A previous Supreme Court decision found that nonmembers can’t be sued in tribal court, except when they’ve consented to dealings with the tribe, for example through a contract, lease or other business arrangement. However, tribal and lower federal courts have ruled that the boy’s parents can pursue the civil suit, seeking $2.5 million, in tribal court.
They note that Dollar General signed a lease in the tribe’s on-reservation shopping center stating that disputes would be taken to Choctaw court and governed by tribal law. They also note the store further entangled itself with the tribe when it voluntarily agreed to participate in the employment program, in which the tribe paid wages, not the store.”
– Monterey Herald, Dollar General seeks tribal suit ban in Miss. Choctaw case.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #50 – Save Tribal Sovereignty.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
