Drugs and The Rez'

A pair of articles in today and yesterday's NY Times highlights a disheartening trend on some Native reservations. If you didn't already know, many reservations match parts of the Third World in degradation, poverty and hopelessness, and alcoholism and drug abuse is a chronic problem. But now it appears that drug trafficking and dealing are also growing concerns:

In the eyes of law enforcement, reservations have become a critical link in the drug underworld. They have helped traffickers transport high-potency marijuana and Ecstasy from eastern Canada into cities like Buffalo, Boston and New York, and have facilitated the passage of cocaine and methamphetamine from cities in the West and Midwest into rural America.

In some cases, outside drug gangs work with Indian criminals to distribute drugs on Indian and non-Indian lands. And on a growing number of reservations, drug traffickers — particularly Mexican criminals — are marrying Indian women to establish themselves on reservations.

At the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation in northwestern Wisconsin, for instance, several members of the Latin Kings gang married Indian women while a tribal offshoot of the gang built a $3 million crack cocaine ring moving drugs from Milwaukee into and around the reservation over the past few years, prosecutors said.

Increasingly American Indians are breaking away to build their own violent, Mafia-like enterprises, according to an examination of dozens of court records and interviews with more than 50 federal and local prosecutors, tribal law enforcement officials and tribal members.

Here's a portrait of one of these drug dealers:

The man, John V. Oakes, like a fast-rising number of American Indian drug traffickers across the country, saw himself as "untouchable," as one senior investigator put it, protected by armed enforcers and a code of silence that ruled the reservation.

After he was finally arrested last May, Mr. Oakes was recorded from jail talking on the phone with his estranged wife. "I can't believe people let this happen to me," he said, according to Derek Champagne, the Franklin County district attorney who listened to the recorded call. "You can't touch me. I'm on the reservation, and I do what I want."

Investigators described Mr. Oakes as an intimidating trafficker who concentrated on stealing drugs and cash from a prosperous and growing cluster of criminals who, like Mr. Oakes, have built sprawling mansions near worn-down trailers on this reservation straddling the Canadian border.

The article points out several reasons why drug trafficking and dealing has gravitated to the reservations:

For traffickers of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, painkillers and people, reservations offer many advantages. Law enforcement is spotty at best. Tribal sovereignty, varying state laws and inconsistent federal interest in prosecuting drug crimes create jurisdictional confusion and conflict.

The deep loyalty that exists within tribes, where neighbors are often related, and the intense mistrust of the American justice system make securing witnesses and using undercover informants extremely difficult. And on some reservations, Indian drug traffickers have close relationships with tribal government or law enforcement officials and enjoy special protection that allows them to operate freely, investigators say.

What the article doesn't say (but can be read between the lines) is that cronyism and corruption bedevil many reservations. Given that tribal governments are mostly sovereign and the federal government tends to give them great leeway in how they manage their affairs, and that power in a tribe is often directly related to who you know and/or are related to, it's pretty easy to imagine a system in which a drug trafficker/dealer with a few friends in high places is going to be allowed to get away with almost anything short of murder:

Mr. Martel, the former senior police investigator at Red Lake, which gained widespread attention last March when a teenager killed nine people and himself at the reservation's high school, said he was fired after three years on the force because he clashed with tribal leaders when he tried to investigate suspects. While the federal government and not the state has jurisdiction over Red Lake, tribal detectives like Mr. Martel are typically the first to investigate criminals and to notify federal prosecutors.

Mr. Martel's partner, Russ Thomas, who resigned in October, said Red Lake police dispatchers "would narc us out," or alert suspects to criminal investigations.

Eventually, Mr. Thomas said, he and Mr. Martel stopped telling others in the police department whom they were investigating, worked their cases at night instead of during the day so they would not be spotted as easily, and changed cars often.

"We quit using our own people," he said. "We were doing our job with our hands tied behind our backs."

Given the abject poverty present on many reservations, it's not much of a surprise that some Native Americans would turn to doing or dealing drugs. Take this dealer for example:

"It was almost an answer to your prayers," said Ms. Phair, who was released on Feb. 6 after serving 20 months in state prison. "If you came from rags and then you had a chance at riches, wouldn't you choose riches? If you lived your whole life in poverty and then you had a chance to be rich, what would you do? It's almost impossible. I never had anything ever, no new clothes, no school-clothes shopping, no nothing at all. Then you're able to have your kids go to a good school and look nice and fit in. I never fit in."

She recalls growing up eating "commodity food" — noodles and cheese, peanuts, canned peaches and fruit cocktail — goods provided by the government. But sometimes there was no food, Ms. Phair said, and when she was as young as 7, "in order for me to quit complaining that there was no food, my mother would get me drunk."

Her earliest memories include witnessing a drunken altercation between her parents, one of many that led to their breakup. She remembers riding around in an old station wagon during that fight and fixating on the image of a Ranier beer can, one of dozens scattered inside the car, with its curvy big red "R" logo.

Poverty is of course no excuse for crime, and plenty of poor and impoverished people don't turn to crime to provide themselves a better life. But there's no denying that where there is poverty and criminal opportunity, more will take advantage of any opportunity to enrich themselves or get out of their circumstances, no matter how great the risk or degrading the crime. Of course, reducing or eliminating poverty doesn't eliminate all crime. But the alleviation of poverty can eliminate some of the worst of it, the drug dealing, the gang violence, and so on. Unfortunately, American's Native reservations are mostly forgotten, and given the current political climate it's unlikely that there'll be a big push to end poverty in American in general-let alone on Native reservations-anytime soon. The ultimate solution is a long way off, which means unfortunately that for now, reservations will simply become another front in the unending war on drugs.