The recent dedication of the country's 391st National Park Service unit in southeastern Colorado, commemorating the 1864 slaughter of at least 160 Cheyenne and Arapaho people camped beneath an American flag reportedly given to them by Abraham Lincoln himself, is a time to reflect on today's relationship between Native Americans and the federal government.
This is especially true when it comes to our criminal justice system - where the federal government legally owes a trust responsibility to serve and protect Native American people living on Indian reservations.
Former U.S. Sen. Ben Night-horse Campbell talked about honoring the federal trust responsibility in his keynote remarks at Sand Creek. My son, Alex, who learned about the senator and the Sand Creek Massacre in his fourth-grade Colorado history class this year, pointedly asked me what those words mean to a U.S. Attorney.
There's nothing like a question from a 10-year-old to make you think. So I tried to explain that unlike other U.S. citizens, Native Americans living on Indian reservations are legally required, by a combination of federal statutes and court decisions, to rely almost entirely on federal law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges for their public safety needs, including the enforcement of all ''major crimes'' such as murder and felony assault. Around the time of the Sand Creek Massacre, the tribes were stripped of their traditional powers to handle these crimes. They now must rely largely on the federal government to keep the peace and punish such criminals.
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