This article explores the connection between historical land theft from Native American tribes and the over-incarceration of Indigenous people. It highlights how revenue generated from state trust lands, originally seized from tribes, is used to fund prisons and correctional facilities, contributing to a cycle of injustice and perpetuating generational trauma.
Steven Amos feels hopeful for once. He’s finishing a drug and alcohol treatment program, living in a halfway house, and working a new job, doing carpentry. “I love anything outdoors,” he said. “I’m happy I’m not locked up.”
Some of the carceral facilities where Amos was sent are paid for, in part, with Arapaho land and resources, through activities like oil and gas extraction and cattle grazing.To build America, the U.S. government enacted laws to redistribute Indigenous lands they had taken.
“The priorities are not to build treatment centers; they’re not to help with the healing our communities are needing,” said Red Bear, who has helped lead efforts to pressure officials in Rapid City, South Dakota to address discriminatory policing. “The redirecting of these funds could be used for so many different things including affordable housing, or substance abuse programs, or mental health programs, or youth programs, or restorative justice programs or reentry programs.
“There’s so many people on this reservation afflicted by addiction and trauma that’s caused by the government coming in and taking our land,” said Terri Smith, who is in charge of the new Northern Arapaho Reentry Agency, which works with Northern Arapaho peoples who are reestablishing their lives after incarceration. The agency began accepting clients, including Steven Amos, in August.
About 172,000 acres of Northern Arapaho land is now earmarked for carceral beneficiaries across Wyoming, South Dakota, and Colorado. In Colorado, some of the Northern Arapaho acreage that makes up the state’s Penitentiary Trust is physically occupied by two prisons: Limon and Sterling.
Pasternak, the criminology professor, pointed out that prisons do more than put people away. “Prisons are a highly productive form of revenue for states because they bring in funding and jobs. Criminalization empowers a whole network of actors within society,” she said. However, there are alternatives.
Social Justice Criminal Justice Native American Land Rights Incarceration Generational Trauma Social Justice
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