Crime on the sprawling, 5,000-acre reservation of the Santee Sioux Tribe of Flandreau, S.D., in the 1990s was intolerable. Drunken driving, methamphetamine drug use and domestic violence were all too common. Both the city and the tribe were not at all satisfied with law enforcement services contracted to the Moody County Sheriff's Department. And the lack of resources, overlapping tribal, city, state and federal jurisdictions, cultural insensitivity and other issues made enforcement difficult.

The tide turned dramatically in 2001, when the tribal and city governments formed a Public Safety Commission and established a joint tribal/city Flandreau Police Department. Crime reporting and domestic violence arrests soared, largely due to increased trust in local police. Drunken driving convictions rose 100 percent.

Cooperation with county, state and federal law enforcement agencies improved. And revenue from the tribe's Royal River Casino helped Police Chief Ken James, a citizen of the nearby Nebraska Santee Sioux, pay the salaries of five officers and purchase patrol cars and radios.

"A tribal local fund established with casino money got us several cars and modern police radios, things that are not very cheap," James says. "Sometimes today when there's no money in the budget and I can't get what I need from the city I go to the Santee Tribal Council and get equipment that's badly needed."

Representatives from the town and the tribe share seats on the commission which oversees the department.

"Many tribes have contractual agreements with nearby counties or municipalities for law enforcement services," James says. "But they don't have a partnership like the Santee and the city of Flandreau."

Improved law enforcement on the Flandreau reservation is just one example of how America's indigenous peoples have been rebuilding tribal nations decimated over the last 250 years by Spanish exploration; European settlement; Indian wars and genocide; and, more recently, failed Federal government Indian policies.

Much of the strengthening of tribal governments and rebuilding of Native nations began in 1970, with introduction by President Richard Nixon of a federal policy of tribal self-determination that resulted in passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. Self-determination enabled tribes to begin strengthening their governments, largely by taking over management of federal programs providing such services as health care, law enforcement, housing and education.

"As long as the Bureau of Indian Affairs or some other outside organization carries primary responsibility for economic conditions on Indian reservations, development decisions will tend to reflect outsiders' agendas," Steven Cornell, co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, said in a 2004 interview.

"Transferring control over decisions to tribes does not guarantee success, but it tightens the link between decision making and its consequences. If somebody is making decisions for you, you're not likely to go much of anywhere. The program doesn't represent your interest. Shifting the decision making power into indigenous hands is a critical part of nation building. These nations have to be rebuilt by indigenous peoples, not by decisions made in Washington, D.C. or Ottawa."

Native nation rebuilding accelerated dramatically with the introduction of tribal government gaming and passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. Some 224 Indian tribes in the lower 48 states now operate more than 420 casinos generating nearly $23 billion in government revenue being used to subsidize or fully fund programs providing health care, education, housing and government services to tribal citizens.

"Nation rebuilding largely began in the 30 years since self-determination, when the Federal government began promoting tribal government systems and tribal judicial systems," says University of Oklahoma law professor Taiawagi Helton, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. "But we're definitely seeing an increase in the last 10 or 15 years, now that tribes have more economic resources. And my guess is you would see the most rapid raise among tribes with gaming."

"With gaming, there's finally something to fight about," says Jonathan Taylor of the Taylor Group, a financial consulting firm. "With the few resources you have allocated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs there's nothing to decide. There's no press for a comprehensive or effective government. I think once an opportunity for gaming opens up, there's this opportunity for decisions to be made that have actual consequences. Do we build a school or a hospital? What do we do with these resources?"

Much of the recent media focus has been devoted to growing American Indian political clout, the issuance of per capita casino profits by a handful of wealthier tribes and the proliferation of Indian casinos, particularly efforts by newly recognized tribes, landless tribes and tribes seeking operations off existing reservations. But the congressional intent in passing IGRA was to strengthen tribal governments and build tribal economies, creating healthier Native American communities. And it's working.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe of Arizona, the Crow Tribe of Montana, the Northern Cheyenne of South Dakota and the Osage Nation of Oklahoma are among many Native nations reforming outdated and culturally inappropriate constitutions imposed on them with passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Other Native nations are establishing and expanding tribal courts and taking control of the management of fisheries and wildlife resources and timber and energy production on tribal trust lands.

An increasing number of tribes are providing free educations for tribal citizens and taking control of medical care from the federal Indian Health Service. Some 350 young tribal citizens from toddlers to teenagers are enrolled in a language retention program offered by the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in central Minnesota, one of a growing number of tribes working to preserve Native languages, customs and traditions.

About 1,100 miles south of Flandreau, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians in 1999 established a Family Violence and Victim's Services Program to deal with an epidemic of domestic violence on the 30,000-acre reservation in northeast Mississippi. A year earlier the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, after learning 60 percent of its citizens were being denied home loans, created Chuika Chukmasi, or "Beautiful Home," a loan program to make affordable housing available to hundreds of Chickasaw citizens.

Many of these tribes are recipients of Honoring Nations awards from the Harvard University Project on American Indian Economic Development. Harvard researchers advocate the need for tribes to build and strengthen government institutions as a tool to generate long-term economic growth and social progress.

"We spent a lot of time in the field, getting stories of what was working; how did this [tribal] enterprise succeed and how did this fail," Cornell said. "It turned out the critical elements were political ones.

"If you had your political house together � if you had stability in government, if you were successful in keeping political considerations out of enterprise management or our of tribal court decisions � if you could do those political things, the economic assets such as good natural resources or good education or being close to large populations and major markets, those would start to pay off.

"If you couldn't get the government house in order, the assets tend to be wasted."

SOVEREIGNTY A CRUCIAL ELEMENT

"We know of no cases of successful economic development occurring without political sovereignty," says Manley Begay, co-director of the Harvard Project and a citizen of the Navajo Nation. "We also found that capable governing institutional development was a key piece of nation building. Incidentally, those institutions had to be culturally appropriate.

"Indian nations planning for the long haul, a hundred years down the road, and asking themselves, 'What kind of society do we want to build and what do we want our society to look like 50 years from now?' are faring better than those who have not."

Mississippi Choctaw Chief Phillip Martin, renown for bringing economic diversity to his once-impoverished reservation, credits a land base in trust status, stable tribal government and sovereignty as the tools for success.
"It's like a three-legged stool," Martin says. "If one leg is missing, the stool will topple over, and economic development is unlikely."

A RULE OF LAW

"Before tribes can think about attracting commercial development to the reservation they have to think about putting laws in place, commercial codes, policy rules and regulations, a good court system, separating politics and business," Begay says. "They need to do this so the investor can feel safe investing in Indian land."

Laws and an established tribal court are essential. There has been a dramatic increase in efforts by tribes to establish tribal courts or expand existing courts, most with two goals in mind.

"Tribes are taking a one-two punch," says Robert Williams, professor of law and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and a citizen of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina. "They are recognizing the need to engage in limited waivers of sovereign immunity in order to get insurance, for example, or in order to get loans. They are negotiating so that these limited waivers of sovereign immunity can be litigated in their own courts. You're seeing that, more and more.

"The business community sees sovereign immunity as the biggest obstacle to investing and contracting. It is essential that tribes negotiate and litigate limited waivers in our own courts, which means we had better beef up our own courts.

"The second thing I see tribes doing with their court systems is to build and make them the primary vehicle of dispute resolution for their own tribal members. That usually involves focusing on customary law � customs and traditions � to make sure people in the community feel comfortable that decisions being made comport with community norms and traditions."

The trend in establishing and expanding tribal courts parallel the emergence of tribal gaming and economic growth on tribal lands.

"I would say up until about 10, 15 years ago you could count on one hand the number of tribes serious about both those tasks," Williams says of the evolution of tribal courts to address economic investments and intertribal dispute resolution. "The Navajo Nation would be one. But now I think there is recognition by a growing number of tribes that they need to do both and they need to do them well."

CREATING SAFE COMMUNITIES

Police Chief James is acutely aware of the problem with domestic violence in Indian Country. Native women account for up to 75 percent of the clients at the county battered women's shelter, according to reporter Jodi Rave of the Missoulian newspaper.

While alcohol is believed to ignite much of the domestic abuse, cross-jurisdiction issues between tribes, local and federal law enforcement authorities compound the problem. So, too, does a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits tribal courts from prosecuting non-Indians arrested for reservation crimes. Eighty percent of crimes against Native Americans are committed by whites and blacks.

James credits a public education program and a policy of having domestic abuse arrests published in the local newspaper with cutting down on wife battering on the reservation.

There have been similar results on the Choctaw Reservation, where the Family Violence and Victim's Services program has promoted greater community awareness and cooperation between tribal and local agencies dealing with domestic violence.

Reports and arrests have soared. Victims and perpetrators are given counseling. One offender told the Harvard Honoring Nation's Program that without the FVV program, "I suppose either I or someone else would be dead."

A Choctaw domestic violence code states "violence against family members is not in keeping with Choctaw values that hold the family sacred."

And the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, like the Santee Sioux of Flandreau, SD, have taken another giant step in rebuilding its tribal nation.