The following is an open letter from Julie Kitka, the president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, to Attorney General Eric Holder, the head of the Department of Justice. All content © Native Sun News.

It is time you meet with leaders of the Alaska Native community, the Alaska Congressional Delegation and the leadership of the US Senate Indian Affairs Committee to be part of the solution on greater safety for Alaska Native women and children and equal rights at the ballot box. Time is running out.

The Alaska Federation of Natives has been working for many years to improve the socio-economic status of Alaska Native people, especially for Native women and children in our villages. Despite the best efforts of many people – Alaska Native leaders, the Congress and others – there remains a serious, seemingly intractable problem of violence, child abuse and neglect and alcohol addiction in our state. Although Alaska Natives comprise only 15.2% of the population of the state, they comprise nearly 50% of the victims of domestic violence, and 61 percent of the victims of sexual assault.1 According to one regional study, Native women in the Athna region are three times more likely to experience domestic violence than other women in the United States, and 8-12 times more likely to experience physical assault.2 Analysts say that the most difficult social problems in the Native community – from high rates of suicide to domestic violence and child abuse – can be traced in large part to alcohol.3 Financially, it is estimated that alcohol abuse costs Alaska well over $525 million a year.

Existing federal and state laws and programs have proved insufficient to combat this problem effectively. Although existing state local option laws enable villages to ban or restrict the importation of alcohol, these laws and state drug laws are enforced and prosecuted primarily from regional centers. Defendants, if they are prosecuted at all, are tried in state courts, away from the villages. Penalties for initial offenses are neither certain nor severe. For youthful offenders, serious intervention is needed immediately, yet under the State system an individual can commit any number of minor offenses before serious attention is paid by the state criminal system. Geographic and cost constraints have prevented the state from having magistrates, troopers, prosecutors or courts anywhere but in the largest communities.

Our villages must be given the tools they need to protect themselves. Tribal courts can intervene earlier and more effectively, dealing with offenders in their own communities. We believe the best solutions to community alcohol and abuse are those which begin within the community. Tribal governments are in place, and are often the only governments with a presence in many of our villages. They are better situated to enforce and adjudicate minor offenses than the State.

We commend President Obama, and his Administration, many key Members of Congress, and advocates from civil society, for the tremendous efforts to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.. Unfortunately, despite some of the worse statistics in the country on assault and violence against women, Alaska was ultimately excluded from the tribal provisions of the bill. Since then, AFN has been working with Alaska Senators Begich and Murkowski to draft new legislation that would give us the additional tools to unravel the complexities of what is going on – the root causes, the secondary causes, sociological efforts of how you can change individual or group behavior, generational issues, public health issues and strategies, resource shortages, and jurisdictional issues between the federal, state and tribal governments.

What we want to ensure is an elevation and empowerment of Alaska Native people – their tribes and institutions -- to continue to address the issues at the local level to build healthy communities. We want measurable solutions that will actually reduce alcohol and drug abuse and the violence in our communities. This will necessitate an increase in resources from both the federal and state governments.

On August 1, 2013, Senators Begich and Murkowski introduced S.1474, the “Alaska State Families and Villages Act of 2013”, a bipartisan bill that encourages the State of Alaska to enter into intergovernmental agreements with Indian tribes in Alaska. Section 6 of the bill would repeal section 910 of the VAWA, which excluded Alaska’s tribes (with the exception of Metlakatla Indian Community, Annette Island Reserve) from the amendments made to the Act by sections 904 and 905 of the VAWA. We applaud their efforts in introducing this legislation. We believe the repeal of Section 910 of the VAWA is necessary and important. At the same time, we believe the bill can be strengthened and will be working with our Senators to schedule an early hearing and markup of the bill. We also want to thank Senator Cantwell, Chair of the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee for her Summer 2013 visit to Alaska and know that we will have her support in addressing this issue.

Because we believe this legislation needs a stronger federal role, we have requested a meeting with you, Attorney General Holder, to discuss ways in which we can improve this bill in order to ensure the delivery of justice in our Native communities. Tribal courts in Alaska need to be armed with the ability to stop violence in the early stages. Improving law enforcement in the villages and empowering Alaska’s tribes to address these issues is absolutely necessary to fill the gap in local authority and ensure domestic safety for Native women in Alaska. Any legislation enacted to address these issues must be measured by how it will reduce drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault. And, importantly, it must provide stable and adequate funding for tribal justice systems in Alaska.

Another timely issue for discussion with you, Attorney General Holder is the impacts in Alaska of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder. That decision struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 to end entrenched racial discrimination in voting. Alaska was one of nine states that prior to the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, were required to seek approval from the U.S. Justice Department for changes to voting laws and procedures. In 1975, when Congress amended the coverage formula in Section 4 of the VRA to add language minorities, including Alaska Natives, it described documentation of “discriminatory practices” against Alaska natives as “substantial.” That discrimination continues to this day.

Section 5 prevented the voters from an illegal redistricting plan in 1990, and it helped to prevent many election law changes that would have disenfranchised Native voters (closing polling places, removing language assistance, requiring people to fly to another location to vote). Now, the Division of Elections can enact discriminatory laws, without prior approval from the Justice Department. This is of major concern to the Native community in Alaska. Almost 30 villages in Alaska have no polling place and are called “permanent absentee” locations. There is a current proposal to close more locations as part of “precinct realignment.” There is no early voting in a vast majority of Alaska Native villages, but readily available in urban areas. The State used to require a 2-day mandatory training for poll workers. The State has reduced that training to only four hours and it is no longer mandatory. Only 66% of the poll workers have received training in the Bethel Census Area (which serves a Yup’ik speaking population). Voter purges are held every two years (consisting of sending a postcard written in English to a non-English reading voter requiring that it be returned by a specific date), with the end result being many non-English readers are purged from the rolls. These are only a few of the problems.

We ask you to meet with the Alaska Native leadership, the Alaska Congressional Delegation and Chairman Maria Cantwell, with the US Senate Indian Affairs Committee this summer and not delay. We need you to do whatever you can to protect the voting rights of Alaska Natives, and to prevent the unraveling of improvements in the voting process that were achieved in the past under Section 5 of the VRA. Working together we can accomplish more.

Copyright permission by Native Sun News