Today Mother Jones came with the mail, and lo and behold there was an article about the Navajo nation and tribal law. I was particularly struck by this quote:
In 1881, a Lakota Sioux named Spotted Tail was killed by another Lakota, Crow Dog. A tribal council was called, the families of the two men gathered, and it was agreed that in order to restore harmony to the tribe, Crow Dog and his family would pay the deceased's kin $600, eight horses, and one blanket. The U.S. territorial court threw out this judgment, put Crow Dog on trial, and sentenced him to death by hanging. The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decreed that tribes were entitled to adjudicate crimes among their own as they saw fit. Congress then stepped in to strip tribes of that right, and today's tribal courts are restricted to dispensing fines and no more than a year of jail time, with major crimes mostly dealt with in federal court.
Read the article here.
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