INDIAN GAMING ASSOCIATION RESOLUTION 04-ANA-BOD-04-07-24 TITLE: Calling on Congress and the President to Undertake An Emergency Indian Country Crime Fighting Initiative WHEREAS , the Indian Gaming Association (IGA) is an intertribal association of 184 federally recognized Native Sovereign Nations established to support Indian gaming and defend Indian sovereignty; and WHEREAS , Native Sovereign Nations are sovereigns that pre-date the United States, with prior and treaty protected rights to self-government and to our Indian lands, and WHEREAS , Native Sovereign Nations are independent sovereigns vested with complete and inherent authority over our lands and our citizens; and WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States, through the Treaty, Commerce, and Apportionment Clauses and the 14 th Amendment, recognizes the sovereign status of Native Sovereign Nations as Native nations established prior to the United States; and WHEREAS , throughout Indian country Native Sovereign Nations are facing a public safety and public health emergency resulting from drug trafficking, violent crime and lack of adequate protection of our communities, resulting in: ● A severe increase gun violence, other serious violent crimes, drug-related crime, and drug distribution related violent crimes; ● the highest level of fatal opioid drug overdoses; ● methamphetamine related crimes at 3x the national average and drastic increases in the presence of hard drugs including fentanyl and heroin; ● homicide rates per population at the highest levels in America; ● the highest levels of suicide; and ● severe increases in aggravated assaults, sexual assaults, and firearms related incidents; and WHEREAS , despite the fact that neither guns nor drugs are manufactured on our Indian Reservations, 95% of our Violent Crime in Indian Country is drug and alcohol related and involves gun violence. Our Native people are victimized by the drug trafficking brought in from outside our communities, causing substance abuse disorders that severely impact our families and children. Drug traffickers and cartels have executed young people who get caught up with drugs. We have also suffered human trafficking, sexual abuse, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons at the highest levels in America; and WHEREAS , the result is that American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) are victimized by violent crime at a rate five times that of the general American population; and
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