Native Americans

Introduction
 

Before the European explo­ration and colo­nial con­quest of North America, the indige­nous pop­u­la­tion con­sist­ed of more than 700 sep­a­rate cul­tur­al units speak­ing more than 300 lan­guages. A greater num­ber of Indians were killed through European con­quest than Europeans were killed by the Black Death pan­dem­ic in the 14^th cen­tu­ry. The first legal­ly sanc­tioned exe­cu­tion of a Native American occurred in 1639. Military author­i­ties behead­ed a man named Nepauduck for the mur­der of a white man, Abraham Finch. While thou­sands of extra-judi­cial lynch­ings of Native Americans occurred in ear­ly American his­to­ry, 464 Native Americans have been exe­cut­ed through the legal sys­tem. In 1711, the first record­ed exe­cu­tion of a Native American woman occurred when Connecticut hanged a woman named Waisoiusksquaw for the mur­der of her husband.

Between 1976 and 2024, 21 Native Americans were exe­cut­ed by a total of ten states. Seven of those exe­cu­tions have tak­en place in Oklahoma. As of January 2025, 23 indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as Native American were on death rows across the coun­try. In July 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had nev­er dis­es­tab­lished the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation, which encom­pass­es the east­ern half of Oklahoma, and that Oklahoma lacked juris­dic­tion to cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cute enrolled mem­bers of the Native American Nations for crimes com­mit­ted on those lands.

Native Americans and the Criminal Justice System

The American native crime vic­tim­iza­tion rate is twice that of non-Indians. National crime vic­tim­iza­tion sur­veys reveal that whites per­pe­trate 57% of the vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted against American Indians. 80% of sex­u­al assaults against Native Americans are per­pe­trat­ed by whites.

The incar­cer­a­tion rate of Native Americans is 38% high­er than the nation­al rate. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights attrib­ut­es this high­er rate to dif­fer­en­tial treat­ment by the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, lack of access to ade­quate coun­sel and racial pro­fil­ing. Law enforce­ment agents arrest American Indians and Alaskan Natives at twice the rate of the greater U.S. pop­u­la­tion for vio­lent and prop­er­ty crimes. On aver­age, American Indians receive longer sen­tences than non-Indians for crimes. They also tend to serve longer time in prison for their sen­tences than non-Native Americans. The sui­cide rate is high­er among American native inmates incar­cer­at­ed in jails than non-Indians. Within the prison sys­tem, Native Americans are often sub­ject to abuse when attempt­ing to iden­ti­fy with native cul­tures through the wear­ing of head-bands, using native lan­guages, main­tain­ing long-braid­ed hair, lis­ten­ing to native music, and secur­ing cul­tur­al­ly-relat­ed edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al.
 

Sources:

• David V. Baker, American Indian Executions in Historical Context, Criminal Justice Studies, 20:4, 315 – 373 (2007)
• D. Hearn, Legal Executions in New England: A Comprehensive Reference, 1623 – 1960 (McFarland 1999)
• E. Hensen & J. Taylor, Native America in the New Millennium (Harvard University 2002).
• C. Mann, Unequal jus­tice: A ques­tion of col­or (Indiana University Press 1993).
• M. Severson & C. Duclos, American Indian sui­cides in jail: Can risk screen­ing be cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive?, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice (2005).
• Jails in Indian Country, 2014 (pub. Oct. 2015) — Compiled by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, this com­pre­hen­sive report presents data from jails and deten­tion facil­i­ties oper­at­ed by trib­al author­i­ties or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• Jails in Indian Country, 2009
• Jails in Indian Country, 2007