CROW AGENCY — U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland spent Tuesday morning meeting with Crow Tribal leaders and touring the Crow Reservation.
During the meetings, which were not open to the public, tribal members told MTN News that they asked the attorney general for more resources to help the reservation combat drug trafficking.
Levi Black Eagle, the tribe's secretary, grew up in Lodge Grass and described it as "Pleasantville" growing up, but noted it's become more dangerous.
"You could walk around, you didn’t have to worry about anything, you could leave your doors unlocked,” Black Eagle said Tuesday after meeting with Garland. “Cartels are things you watch in the movies, you read about on the news, not something you expect to happen in your own backyard.”
Garland met with tribal leaders at the hospital in Crow Agency for a discussion described by the U.S. Department of Justice as a roundtable talk centered around combatting the problem of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) and drug trafficking on the reservation.
He later met in Billings at the federal courthouse with other law-enforcement leaders in the region.
For the Crow Reservation, residents say they are seeing cartels in backyards. Black Eagle said impacts can be seen driving down the road, with boarded-up businesses, graffiti and high crime rates.
According to Black Eagle, the drug cartel targets poverty-stricken areas with vulnerable people, because selling drugs that have been trafficked here from Mexico is the quickest way to get money when you need it.
“The sad thing is that on our reservation, in some of our communities, it’s easier to buy drugs than it is groceries, which doesn’t make any sense,” Black Eagle said.
Crow Tribal Chairman Frank White Clay said drug trafficking has a ripple effect.
“Human trafficking and the missing and murdered indigenous people,” White Clay said. “Fentanyl use, meth use and the users are becoming younger and younger.”
White Clay said everyone is being targeted, from the elderly to those as young as 12 years old.
“(Cartels) do set up shop in reservations because it’s kind of a safe haven, especially with limited law enforcement,” White Clay said.
Both White Clay and Black Eagle said one of the biggest needs is additional law enforcement.
“At any given time, we have two police officers patrolling the size of Connecticut, 2.5 million acres," Black Eagle said. "I know there’s a lot of jurisdictional issues and it’s dicey a little bit to have outsiders come into our sovereign land and help with the law enforcement but it’s desperately needed because the BIA is severely undermanned.”
Black Eagle said the Bureau of Indian Affairs is doing the best they can with the resources they have, but they simply need more help. Black Eagle also noted that the discussions of additional resources for addiction recovery was also mentioned during the meeting with Garland.
