New Scholarship on Domestic Violence and Alaska Natives

Laura S. Johnson has published “Frontier of Injustice: Alaska Native Victims of Domestic Violence” (PDF) in American University Law School’s “The Modern American.”

An excerpt:

This paper will present three pieces of a strategy to better combat domestic violence in Alaska Native communities. First, cooperation among sovereigns is critical to ensure that laws are enforced. Second, effective law enforcement can be enhanced by creative, community-based, culturally-sensitive models that respond to domestic violence through alternate forms of dispute resolution in Alaska Native communities such as tribal courts. The State of Alaska should actively encourage the development of tribal courts to offer victims alternative forms of dispute resolution because they can offer victims more immediate, culturally-sensitive and community-based remedies. And finally, Alaska Native tribes should exercise regulatory civil jurisdiction over domestic violence crimes in their communities to help Alaska Native victims of domestic violence achieve justice and be protected from their abusers. Part I lays the foundation for a discussion of legal remedies available to Native Alaskans by briefly examining the limitations on tribal jurisdiction in Alaska. Part II presents the remedies that are currently available to Alaska Native victims of domestic violence. Part III expands from the Alaska Supreme Court’s monumental decision in John v. Baker to argue that Alaska’s courts should recognize tribal jurisdiction in domestic violence cases just as Alaska’s Supreme Court recognized tribal adjudicatory jurisdiction in the family law context.