Friday Transportation Seminar: Tribal Mobility, Accessibility and Social Equity

 

The speaker for this seminar was Margo Hill, a Spokane tribal member and current faculty member at Eastern Washington University. She was formerly a Spokane Tribal Attorney and Coeur d’Alene Tribal Court Judge. The seminar focused on the specific transportation needs of Native American communities in the United States. She began the seminar by underscoring the importance of understanding Native American history and how it has shaped the concept legal structure of tribal governments today. This is especially important to consider in order to do good planning in Indian Country. She explained the concept of inherent tribal sovereignty, the inherent right to self-government possessed by native people long before the arrival of colonizers. Treaties, federal statues, executive orders, and federal court decisions have also played important roles in shaping tribal law in addition to agency regulations, specific provisions of the US Constitution, as well as tribal laws themselves. An important consideration for planning in Indian country is the different layers of government, from federal to state to tribal. This is reflected in the various land designations that comprise Indian reservations, including federal tribal trust land, tribal fee land, and non-Indian fee land. Fee land carries much more flexibility in terms of land use, right-of-way, etc. Something else that is very important to recognize is the incredible diversity in Native peoples; each tribe has unique laws and code. Specifically in regards to transportation, some tribes have a specified right to travel explicitly spelled out in treaties or tribal constitutions. This clearly has important implications for tribal mobility and transportation and the issue has recently been adjudicated by the US Supreme Court.

A study carried out by Eastern Washington University highlighted the diverse variation in mobility and access to urban areas, interstates, and grocery stores across different tribes. Interestingly, the most accessible necessity measured on average was Walmarts, which many tribes apparently rely on for fresh fruits and vegetables. 

One of the most important areas impacted by mobility is that of missing and murdered indigenous women. Rates of violence on reservations can be up to ten times higher than the national average. According to the CDC, murder is the third highest cause of death for indigenous women. Overly 80% of Native women experience violence in their lifetime. Tribes depend on the US Attorney to prosecute crimes like these. According to the experience of Dr. Hill in her capacity as a tribal attorney, the tribe frequently received letters of declination when trying to prosecute these crimes. Current systems of travel are clearly not prioritizing the safety of indigenous women. 

Indigenous women have very low rates of car ownership and thus high rates of public transit use. Poor access to public transit on many reservations coupled with high rates of poverty among indigenous women lead many to resort to hitchhiking, exposing native women to a dangerous environment. Many reservations have limited access to financial institutions like banks, posing a further barrier when it comes to transportation and mobility. 

Equity is such an important consideration when it comes to transportation planning, as we have discussed in class and has been discussed in our readings. With this blog post, I hope to bring to light an area of equity that may often be overlooked, or one we may simply not know much about, knowing the demographic background of most planners. We talk about the importance of historical context when it comes to planning, and I can think of no better area where that would apply than servicing indigenous communities. There is such a long history of discrimination and disinvestment in this community. Hopefully by focusing more on issues such as these through an equity lens, we can begin to make amends through our planning.