In rural villages, little protection for Alaska 

Natives

In the tiny Tlingit community of Kake, a brutal murder highlights how help often comes slowly and public safety is in short

KAKE, Alaska — Her body lay in the back entryway of the church for 11 hours after villagers called the Alaska State Troopers for help. She was a 13-year-old nicknamed “Mack” who wore big red glasses and loved to dance. The native Tlingit girl had been beaten to death.

No one knew who killed Mackenzie Howard that cold February night last year — and people were terrified that the killer was still in their midst. But in the remote community of Kake, only accessible by air or boat, there was no law enforcement officer. That meant no police to protect the community, cordon off the crime scene, preserve the evidence and launch an investigation. The villagers had to wait for state troopers in Juneau, 114 miles away, to get there.

“They have the capability of flying at night now . . . but still nobody came,” said Joel Jackson, a local wood carver who helped gather villagers to guard Mackenzie’s body and the crime scene that night. “And that upset me greatly. When there’s any fishing violation or hunting violation, they’re here in full force — over a dead animal. To have one of our own laying there for [so long] was traumatic for everybody.”

With no police and few courts of their own, most Alaska Native villages instead are forced to rely on Alaska State Troopers. But there is only about one trooper per every million acres. Getting to rural communities can take days and is often delayed by the great distances to cover, the vagaries of the weather and — in the minds of many Alaska Natives — the low priority placed on protecting local tribes.

Rural Alaska has the worst crime statistics in the nation’s Native American communities — and the country. Alaska Native communities experience the highest rates of family violence, suicide and alcohol abuse in the United States: a domestic violence rate 10 times the national average; physical assault of women 12 times the national average; and a suicide rate almost four times the national average. Rape in Alaska occurs at the highest rate in the nation — three times the national average.

These trends, according to Bruce Botelho, a former Alaska attorney general and a member of the Alaska Rural Justice and Law Enforcement Commission, are “exacerbated, in part, because of the enormous geographical size of Alaska, the remoteness of these communities, the skyrocketing costs of transportation, the lack of any economic opportunity and the enormous gaps in the delivery of any form of government service, particularly from the state of Alaska.”

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