Author: Matt Davis

For decades, the United States has responded to social issues like mental health and substance use crises, chronic homelessness, and ongoing cycles of interpersonal violence with jail incarceration rather than pursuing innovative strategies that are better suited to address the root causes of these issues. Jail incarceration has disrupted the lives of millions of people—disproportionately harming Black, Indigenous, and people of color—without improving public safety. There is a better way.

Communities can instead invest in agencies and organizations that address these issues outside the criminal justice system. The proven solutions highlighted in a new report released by the Vera Institute of Justice with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge look beyond jails to promote safe and thriving communities.

To be responsive to residents’ needs and account for the harm caused by incarceration, jurisdictions across the country must look for public safety solutions outside of the criminal justice system. Effectively ending the current dependence on jail incarceration requires an ecosystem of services and supports that enhance the mental, physical, and socioeconomic well-being of the people who have been most marginalized.

The report looks in depth at what methods are working to reduce jail use. They include responding to behavioral health crises without incarceration, using crisis call centers, mobile crisis response teams, crisis stabilization measures and other services instead of police and jails. Incarceration will not address chronic homelessness, but permanent supportive housing can. And some jurisdictions are interrupting cycles of violence without incarceration by adopting a public health approach that includes investment in community violence intervention programs.

Some example programs in cities and counties participating in the SJC include:

• Started in 2021, the Portland Street Response (PSR) in Multnomah County, Oregon, is a specialized mobile crisis response program designed to reduce police interaction with people who are experiencing homelessness and/or behavioral health issues. When a 911 call involving these issues comes in, PSR dispatches specially trained medics alongside peer support specialists who have direct experience with similar challenges. In addition to providing care for non–life-threatening medical issues and connecting people to services, the team may provide transportation to shelters, clinics, or another destination the person being helped selects.
• In Cook County, Illinois, the Westside Community Triage and Wellness Center provides urgent behavioral health care and serves as a hub to connect the neighborhood’s largely Black and Latinx residents to ongoing behavioral health services. In Pima County, Arizona, the Crisis Response Center offers 24/7 access to care resources for people who are experiencing behavioral health crises to avoid jail or emergency room settings.
• In Baltimore, Maryland, the Baltimore Community Mediation Center provides mediation services for people experiencing any stage of conflict, including mediation within jails and prisons for people approaching reentry. To ensure mediation services are accessible, the center partners with other public services and community-based organizations. In 2018, with help from around 60 volunteers, the center held close to 600 mediation sessions at more than 130 different locations around the city.
• In multiple cities around the United States, Cure Violence has reduced shootings by adopting a public health approach called Community Violence Intervention (CVI). It conducts public education campaigns to change attitudes about violence, seeking to build relationships with people who are most likely to engage in violent behavior. It relies on “credible messengers,” people who have lived experience with violence in neighborhoods, to perform outreach and intervention.

The report also focuses on grassroots strategies to elevate community expertise, and on effective collaboration with community-based organizations.

• For example, JustLeadershipUSA in New York City—a strategic ally of the Safety and Justice Challenge—is a power-building movement led by organizers directly impacted by the criminal justice system. In 2020, the organization created the #buildCommunities Platform 2.0, a large-scale vision-building exercise conducted in association with the #CLOSErikers campaign. Over three months, the collaborative convened assemblies in eight different neighborhoods in New York City that had been heavily impacted by incarceration and divestment. Conveners facilitated sessions for groups of residents to present, discuss, and workshop ideas together to identify where investment is needed to improve safety and well-being. The vision contributed to a multi-campaign effort that generated a $391 million city commitment to non–criminal justice system programming and resources.
• In 2019, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors established a public-private Work Group on Alternatives to Incarceration. The group convened dozens of representatives from nonprofit organizations, service providers, and state and local governments to explore better responses to the “human conditions” of homelessness, poverty, and behavioral health issues. Their work involved creating a roadmap for solutions that provide care and services first and make jail a last resort, a process that engaged government and community residents to think broadly and boldly about strategies for public safety. The group produced more than 100 recommendations to minimize the use of police and jails.

Vera’s report also highlights why criminal justice system responses to these social issues are not enough. Many current approaches to reducing the use of jails fail to address many of the underlying drivers of jail incarceration that would be better addressed through other agencies, organizations, and community-led efforts—unstable housing, poverty, limited educational opportunities, poor health, and inadequate access to services. Moreover, most current local justice reform approaches also fail to account for the racialized harm caused by decades of investments prioritizing criminal justice system agencies over community-based services and often ignore problematic system practices. These shortcomings limit both the efficacy and the reach of many reform efforts.

Ultimately, a network of community-based services and supports could go a long way to address criminalized behaviors in ways safer and more effective than jails.

Historically and up to today, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, and people residing in neighborhoods of historic divestment, are more likely to be harmed by public safety systems.

To truly reimagine public safety, cities must acknowledge these harms and take actionable steps, alongside their residents, toward transformation. In 2020 the names of people lost to police violence became synonymous with the movement toward justice. These tragic losses prompted a long overdue conversation with local leaders. They realized they could no longer treat public safety as solely a function of law enforcement.

The recent upticks in violent crime in many cities, despite low crime rates overall, reinforce the importance of city leaders having guidance and support as they think differently about public safety. Losing momentum toward transformation could lead cities back toward strictly enforcement and punishment-based levers for safety.

In this context, the National League of Cities Reimagining Public Safety Task Force held meetings and listening sessions hoping to collectively set a new vision for what it means to keep residents safe. Meeting from February to August of 2021, Mayors and Councilmembers from more than 20 cities, alongside national partners and community stakeholders, developed five high-level recommendations that support the movement toward safety for everyone.

Through collaboration with their peers, national organizations, and most importantly, their communities, elected officials can innovate and replicate policies and initiatives using these recommendations as a guide. Within each recommendation there is a strong focus on both moving away from policing as the only option and on centering the equitable engagement and involvement of residents in every step of the process.

Captured in the report “A Path Toward Safe & Equitable Cities”, the recommendations provide an initial framework for city action:

1. Direct municipal government leadership toward providing safety and well-being for all. This recommendation guides local leaders towards broader definitions of safety and new ways to measure what it is that makes people feel safe. A focus on wellbeing and public health leads cities toward expansive safety visions.
2. Balance the respective roles of government agencies, residents, and partners. Non-traditional stakeholders need to be involved in safety conversations, planning, and budgeting. Specifically, this inclusion centers members of the community who are often left out but most impacted by the harms of current systems.
3. Significantly expand the use of civilian-led and community-based well-being and prevention-focused strategies. Building on the momentum around community responder models and the amplification of credible messengers as key for any safety plan, this recommendation highlights public health response options to both crisis and violence.
4. Embrace full and transparent oversight and accountability for law enforcement. While the report does not center law enforcement in reimagining public safety, it is important for cities leaders to recognize and embrace their role in the oversight of their local police force. Accountability and transparency matter.
5. Seek guidance and support from peers and experts with the assistance of the National League of Cities. Local elected officials face scrutiny daily. In 2020, they also faced both a global pandemic and a reckoning around policing. Support from their peers and access to other resources is necessary as they take a journey toward community centered safety.

During NLC’s annual City Summit in November 2021, a Municipal Toolkit was released to dig deeper into what cities are doing and can do to bring these recommendations to life. The toolkit takes each recommendation and explains it in depth, draws out local examples where it has worked, and describes what implementing policies and initiatives could look like in communities across the country.

NLC, and the Task Force, recognizes that no city has this figured out completely and that much of what we have seen thus far has been smaller in scale and less equitable than we would like. However, by taking these steps, evaluating them, enhancing them and taking them to scale, transformation is possible. In addition, the American Rescue Plan offers an opportunity for cities to invest in ways not possible before. Not all cities are the same and not every city leader will act in the same way. But, through collaboration with residents, local stakeholders, and national partners, we can move from harm to wellness.

“We are talking about wellness. We are talking about holistic health in our communities. That is what public safety is all about—not just the absence of violence—but the presence of wellness,” said Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, New Jersey. “We need more than the police department to create wellness. Public safety has to be expanded and put in the hands of other folks.”

Probation is the most common sentence in the United States. In 2019, one in 73 adults was on probation, and there were almost 1.5 million more people on probation than in jails and prisons combined. Although the problems of “mass supervision,” particularly the way probation violations contribute to state prison populations, have begun to draw greater critical attention, there is very little information about how probation contributes to local jail populations.

A new report released by the Vera Institute of Justice, with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge, focuses on the ways probation can affect jail populations and what can be done differently.

Research shows people are frequently sentenced to overly long terms of probation and have to comply with an average of 10 to 20 conditions, which are often vague and sometimes conflict with each other. The difficulty of complying with all of these conditions for long periods of time frequently leads to “technical” violations (violations of supervision conditions that are not based on new criminal conduct) and can lead to revocation of probation and imposition of a jail or prison sentence. Nationally, only around 60 percent of people under supervision complete probation successfully.

Probation is also marked by significant racial disparities. Despite being more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison than probation, Black people are still over 2.6 times more likely than white people to be on probation. When they are sentenced to probation, Black people tend to be given more conditions and to be on probation for longer terms than similarly situated white people. They are also more likely to have violations filed against them, to be sanctioned with incarceration, and to have probation revoked and be sentenced to incarceration.

There are multiple ways probation supervision can result in jail incarceration, such as detention of people waiting for court hearings on violations alleged by a probation officer or sentencing of people to jail for probation violations. There is some evidence that increasing numbers of people are choosing to accept a jail sentence up front to avoid probation, as they view probation as too difficult to comply with and likely to result in eventual incarceration anyway.

National data provides almost no details on how probation contributes to jail populations. To begin to remedy this gap, we analyzed jail data from nine jurisdictions participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge. This analysis showed admissions to jail for probation violations vary from a low of 3.9 percent to a high of 23.8 percent. The data also showed that length of stay (LOS) for people with probation violations was much longer than for those held in jail for other reasons. Because of this extended LOS, on any given day, the proportion of people in jail for probation violations greatly exceeded their share of jail admissions. The probation violation ADP ranged from 9.1 percent to just over 50 percent. Our analysis also confirmed significant racial disparities: across the sites for which race data was available, Black and Native American people were held in jail for probation violations at rates far higher than their representation in the general public.

We also highlight strategies in two SJC sites to reduce probation violation populations in jail. For example, St. Louis County placed three full-time probation staff members in their jail to meet right away with people who come in on violations and work on release plans and recommendations that can be delivered directly to judges. This has led to more judges ordering release based on a probation officer’s written recommendations rather than waiting to hold a preliminary hearing.

Allegheny County, meanwhile, adopted multiple strategies to try to prevent people from going to jail on probation detainers and to get those who are jailed released more quickly. A new policy makes probation detainers an option of last resort, as probation officers in most cases must exhaust all other options for keeping people in the community before issuing detainers, while also requiring earlier release planning and regular follow up for people who do get detained. Allegheny County also developed procedures to ensure that probation violations and new charges are resolved at the same hearing, rather than waiting an average of two months between separate hearings. Finally, the County adopted criteria for termination of probation agreed on by the public defender’s and district attorney’s offices, which led to judges ending probation early for more people who were doing well under supervision.

To better understand how probation affects jail populations, probation agencies and local jails should work together to combine data, disaggregated by race and ethnicity, to ensure that they can determine who is in jail for probation violations; whether the violations are all technical or include new charges; whether people are being detained pending a violation hearing, serving a sentence as a direct sanction for a violation, or serving a previously imposed jail sentence after probation has been revoked; and how long people are spending in jail pending hearings and/or after being sentenced for violations.

Because probation can be a significant driver of jail populations, jurisdictions should work to reduce the number of people detained for violations as well as the time they stay in jail for those violations. Sites should consider using alternative non-carceral sentences instead of probation, limiting the length of probation, reducing and tailoring the number of probation conditions, reducing the frequency of reporting and allowing remote reporting, using summonses instead of warrants for violations, eliminating or severely restricting the use of detainers, and using only non-carceral sanctions for technical violations.

Hispanic Heritage month is an important time to reflect on Hispanic Heritage generally, including how far we still have to go to ensure equitable inclusion and access to justice. One aspect of this is to understand the overrepresentation of and disparate outcomes for people of color, including Latino/Latina/Latinx folks involved in the criminal legal system. Accurate data is needed for that.

Yet, remarkably, we do not know how many Hispanic and Latino people are arrested or how many are incarcerated in the United States because we are not collecting the data. Research by the Urban Institute shows 40 states report race in arrest records, but only 15 report ethnicities.

Counting or failing to count Latinos in our crime metrics has impacts far beyond this specific group of people. Failing to count Latinos means they are often captured as White people in the data. In addition to obscuring the impact of policies on Latinos, this failure obscures disparities between White and Black people in the system.

Without accurate representation we are limiting our chances of advancing racial equity, which is increasingly acknowledged as a key part of legitimate and sustainable strategies to reduce incarceration in the United States.

Self-Identification of Ethnicity Matters

Nineteen percent of America’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, but it is important to note that this population is not monolithic. It is a diverse and multiracial group. It encompasses an array of cultures, life circumstances, and regions of the world, including Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South and Central America, and the Dominican Republic. In the criminal justice system and elsewhere, it is important to identify people in the way they self-identify. Recently more people are using the term Latinx, and it is important to use the term for people who self-identify as such. Research by Pew Research Center shows that only about three percent of Hispanics use the term, countrywide. Sixty-one percent prefer the term Hispanic, and about a third prefer Latino.

Excluding Latinos from Criminal Justice Data Perpetuates Bias

Most states do not track race and ethnicity in a systematic way within local justice systems. The research shows that only one state, Alaska, tracks race and ethnicity consistently across all aspects of its prison population including parole and probation. Other states may be tracking this information but are not reporting on it publicly. This leaves Latinos largely invisible in data-driven discussions about reform. Data informs public policy and excluding Latinos from data collection excludes them from criminal justice policy discussions.

Perhaps most shockingly, states with large Latino populations do not necessarily keep better data. Most jurisdictions rely on arresting officers to classify the race or ethnicity of a person when they are arrested. If officers do not ask a person how they self-identify, bias in race and ethnicity can arise. For example, individuals who are light-skinned may be classified as White, and darker-skinned individuals will be classified as Black. Until about 1980, almost every jurisdiction categorized Latino people as White.

There is much room for improvement in how we categorize people. Because we know that front-end decisions impact subsequent decisions, accurately classifying people in the early stages of system involvement is key.

The MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge is working to reduce jail populations across America. It focuses significant attention on people who languish in jail before trial, who have been arrested on low-level crimes who are not a danger to their communities, and who cannot afford the cost of cash bail. As a result, people working together in cities and counties participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge are in a good position to influence change that leads to improved metrics on race and ethnicity. This represents a significant opportunity to further racial equity.

Organizing For Change in a Multiracial Society

I have heard often from people working to change the way Latinos are treated in the justice system that it is particularly difficult for us to organize when we are not accurately counted. Indeed, most people remain surprised when they hear the depth of this inconsistency. System actors often rely on existing, incomplete data infrastructure to collect and monitor data. This includes the limited classification for capturing race and ethnicity. There are still tremendous variations between agencies, states, and systems.

It is encouraging to see some SJC cities and counties be proactive in improving their data infrastructure to reflect the population they serve. In the end, we cannot measure the impact of reforms geared toward reducing disparities and inequalities if we do not have a mechanism that accurately counts people. The tracking of race and ethnicity across justice systems needs to change with the times.

October 11, 2021, marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day—a tradition first instituted in Berkeley, California, in 1992 as a counter-celebration to the 500^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas and the federal holiday honoring him. The goal of Indigenous Peoples’ Day is to recenter Indigenous people’s stories, celebrating their culture and history, and to highlight the grave impact that Columbus and colonialism had on them.

This year, the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) is using the day to highlight the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in jails across the country while we are also actively pursuing solutions. Some estimates suggest that Indigenous people are jailed at twice the rate of White people in the U.S. We spoke to Indigenous people working to reform local criminal justice systems through SJC to explore how we can all work to reduce Indigenous populations in jails.

Carolyn Olson works in the state attorney’s office in Pennington County in South Dakota. She identifies as biracial, Indigenous (from the Anishinaabe Monacan, and Eastern Band Cherokee tribes) and White, and serves as the local SJC community liaison attorney. Census takers estimate that the Native American population of Pennington County is between 10 and 25 percent, but the jail population in Pennington County is 55 percent Indigenous.

“It’s unacceptable, the disparity,” Carolyn said. “It’s way too high.”

Carolyn spent 18 years working as a prosecutor in Pennington County and has seen how Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system there. Now Carolyn is spending her time connecting system-impacted Indigenous individuals with existing and emerging Indigenous resources in the area, so that they can better access services to help them heal, overcome addiction and trauma, and stay out of jail.

Carolyn has worked with an Indigenous-focused group called I. Am. Legacy which was founded by Erik and Morgan Bringswhite to build trust in the county and on neighboring tribal reservations. I. Am. Legacy offers culturally relevant programming for people who are involved with the criminal justice system—particularly those who might have encountered law enforcement because of an underlying behavioral health issue, like substance abuse disorders. I. Am. Legacy helps people reconnect with their culture as part of their work to overcome trauma and the root sources of their substance abuse disorder. In addition, Carolyn has also built bridges with criminal justice system programs, law enforcement, as well as other Indigenous-rooted services.

“As a Native person working in the criminal justice system for so long, I really do think systemic racism plays a big role in the way the system was set up and operates,” Carolyn said. “The volume of cases coming through the system means that hardworking, well-intentioned people don’t have time to reflect on why things are happening. The work I’ve been doing is to get people to see that historical trauma impacts Indigenous people who go through the system and work to overcome things like substance abuse disorders. The goal is to connect people to culturally rooted services to overcome some of that, and it’s starting to have an impact.”

Char Green-Maximo recently left her position as the SJC community engagement coordinator in Minnehaha County, South Dakota, to join South Dakota Urban Indian Health, which provides culturally based mental health and substance use treatment, mentoring, arts programs, and other services to Indigenous people. “Judges are referring people to the services, and they are starting to have an impact,” Char said.

Originally from Fort Peck, Montana, Char is from the Nakoda and Dakota tribes. She has an older brother who spent time incarcerated, and while she knew about the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in prisons and jails, she did not realize the impact on people’s lives until she visited him.

“I went to see him, and I always knew the rates of imprisonment for Indigenous men were high, but that was the first time I saw so many Native men together,” she said. “And it was just mind-blowing. I went from reading a number to seeing the people, and it was just a whole different thing. It’s just a lot to take in when you consider the families impacted.”

Char meets often with law enforcement in the county as part of her work. While there has been an occasional Indigenous person in the police department, and there is one Indigenous judge, locally, most people working in law enforcement and the criminal justice system are White.

“They see the overrepresentation of Indigenous people, but it’s hard to soak it in, because most of them didn’t grow up by reservations or around the Native American population, so they don’t know anybody, personally, like that,” Char said. “The only time they’re interacting with Indigenous people is when they’re arresting them. I think sustained training for law enforcement would help them understand the deeper issues that contribute to some of the issues. And I don’t mean a two-day training but ongoing work. These issues often traumatize people as children and take time and training to understand over a long period as you see the behaviors coming out in response to stimuli.”

“They want to recruit more Indigenous officers, but it’s about forming more authentic relationships in those communities earlier so that people know you more and trust you more,” she added.

In Missoula County, Montana, county participating in SJC, Dr. Desiree Fox and Dr. Ciara Hansen are clinical psychologists who are working on an upcoming paper with support from the MacArthur Foundation about the overincarceration of Native Americans. They worked with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes—of which Desiree is a member—on a project designed to facilitate successful return to the reservation community for Indigenous people who had been incarcerated.

“People were coming back to the reservation and facing sentencing conditions that were impossible to meet,” said Ciara. “People were going back to prison at disproportionate and alarming rates for things like not being able to line up anger management training. It’s impossible to access that training when you’re living on a reservation.”

Ciara and Desiree collaborated with the managing attorney at the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal defender’s office to develop a tribal reentry program based on the “holistic defense” program developed by attorney Robin Steinberg, the founder and former executive director of the Bronx Defenders in New York. Under the holistic defense model, public defenders work in interdisciplinary teams that include social workers, mental health professionals, and others, to address not only a client’s criminal case, but also its causes and wider consequences not just for the individual accused of a crime, but for their families and wider circle. For example, if a person is sent to jail and spends time away from their family, unable to be a parent or work to earn money for the family, then when they return, the consequences can be severe. Likewise, it is possible that a person committed a crime because of a behavioral health issue that can be treated.

In response, Ciara and Desiree began to develop new risk assessment tools that were more sensitive to the physical, social and cultural needs of Indigenous people.

“The typical mainstream predictors for recidivism are not the same as they are for Indigenous people,” said Desiree. “For example, the court system might increase your risk because of where you grew up or how you grew up. And now you’re automatically considered an increased risk of recidivism because you grew up on a reservation. That inherent bias discriminates against Indigenous people in a way that is out of control.”

“While we were doing the program, we realized that all of the risk assessments that were being used to provide insight about the conditions people need in their sentencing were not based on Native populations,” Ciara said.

“Systemic biases in America’s government and legal systems are rooted in historic genocide perpetrated against Native people,” said Dr. Selso Villegas. He is a member of Pima County, Arizona’s Collaborative Community, part of the local SJC’s work. He is also a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Executive Director of the Nation’s Department of Water Resources. Selso thinks that mainstream America believes its in their best interest to not acknowledge the struggles undergone by Native people, perhaps thinking it is better to ignore it rather than deal with it.

“We’re invisible to people because that’s the way many in society want it,” he said. “Not too many people have Native friends. We know we’re not a priority to Pima County. We are sort of a nuisance. For example, my grandson, who has been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Disorders, has not had rehabilitation or behavioral training recommended to the Court. He is doing time for the addictions of his parents. We also understand that tribal needs are an afterthought in local, state, and federal government operations.”

Selso recently participated in a wellness day focused on mental health and self-care sponsored by two local tribes. He set up a booth to talk to people about how to go to court to expunge outstanding warrants, the majority being failure to appear warrants. He signed up over 30 tribal members and talked to over 100 people about taking advantage of the Pima County Court program.

“For a short amount of time, we got some people to believe that they had a chance in the legal system,” he said. “And that’s good. I felt like I was contributing to the cause because it will keep at least a hundred people out of jail.”

Selso wants to remind people that Native people may have been forgotten by many, but that Native people take great pride in this country. “It is our home too,” he said. “We are the first Americans.”

Renee Bourque, a citizen of the Mvskoke Nation from Oklahoma, is the Director of the Victim Assistance to Support Tribes (VAST) Center at the National Center for Victims of Crime, a strategic ally of the Safety and Justice Challenge. VAST provides technical assistance and training on Indigenous issues to tribal governments and victims’ service agencies, but also to any federal, state, or non-governmental agency that serves Indigenous people. The initiative’s staff are Indigenous by intention so that they can build relationships across the criminal justice system and Indigenous partners.

Renee attributes historical and generational trauma perpetuated against Indigenous people as a root cause of overrepresentation in the justice system.

“I’ve been working with crime victims in Indian Country for 20 years, and it is so evident that hurt people hurt people,” Renee said. “It’s not uncommon in Indian Country for you to serve a victim one week and then in a couple of months, that person may be the offender, and you might be serving the same family.”

She points to news stories coming out of Canada about the murder of Indigenous children at boarding schools and says it is a moment to build awareness of the harms perpetrated on Indigenous people across North America. Secretary for the Interior Deb Haaland has launched an investigation into the lasting effects of the more than 350 government-funded Indian boarding schools in the United States. The remains of 10 Native American and Alaska Native children were recently returned home to their communities from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

The school’s chilling motto, like many boarding schools across the United States for Indigenous youth attempting to “Americanize” them, was to “kill the Indian, save the man.”

“Most Americans also don’t realize that there are 574 tribal nations in the United States, with 229 in Alaska, and the rest in the lower 48,” Renee said. Each one is an individual sovereign nation with their own codes, laws, courts, traditions, language, and treaties with the U.S. government.

“We each have a different creation story,” Renee said. “We’re all different. And I think the biggest misnomer is that ‘Indigenous people’ all get lumped into one group. But tribal affiliation for each group is important. It’s most important to me to identify as a ‘Mvskoke’ woman, for example. There’s still so much education that needs to be done.”

Aside from a deeper understanding of the complexity facing Indigenous people in the U.S., the most important thing on October 11, Renee said, is for people across the country to understand the history of these issues.

“It’s only by understanding our history and treatment of our people that we may move forward,” she said. “The treaties must be honored, so that we may honor our ancestors and continue to grow and prosper as the first peoples of this land. We are still here!”