Interesting
Rick Smith
Federal judge considers lawsuit that could decide Alaska tribes’ ability to put land into trust
Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people gather in Juneau for Celebration on June 5, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
BY JAMES BROOKS, ALASKA BEACON
JUNE 22, 2024
This month, hundreds of Tlingit, Tsimshian and Haida tribal members gathered in Juneau for Celebration, a four-day, biennial cultural festival.
As they walked to Juneau’s convention center, attendees passed a black banner advocating “LandBack,” or the return of land to Alaska Native tribes.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published by the Alaska Beacon on Jan. 20, 2024 and is republished here under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.]
Hundreds of miles away, in Anchorage, a federal judge is considering a legal case that could allow tribal governments, rather than Alaska Native corporations, to take authority over significant amounts of Alaska land.
Attorneys argued the case, known as Alaska v. Newland, in early May, and U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason is preparing a ruling.
At its heart, the case involves a straightforward question: Can the federal government take land into trust on behalf of Alaska Native tribes?
Doing so would allow those tribes to create “Indian Country,” giving tribes the ability to exert their sovereign governmental powers. It would also prevent the land from being sold or given away.
The state of Alaska, which filed the lawsuit, has argued that when Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971, it did not intend to allow the creation of new Indian Country in Alaska.
Arguing in court, Alaska Solicitor General Jessie Alloway asked Gleason to consider what has changed in the past 50 years.
“It’s certainly not any legislative intent on the part of Congress,” she said.
But the federal government’s view on existing law has changed. In November 2022, the Department of the Interior concluded that ANCSA did not forbid the federal government from taking new land into trust here.
The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska was among the first tribes to take action based on that conclusion, petitioning to have the federal government put a small, 787-square-foot parcel into trust.
The Tribe hopes several adjacent parcels will follow.
Speaking in court last month, attorney Charmayne Staloff represented the federal government.
Rhetorically, she asked whether a 90-year-old federal law gave the Secretary of the Interior the ability to take land into trust within Alaska.
“The answer to that question is yes,” she said.
“Second, does the secretary retain that authority today? The answer is also yes,” she said.
Attorneys for the federal government and Tlingit and Haida have argued that while ANCSA did erase some tribal trust land, it didn’t prevent the creation of new trust land.
The state of Alaska has argued that the issue is a “major question,” a key term in federal jurisprudence.
Under a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, if something is a major question — involving issues of “vast economic and political significance” — a federal agency can’t act without explicit direction from Congress.
Staloff argued that the issue doesn’t apply here. Tribes in the 49 other states have long been allowed to place land into trust, and Alaska is the only exception.
“This is simply not a case in which an agency relied on some vague language or ancillary provision to discover unheralded power,” she said.
Judge Gleason also sounded skeptical of the suggestion that the issue is a major question, asking Alloway if she can think of a prior example where a major question involved just one state.
“I’ll be honest with the court that I think that that would be an issue of first impression, but I don’t think that there’s no support for it,” Alloway said.
Gleason questioned both attorneys intermittently and at one point said that based on her reading of federal law, she “isn’t persuaded” that any given tribe is entitled to put land into trust.
Gleason didn’t say when she may rule on the case, but she appeared to hint at the direction of her thinking when she asked both attorneys what they would think about a decision that declared the issue was not a major question but put limits on the federal government’s ability to put land into trust.
Rick Smith
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Rick Smith
Measuring Up
National Capital Parks-East, National Mall and Memorial Parks, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument
Only a handful of US Park Police (USPP) officers from the 1940s through 1970 were women. In 1972, however, two events opened the door to change. Thirty years after the first policewomen were hired, women officers were uniformed, making them publicly visible for the first time. In addition, a legal challenge to USPP’s minimum height and weight standards for women brought at least the promise of more opportunities for policewomen.
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USPP's early progress hiring policewomen in the 1940s stalled during the 1950s and 1960s. No new women officers were hired and by the late 1960s, the policewomen hired in the 1940s had retired or were working in administrative positions.
USPP seasonal employees for parking control and public assistance, 1971. (US Park Police photo)
By 1970, women were more likely to find USPP jobs as "seasonal employees for parking control and public assistance" (sometimes referred to as meter maids or crossing guards) than as police officers. The public safety positions were temporary and the names of the women hired are not readily available. Although a 1971 photo documents a dozen women working that summer (most of whom were women of color), it's not known how many women were hired in any given year. By 1976, the jobs had been retitled "park aides."
Although they were not policewomen, they were the first women in USPP to be uniformed. Their uniforms consisted of black skirts with blue stripes down the sides, white short-sleeved blouses, white gloves, and blue hats modeled after the US Navy’s World War II WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Service). Although the hat included the USPP insignia on the front, the women did not wear badges or aparently patches on their shirts.
As the 1970s dawned, more women looked to become police officers with USPP rather than parking enforcement officers. In June 1970, Shirley Long passed the examination to become a USPP officer but she wasn't offered a job. Among the reasons cited was that she did not meet the minimum requirements of 5'8" and 145 pounds. However, those standards were not put in place until after she applied.
Sometime during summer 1971, the Americans Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a discrimination claim on Long's behalf. The ACLU argued that the standards made 98 percent of American women ineligible. The National Organization for Women (NOW) also took up Long's cause. In January 1972 a group of NOW women demonstrated outside the Department of the Interior. They distributed leaflets titled, “We Can No Longer Permit One Half of the Population to Police the Other Half” and which demanded that “50 per cent of Park Police in all phases of police work be women.”
In November 1972 the Civil Service Commission’s Board of Appeals and Review ruled that the practice was sex discrimination, noting that there was “no rational relationship” between the minimum standards and USPP work, most of which involved traffic duty at the time. The board also ruled that Long be hired to fill the next available USPP vacancy. Despite her legal victory, it appears that she never worked for the USPP.
The USPP policewomen working from the 1940s through the 1960s were all plainclothes officers. That changed when Judy Shuster and Paulette Dabbs became the USPP’s first uniformed policewomen in 1972.
Dabbs and Shuster both joined USPP on December 26, 1971. They had to meet the minimum height (5’8”) and weight (145 pounds) standards for USPP officers. Judy Shuster (now Ferraro) recalled trying to gain weight to qualify but that at weigh in she was still too light by a pound. She remarked, “If you had weighed me right after breakfast, I would have been 145 pounds.” They let her in.
They were part of class 1971a (December 1971 to April 1972) at the Consolidated Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (CFLETC) in Washington, DC. The US Secret Service conducted the firearms training. Swimming was also done offsite. The third woman in the class was Donna Simms who was training as a park ranger. Judy Shuster Ferraro recalled,
They were very adamant that we had the same exact training as the men. If they ran a certain amount, we had to run the same. If they did a certain amount of sit ups, we had to do the exact same. They were very strict with that.
Police class 1971a. The three women in the front row are (left to right) Paulette Dabbs, Donna Sims, and Judy Shuster. (Courtesy of Judy and Tony Ferraro)
Although USPP was “so anxious at that point to push a woman up” as Ferraro recalled, it was unprepared for the realities of women officers. One area where this was apparent was the lack of a woman’s uniform. In the photo above, Simms is wearing the NPS 1970 women’s uniform, but Dabbs and Shuster are wearing civilian clothes. The eight USPP men are all in uniform.
Ferraro recalled that the uniform was created right before she and Dabbs graduated. “I think they had crossing guards at the time that wore skirts. Well, they took those skirts and put a blue stripe down them. And then we went over to 8th and Eye Streets to the Marine Corps’ dress shop across the street from the barracks, and they put a uniform together. We wore the men's shirts. It didn't fit too well. We were supposed to have the necktie like the men, but unfortunately, on the day of graduation, I lost my tie. And so, they went downstairs to the Executive Protective Service and got those little cross Tuxedo ties, I think they called them, so that was our uniform."
Private Judy Shuster in the winter uniform. (Courtesy of Judy and Tony Ferraro)
The basic uniform looks remarkably similar to that of the temporary "meter maids" documented in the photograph above, right down to the hat and, on ocassion, the white gloves. Ferraro recalled the hat noting, “It looked like an inverted tea strainer or something. It was awful. And we had a straw one in the summer, and sort of a felt one in the winter, but they were pretty outrageous.”
Of course, there were some key differences between the uniforms such as the tie, the uniform shirt with USPP shoulder patch, and, as Ferraro noted, “Come winter, we got pants and a winter coat.” Most notably, however, both Dabbs and Shuster wore badges and carried sidearms. Like the men, they wore the Sam Brown belt across their chests and around their waists to hold their pistols. At first they were issued detective special pistols but later were given 4-inch .38 pistols.
Initially, the uniform included pumps which were uncomfortable and impractical. “We found that out real fast, and they took us down and bought us another pair of shoes that looked like a nun's shoes. We just had to agree, both of us, what we would wear, and so we picked something that was comfortable to walk in, because those first ones did not cut it for a foot beat.”
A women’s uniform shirt was created in 1973, providing a better fitting option. By ca. 1974, the skirt was replaced by trousers year-round, but the crosstie and the hat remained until around 1978. Beginning in 1979, woman and men wore identical uniforms.
Although Shuster and Dabbs weren’t the first USPP policewomen, their uniforms made them the first who were publicly visible. Ferraro remarked, “If I had a dollar for every time my picture was taken in front of one of these memorials, I'd be wealthy because it was such a novelty. Nobody was used to seeing a woman with a gun in uniform.”
Demonstrations and The Ballgown Beat
Like other new recruits, Shuster and Dabbs worked foot patrol their first year. After a short training period, they patrolled without partners. They rotated through the same shifts as the men which meant doing solo patrols at night. They didn’t usually work together except for special assignments, including demonstrations where women might need to be searched.
Privates Dabbs (right) and Schuster search women at their first antiwar demonstration. (Courtesy of Judy and Tony Ferraro)
Ferraro recalled that their first demonstration was a protest against the Vietnam War. She remembered, “They were putting these people they were arresting on buses, and we had to search the females before they put them on the bus.” Some demonstrators mocked their uniforms, saying that they looked like stewardesses. Shuster always responded, "Yeah, ride the friendly buses of the United States Park Police."
Working during demonstrations often involved a lot of waiting. Ferraro recalled, “They would have all the police on the bus and just a handful [on the streets]. If anything started, everybody on the bus would have to go out. There were like three or four buses of police. You'd be sitting on a bus for eight hours sometimes. I'd read a book. Paulette [Dabbs] would have sewed or knitted or something. That's the only time we were really together."
At the time, USPP was the only federal agency in Washington, DC with women police officers. As a result, Shuster and Dabbs where sometimes loaned out when another agency needed women officers. Ferraro recalled working the inaugural events for President’s Richard Nixon’s second term in January 1973. The Secret Service purchased the gowns she and Dabbs wore as they mingled at the inaugural ball, alert for security threats. Later USPP policewomen also attended the balls undercover. Shuster was also featured in a US Department of Treasury training film.
Left to right: Private Judith Shuster, Deputy Chief Fallon, and Private Paulette Dabbs, ca. 1972. (US Park Police photo)
The 1972 determination in Long's case that the minimum height and weight standards were discriminationatory was significant but it didn't change USPP overnight. It was a couple of years before women applicants started to benefit from the ruling. In the meantime, women like Janice A. Rzepecki and Jane P. Marshall, who met the minimum standards, were hired. In practice, it seems that the height restriction was eliminated first, but even that step began Tipping the Scales towards more women on the force.