Protest March Calls Attention To Criminal Justice Sentencing - alleged discrimination against native Americans in murder case - Brief Article

FAIRBANKS, AK-On May 1, 2001, heavy snow flurries dampened the crowd waiting for Shirley Demientieff to speak. About 100 people, calling themselves Alaska Natives Standing Up for Justice, had gathered near the state courthouse to call attention to what they say is lousy police work and the false incarceration of four young men.

Many carried hand-written signs declaring the men's innocence or that the police failed to listen to other witnesses.

Demientieff, dressed in her trademark black clothing, had led the group in peaceful protest from the Tanana Chiefs Conference complex, through downtown Fairbanks, along Second Ave and Cushman Street, to Bicentennial Park.

The event was scheduled to show support for Marvin Roberts' evidence hearing the following day. Roberts, along with two other Native men, George Frese and Eugene Vent, and a white man, Kevin Pease, were convicted of the October 9, 1997 murder of John Hartman, a Fairbanks teenager.

Demientieff and other Native speakers made the case that racial discrimination and sloppy police work led to wrongful conviction in the Harman case.

Steve Ginnis, president of Tanana Chiefs Conference, explained that the march and rally was set in motion through a resolution passed by the organization's annual March convention.

Unresolved questions

"There are many unresolved questions surrounding the conviction of four young men for the murder of John Hartman," Ginnis said. "Mr. Hartman's death was a tragedy-a senseless and brutal act that deserves condemnation and strong punishment. Yet the facts of this case appear to indicate that unreasonable and preconceived attitudes led to the convictions."

Nelson Angapak, vice president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, traveled from Anchorage to speak at the rally.

He told the crowd that, "The Native population makes up 16 percent of Alaska. (Yet) Thirty percent of inmates are Native people. There's something wrong with the judicial system."

Angapak went on to chastise the Alaska Legislature for dragging its feet concerning hate crimes legislation. Spurred in the wake of recent paint-ball gun attacks on Natives in Anchorage, racial prejudice concerns have reached new heights across the state. The paint ball shooting episode received national attention and cast the Legislature's Republican-led leadership as uncaring.

One day earlier, Governor Tony Knowles took the proactive step of appointing a 14-member Tolerance Commission to investigate hate crimes and racism in the state. In making the announcement, Knowles said, "In February, Alaskans were sickened to see the the videotape of three teenagers who targeted Alaska Natives for violence in downtown Anchorage. This assault was only the latest in a series of incidents of racial intolerance eating away at Alaska's social fabric and it's appropriate that the state respond.

Representatives Georgiana Lincoln and Mary Kapsner were named to the panel along with Denise Morris, president and CEO of the Alaska Native Justice Center, Senator Betlye Davis; Fairbanks mayor, Jim Hayes; and Gilbert Sanchez, an Anchorage journalist.

The commission is charged with holding hearings around the state in order to develop a record of the depth of the problem. Knowles hopes the comments and ideas that flow from the hearings will promote solid recommendations for systematic solutions.

The Fairbanks protesters, however, found little favor in the governor's proclamation. Citing institutional racism as the culprit, a TCC delegate from Tanana, Curtis Sommer, blasted the state's legislative and judicial systems as "undermining all that Natives are working for."

"...Someone we trust"

"The judges in the court are openly biased against people of color," Sommer said. "This justice system needs to be scrutinized. It needs to be scrutinized by someone we trust."

Ginnis said much the same when he accused the Fairbanks Police Department, the district attorney's office and the court of "unreasonable and preconceived attitudes" toward the Native community, and more specifically, the four men who have been in jail over three years.

Meanwhile, at nearly the same time, the Alaska Federation of Natives was announcing that its petition to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission had been accepted. In recent years the AFN has been pressing the commission to hold hearings in Alaska. In addition to direct incidents of racial bias, the AFN is expected to ask the national commission to investigate claims that differences in Alaska's budget and resource policies are tied to racial insensitivity and possibly blatant racism on the part of some of Alaska's political leadership.

Alaska's junior senator, Frank Murkowski, downplayed the usefulness of bringing the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to Alaska. Murkowski says that most non-Native and Native Alaskans get along well and questioned the value of a civil rights overview.

"We've had incidents. But as far as prevailing attitudes against our aboriginal people in Alaska, I think we've had the pleasure of living together and understanding each other's culture and being sensitve to each other's concerns," Murkowski said.

The civil rights investigation is scheduled to get underway later this summer.

The demonstration at Bicentennial Park went for barely more than an hour. As the latest Native call for equal rights dispersed, the snow stopped falling.

The Council, May 2001 issue, Reprinted with permission

COPYRIGHT 2001 Intertribal Christian Communications
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group