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• U.S. Associate Attorney General Tony West, the department's third-highest official, traveled to Bismarck for the first public hearing of a 12-member task force that will examine the impact of exposure to violence on Native children. West said tribal children are victimized and witness violence at a higher rate than non-Native children, which can lead to a cycle of abuse and societal problems, the Bismarck Tribune reported.
• "We know that we do not have to accept these outcomes as inevitable," he said.
• The task force, which is co-chaired by former North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, is the latest effort by the Justice Department to address violence on reservations, particularly against women and children.
• Federal prosecutors in North Dakota recently tried two cases involving the death of three children on Spirit Lake, which has been criticized for its ineffective child protection system. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which took over control of the tribe's child social services more than a year ago, recently assigned seven agents to the reservation.
• Chase Ironeyes, an attorney and founder of the Web site lastrealindians.com, told committee members that he was exposed to violence as a child, then perpetuated that violence as an adolescent along with other children growing up on the Standing Rock reservation.
• "I didn't have a single male role model growing up," he said.
• Ironeyes urged the committee to find ways to help fund existing programs to help children who have been exposed to violence, so that the cycle of violence that has taken over tribal communities can be broken.
• Dorgan, a longtime advocate for Native American issues, said the problem is not some mysterious illness with an unknown cure.
• "We know this is happening, and we know how to address it if we just have the will and if we have the determination to use the resources and make the resources available to say that children are our priority," Dorgan said.
• The two-tiered task force is anchored by a federal working group that includes U.S. attorneys and officials from federal Interior and Justice departments, and an advisory committee of experts on American Indian studies, child health and trauma and child welfare and law. The committee will make policy recommendations to Attorney General Eric Holder.
• West is the second top-tier DOJ official to come to the Dakotas in the last year. Deputy Attorney General James Cole visited the Standing Rock Reservation -- which straddles North and South Dakota -- in the spring of 2012.
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