Approximately 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, in southwest Arizona near Tucson, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe is situated on a 2,200-acre reservation. Four to five thousand of the tribe’s 19,000 members reside on the reserve. Single-mother homes, which make up roughly 43% of all Pascua Yaqui households, are the most prevalent household type on the reserve. As stated by the U.S. According to the census, the population of the Tribe’s trust lands and reservation is roughly 12.7% non-Indian. The DOJ received the final Pilot Project Application Questionnaire from the Pascua Yaqui Tribe on December 30, 2013. On February 6, 2014, the Tribe was given permission to begin exercising its SDVCJ, and on February 20, 2014, jurisdiction became effective. A official notice to the community about the new law’s implementation was promptly published by the Tribe in a news release. Following the completion of the Pilot Project, the Tribe made a detailed Pilot Project Summary and Implementation Timeline public for Pascua Yaqui’s adoption of the SDVCJ.
Many of the Pascua Yaqui prosecutors are designated as Special Assistant United States Attorneys (SAUSAs), which enables them to simultaneously serve as prosecutors in federal court. Domestic violence-related offenses make up the great majority of criminal cases filed in the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Court. The Tribe provides funding for a full-fledged Public Defenders Office, which was first established in 1995 and has four certified defense lawyers on staff. For cases where there is a conflict of interest, the Tribe also pays four privately hired defense lawyers. Since long before VAWA 2013, the Tribe has engaged judges with legal training and recorded its court procedures. The majority of SDVCJ cases are involving Pascua Yaqui, which also had the first jury trial.
A $450,000 grant from OVW was given to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in 2018 to help with the execution of the SDVCJ.
The Pascua Yaqui Tribe is descended from the Uto-Aztecan people, who once occupied a sizable portion of the Southwest and Mexico and are well renowned for their deer dances and cultural paintings. The tribe now has eight settlements spread across picturesque and lushly vegetated desert terrain in southern Arizona.
History & Nature
Within the village, the Yaqui culture and spirituality are significant. Their deer dances are a manifestation of their spirituality and serve as a representation of the Yaqui people’s relationship with nature. The Tribe has maintained its culture through oral tradition over the years while simultaneously managing to assimilate politically into American society.
The Yaqui, forebears of the Pascua Yaqui tribe of today, lived in the Mexican Yaqui River basin. Early Spanish explorers came upon the tribe in the 1530s, and talks with Spain started then. In 1610, the Yaqui nation and the Spanish government signed a formal peace pact. Soon after, the first catholic missionaries were established.
The Yaqui started combining many of their customs with Christian teachings in the 1700s. Pascua, the Spanish name for Easter, became deeply ingrained in the tribe’s tradition. The Yaqui’s Deer Dance, which was once performed to persuade deer to die for the tribe’s benefit, now symbolizes Christ’s death on the cross for the benefit of all people.
Although the Yaqui accepted the Spanish settlers’ faith, they were much less willing to submit to their rule. The tribe had started to grow weary of the Spanish encroachments into their territory by the middle of the eighteenth century. The Yaqui nation attacked the Mexican government by banding up with nearby tribes.
Over the following century, hostilities between the factions fluctuated in severity but never totally subsided. Up until a formal peace deal was reached in 1897, the Yaqui and Mexico were virtually at war. Many of the Yaqui had already been forced into Arizona’s neighbor at that point.
The number of Yaqui immigrants to the country increased over the ensuing 20 years. The Mexican government kept expelling members of the tribe from its boundaries notwithstanding the peace pact. In addition, many Yaquis entered the nation voluntarily to reunite with their relatives and flee persecution. Many people moved into a community they called Pascua.
Despite ongoing difficulties, the newly established Pascua Yaqui tribe started to prosper. They started the protracted battle for reform. Their initial success came in 1964 when they applied for lands with nonprofit status. The American government had yet to legally recognize the tribe’s official status at that point. Nevertheless, the tribe received 202 acres of land outside of Tucson, Arizona, while operating under the very flimsy pretext of the Pascua Yaqui Association.
The Pascua Yaqui tribe received official recognition as a formed tribe in 1978. Even while the separation was not perfect, it gave the tribe significant rights and benefits. After the Pascua Yaqui tribe was formally recognized by the US as a historic tribe in 1994, those rights were further strengthened.