ABSTRACT

In the mid-1990s, what I term “the banishment case” excited anthropologists, criminologists, indigenous rights activists and others working in the fi elds of law and justice. In August 1994, Washington State Superior Court Judge James Allendoerfer agreed to a “unique experiment in cross-cultural justice” when he allowed two Tlingit youths convicted in a brutal beating and robbery to delay their mandatory jail sentences and face a traditionalist tribal court in Alaska. With the state court’s sanction, the Kuye di’ Kuiu Kwaan tribal court banished the two youths, Simon Roberts and Adrian Guthrie, both seventeen at the time, to remote and uninhabited islands in Southeastern Alaska for a period of twelve to eighteen months. According to tribal court organizers and other proponents, the banishment was meant to provide a culturally-specifi c, therapeutic alternative to incarceration.