In 1953, Congress passed Public Law 280, transferring criminal jurisdiction over tribal lands to state governments in Oregon. No tribe was consulted. No tribe consented.

In 1954, Congress passed the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act. Sixty-one tribes — more than any other state in the country — lost federal recognition in a single act. Their land base, their sovereignty, their legal existence as nations: terminated.

The restoration took decades. Siletz in 1977. Cow Creek in 1982. Grand Ronde in 1983. Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw in 1984. Klamath in 1986. Coquille in 1989. Each tribe fought its way back individually, years apart, through separate acts of Congress.

In 1996, Governor John Kitzhaber issued an executive order requiring all state agencies to engage in government-to-government communication with Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes.

In 2019, the Oregon legislature unanimously declared missing and murdered Indigenous people a statewide emergency.

In 2020, Oregon State Police produced a report on the crisis. The listening tour that was supposed to consult all nine tribes was halted by COVID after reaching three. The report — completed without input from six of the nine nations it was meant to serve — identified the problems: impossible to quantify the scope. Poor communication between agencies. Law enforcement unfamiliar with tribal jurisdiction. “Pervasive” trust deficits between police and Indigenous communities.

In June 2023, Oregon State Police hired their first tribal liaison.

One person.

Glendon Smith is a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Former associate judge in tribal court. Former secretary-treasurer and CEO of tribal council. Over a decade of service to his nation before he walked into a state agency to teach it how to talk to the nations within its borders.

He received Governor Kotek’s Public Service Ambassador Award. His colleagues nominated him without telling him.

He says he needs one to two additional staff members.

He doesn’t have them.

Here’s the detail that makes the architecture visible: The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is the only tribe in Oregon that was never subject to Public Law 280. Smith’s nation was exempt from the beginning — the only one whose criminal jurisdiction was never transferred to the state.

The man teaching Oregon State Police how to navigate the law that governs eight tribal nations comes from the one nation the law never touched.

He is not learning the system. He is translating the damage.

In May 2025, Oregon passed Senate Bill 1011 — creating a process for tribes to petition the governor for retrocession from PL 280. It passed unanimously. Senator Anthony Broadman, who sponsored it: “PL-280, plain and simple, hurt tribes.”

The state that imposed jurisdiction without consent in 1953 created a petition process for its removal in 2025. Seventy-two years. The petition process is voluntary. The original imposition was not.

New troopers receive one day of jurisdictional training. One time. There is no centralized database for missing Indigenous people in Oregon. The state cannot tell you how many people have been found after being reported missing, because no system tracks removals from the database.

Oregon declared this an emergency seven years ago.

The emergency has one employee.

This is not about Glendon Smith failing. This is about Glendon Smith succeeding inside a structure designed to be insufficient. The award is real. The relationships he’s building are real. The nine nations he serves know his name and his work.

But one person is not infrastructure. One person is a phone number.

In South Dakota, the state’s only MMIP liaison — one Oglala Lakota woman, funded not by the state but by a nonprofit — left her position this month. 105 open cases. The phone number is still listed. The person is not.

Oregon funded the position. Oregon hired the person. Oregon gave the person an award.

Oregon did not give the person staff.

Sixty-one tribes terminated. Nine restored. One executive order. One emergency declaration. One report written without input from six of nine nations. One liaison. One day of training. One petition process, seventy-two years after the imposition it’s meant to undo.

The word “liaison” means a person who serves as a link between groups. The fact that a link needs to exist between a state’s police force and the nations within its borders is not a staffing problem.

It’s an architecture problem.

The architecture is seventy-two years old. The link is one person.

// NEON BLOOD