Editor's Note: This article was updated on 11/4/24 to clarify a source's comments about working with federal government employees.
Terri Smith drove her white pickup truck across the storm-darkened community of Arapahoe, on the Wind River Reservation.
“I know the Little Shields live here,” she said. “I know the Whites live over here, last name White. C’Bearings’ over here.”
For people who’ve been to prison, the odds of returning there after being released are high across the board.
That rate is estimated to be 33 percent higher for Native American people, according to a report from the Department of the Interior.
Smith leads the Northern Arapaho Reentry Agency. For now, she’s its only employee.
It started up this year after the tribe got a federal grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to help Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribal members coming from prison readjust to life on the reservation and stay out of jail.
In the truck, Smith barreled across flat pastureland and the occasional smattering of houses, all of it sitting at the feet of the Wind River Mountains.
Her eyes were busy with memories.
“The house burned down, so now there's like a camper there, and one of my aunts lives there because she has no place to go,” she said. “There's no electricity, no water, no nothing. They basically live in that tent, in that car, and that thing with no electricity. She's, like, 64.”
Difficulty finding housing is one of many hurdles people coming back from prison face.
Smith was raised here and knows personally about what can lead someone to get caught up with addiction and the law.
That’s because in 2020, she was sentenced to six months in federal prison in California for conspiracy to distribute Oxycodone and cocaine.
“I was away from my kids, I was away from my partner,” Smith said.
At the time, she was chief judge of the Wind River Tribal Court with a promising career ahead of her.
But she lost her law license while in prison.
“There's gonna be a lot of people who still view that side of me, but I know I've done the work to get better,” Smith said. “I did my time, I went to treatment.”
She came home in 2021 and started over, working at Center of Hope, a local halfway house. When the funding for the reentry agency came through, former Northern Arapaho Business Councilman Lee Spoonhunter told Smith she should apply to lead it.
“I honestly think this job is perfect for me right now,” she said. “Because I'm getting a second chance, I want everyone to get that.”
Smith made a left turn into the town of Riverton as rain pelted the car, on her way to pick up one of her clients for their regular check-in meeting.
Tremayne Thunder is a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe and Smith’s first client.
He’s one of 15 who she helps on a weekly basis. Last year, he was arrested and charged with illegal possession of a firearm.
“When it came time for me to get released, I had nowhere to go,” said Thunder. “And that's when Terri came in. She helped me from the very start, even when I was in prison.”
Smith helped him find a place to live when he got out.
“She can relate to everything, as in, all of it: the prison system, the probation system, being an addict, everything,” Thunder said. “Her story inspires me so, so much. It makes me want to do better, you know, because it can be done.”
Smith also helps Thunder find a way to get to and from medical appointments and meetings with his federal parole officer.
“If there's a document that I don't understand, I call her, and it's just like, ‘Man, I don't understand this. Can you help me with it?’” he said.
Meanwhile, state leaders in Cheyenne, like Navajo Sen. Affie Ellis, say they support Smith and her work.
Ellis was the first Native American woman to be elected to the Wyoming Legislature. She served on the national Indian Law and Order Commission starting in 2010, which was tasked with crafting a report on crime in Indian County and making recommendations to improve public safety.
“I think these programs are really important and long overdue,” said Ellis. “To the extent that we can rely more on tribal governments and tribal courts to provide those [reentry] services, the better off I think everyone is.”
Reentry services like Smith’s are new to the Wind River Reservation and to many other tribal nations in the U.S.
Ellis says she supports Smith and her goal of reducing recidivism rates among reentry agency participants by 50 percent.
“When the feds are involved, they don't necessarily have the wraparound services that really make a difference when it comes to treating an individual, not just the crime, in a punitive way,” she said. “But how do we restore that individual so that they can live in that community in a really productive way?”
But Ellis worries about the program’s dependence on federal money.
“We've seen this time and again in Indian Country: great idea, great program,” she said. “Here's some funding. Tribes get something going, and then money runs out, they lose the grant, and then the program's gone.”
The reservation also has a Wind River Tribal Reentry Court, which is separate from Smith’s agency.
It’s made up of a district judge, U.S. attorney and public defender – all feds – as well as representatives from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. They come to the reservation to meet with tribal members directly.
People on supervised release like Thunder have to meet with the court regularly to make sure they’re following its rules.
Before the reentry court started up about a year ago, tribal members often had to travel all the way to Cheyenne or Casper to meet with the nearest district judge.
“They came to us and said, ‘What can we do to help this situation? How can we be better?’” said Sunny Goggles, one of the tribal representatives on the court and the director of White Buffalo Recovery Center.
Before it got going, Chief U.S. Probation Officer Paul Ricketts says federal data indicate 75.6 percent of people who had committed crimes on the reservation somehow violated the terms of their release. That means they were either sent back to prison or were put back on supervision.
“[That number] just blows my mind,” said Goggles. “But I see it. I see it with family members and relatives.”
For her, the bottom line will always be that the federal government controls much of the tribes’ judicial system, including punishment for more serious crimes like felonies.
In general, Goggles expressed concern about many of the federal employees she works with on a broader level than the reentry court, including some at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the FBI and the federal Bureau of Prisons.
“I like the feds that I work with, but I really think on the federal system, you know – it's a job, it's a job,” Goggles said. “I don't think their heart is in it. I don't think their heart is for our community, and unfortunately, we don't have control over these systems. There's not a lot of dialogue between the federal system and the tribes.”
Back in Arapahoe, Smith goes to her reentry agency office in Great Plains Hall.
“This grant is just me in this office,” she said. “That's all was written into that grant. I want to help all these people, and I intend to, but I don't want to get worn down.”
Smith said she looked to reentry agencies in Oklahoma and Minnesota for guidance on how to run hers. She’s also hoping to apply for more grant funding for the agency to try and keep it alive.
In the meantime, she’s petitioning to get her law license back so she can help clients like Thunder even more.
“I got letters of recommendation from my attorney friends and from Lee [Spoonhunter], the councilman,” Smith said, holding up the letters. “I hope it goes well.”
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
