The future of a Northern Arapaho man who shot a bald eagle for use in his tribe’s Sun Dance two years ago now rides on the eventual decision of a federal appeals court.
Winslow Friday, 23, of Ethete, Wyo., listened Monday as lawyers representing him and his tribe sparred with a lawyer from the U.S. Department of Justice before a panel of judges at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
The Department of Justice wants the appeals court to reinstate a criminal charge against Friday.
If he’s convicted of illegally killing the bald eagle, he could be sentenced to up to a year in jail and fined $100,000.
The appeals court did not immediately issue a ruling on the case after Monday’s arguments, leaving Friday to wait.
“Getting older, I understand what stress does to you now,” Friday said after the court hearing.
Friday acknowledges killing the eagle with a rifle on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming, home to both the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.
Friday says he didn’t know about a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program that allows American Indians to apply for permits to kill eagles for religious purposes. Attorneys representing him and his tribe claim the federal agency did its best to keep the program secret and only grudgingly issued the permits.
Late last year, U.S. District Judge William F. Downes agreed, dismissing the criminal charge against Friday.
“Although the government professes respect and accommodation of the religious practices of Native Americans, its actions show callous indifference to such practices,” Downes wrote in his ruling.
Kathryn E. Kovacs, lawyer with the Department of Justice, said Monday that Friday had no standing to argue about shortcomings of the federal permitting process because he never applied for a permit before killing the eagle.
Kovacs also told the appellate panel that Friday’s ignorance of the permitting process “does not give him a license to ignore the law.”
John T. Carlson, an assistant federal public defender representing Friday, argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service kept the existence of permits quiet and instead tried to point Indians toward a federal repository in Denver that stores the remains of eagles killed by power lines or other causes.
Speaking after the hearing, Friday said he doesn’t accept the government’s argument that he shouldn’t be allowed to argue against the permitting system because he didn’t apply for a permit.
“I don’t think they should be able to do that because of what the First Amendment obviously says is my right to practice my religion,” Friday said. “Now I have to wait for three months to a year (for a permit)?”
