- [Narrator] Before the arrival of American miners and Russian fur traders, and European explorers, Alaska was a different place.

Villages around the state maintained effective dispute resolution and peacekeeping mechanisms.

That's according to a 2002 report by the Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Tribal advocates say violent crimes were rare.

- If you did those things, they killed you.

They were totally unacceptable.

- [Narrator] Victoria Hykes Steere is in U-Pack, born and raised on Alaska's West Coast, and an assistant professor of Alaskan native studies, at Alaska Pacific University.

She's a legal expert, familiar with the way things used to be in Alaska communities.

- If you did something really bad, you never had control over who was punished.

Like if you murdered someone, the family of the victim could determine who paid.

They could take your favorite child and make that child live the rest of their life as that person, with that person's name.

- [Narrator] Historically, justice in Alaska Native villages was communal and restorative based on traditional indigenous values.

- It's a totally different way of being human.

It's a different understanding of our responsibilities to each other.

It's a different social structure.

- [Narrator] The structure focused on healing communities and keeping people together, but those traditional models were slowly replaced by western systems.

Many indigenous Alaskan children were separated from their families, removed to boarding schools, punished for speaking their languages, and abused by clergy who came to Alaska with the Catholic church.

In 1959, Alaska became a state and more legal changes were enacted.

- They turned us into what they call a Public Law 280 state.

- [Narrator] Mary Ann Mills is Dena'ina, and a member of Alaska Pacific University's elders counsel with extensive experience as a tribal judge and leader.

Among other things, she says, Public Law 280 granted the state of Alaska jurisdiction over certain matters in native communities, and that made a big difference.

- Of course, you know this state is an adversarial type of court, and our is a restorative.

So, you're talking two different poles.

- [Narrator] Mills was mentored by Peter Kalifornsky, a legendary Dena'ina writer and translator, who was himself raised with the stories of Kenai chief, Chicalusion.

Mills asked Kalifornsky, "How did Alaska communities used to deal with it "when someone acted out of hand."

- And he said that, it was handled by they would get somebody in the community, in the tribe, that the individual really respected.

And that individual would try and bring the person back to our values, our traditional values.

- [Narrator] Those values include love, honor, and responsibility.

Justice focused on restoring those things, rather than punishing offenders, but if that didn't work.

- They were no longer accepted in our community, and so we didn't have a lot of the crime.

- [Narrator] Statehood marked another milestone in a long history of systemic changes for Alaska communities.

Today, state magistrates have placed replaced some local counsels and the native judge panels.

Across Alaska laws are enforced by Alaska state troopers, local police and village public safety officers.

Some legal experts say the government, by preventing villages from enforcing their own laws, rendered them dependent on inadequate services provided by the state.

- It's basically pathway into jail forever.

- [Narrator] A 2005 Alaska Supreme Court ruling found the state's current system is "based on financial and geographical constraints."

Today, one in three rural villages have no local law enforcement, according to reporting by the Anchorage Daily News and propublica.

And Alaska's rates of sexual assault and domestic violence now consistently rank among the highest in the nation.

In June, Attorney General William P. Barr declared a law enforcement emergency in rural Alaska.

The declaration unlocked more than $10 Million to support rural police and law enforcement resources in response to what the Department of Justice called a "public safety crisis in rural Alaska."

Experts say it's a complex issue with contributing factors ranging from budget cuts to a lack of rural public safety infrastructure, low rages, and high turnover rates for rural police, but it ties back to Alaska's long history of colonization, statehood, and the systemic changes that came with it.

- And that is why I went to law school, was to undue what has been a disaster for the communities we come from.

- [Narrator] Communities large and small in every corner of the state.