Sexual Assault And Native American Women

by hilzoy

Amnesty International issued a report yesterday on sexual abuse of Native American women. From the Washington Post's account:

"One in three Native American women will be raped at some point in their lives, a rate that is more than double that for non-Indian women, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The report, "Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA," noted a variety of reasons that rape is so prevalent on reservations, according to its authors.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Oliphant v. the Suquamish Indian Tribe that tribal governments have no criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. When a crime is committed, tribal police and their non-Indian counterparts must hash out whether the suspect is Indian or not.

Tribal governments lack the funds and staffing to patrol their lands, the report said. At the million-acre Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which straddles North and South Dakota, seven police officers are on duty. In Alaska, where state and native police patrol a vast landscape, officers took four hours to reach the village of Nunam Iqua, during which time a barricaded suspect raped a 13-year-old girl in front of her siblings.

"It is extremely frustrating," said Jason O'Neal, chief of the Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Department in south-central Oklahoma. "It's confusing for the victim because they don't know who they should be calling. A victim of domestic violence may call 911, the sheriff's office or our office."

As a result, victims are reluctant to report rapes because of these circumstances, the report said. When they do, their cases are often mishandled. Health facilities on native lands are so underfunded that many nurses are not trained to counsel victims of sexual assault or to use a police rape kit to gather and preserve evidence of a crime. (...)

Amnesty International's study was carried out in 2005 and 2006, drawing on victim interviews, questionnaires submitted to law enforcement officials such as police and prosecutors, and numerous reports. More than 86 percent of rapes against Native American women are carried out by non-native men, most of them white, according to the Justice Department.

The Amnesty study focused on three areas: Oklahoma, Alaska and the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota. But its findings, said Virginia Davis, associate counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, are reflective of Indian country across the nation.

"It's jaw dropping," Davis said. "We've been talking about this for years. I think this is an incredibly complicated problem. Most Americans can live their daily lives and never think about it.""

There's also a good NPR story on the report here.

The legal issues involved strike non-legal me as confusing and, in some cases, downright perverse. What earthly reason is there for making the question whether tribal police can arrest a suspect depend on that suspect's ethnicity? If the suspect won't tell, do the police have to wait for some sort of evidence of ethnicity before making an arrest? As far as I can tell, the case that established this peculiar principle, Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, wasn't based on positive law, but on the absence of any explicit provision, combined with various treaties, etc., that led the Court to assume that Congress must have assumed that tribes lack jurisdiction over non-members. If so, Congress should rectify this by creating some system that actually makes sense. In addition, of course, we should fund the Indian Health Service adequately. We should also fully fund the Violence Against Women Act, which includes money for battered women's services on Native American reservations.

In the meantime, the NPR story I linked above describes one shelter that's at risk of closing for lack of funds. Pretty Bird Woman House is the only shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which includes 2.3 million acres in North and South Dakota. On the list of counties with the lowest annual per capita income in the US, the two counties that make up most of the reservation ranked sixth (Sioux County ND, $7,731) and seventh (Corson County SD, $8,615.) According to the Amnesty report, 45.3 of the women on the reservation live in poverty, and the unemployment rate is 71%.

The shelter, Pretty Bird Woman House, is named for its founder's younger sister. NPR:

"Ms. JACKIE BROWN OTTER(ph) (Resident, Standing Rock Indian Reservation): I’m in McLaughlin, South Dakota. I live on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

SULLIVAN: Jackie Brown Otter lives about 30 miles from the nearest shopping center. The reservation covers 2.3 million acres. There are seven tribal patrol officers. Otter’s little sister was raped, kidnapped from her home and murdered six years ago.

Ms. OTTER: Chingkawa Wastewi(ph). That’s her Indian name. And that translates in English to Pretty Bird Woman. She smiled and she was well liked and always laughing.

SULLIVAN: It took almost a day for tribal police to arrive when Pretty Bird went missing. Her house was torn apart. A window was broken and bloody bedding was stuffed into the trash bin. It took several more days for the FBI to arrive. Her body was found later, beaten to death along a rural road. Otter opened a shelter for women at Standing Rock in her sister’s honor. But the group will run out of funding this month and will probably have to close. And still, the attacks keep coming.

Ms. OTTER: We’re so overwhelmed that we can’t see beyond the perimeters of it. It’s just beyond words for me."

One of the shelters I used to work for served (among others) a substantial Native American population, and as someone who tried her best to help Native women navigate the (cough) fascinating bureaucracies they had to work with, and to deal with various cultural issues that arose, I can attest to the fact that even the best intentions are no substitute at all for having shelters run by Native American women on reservations. Moreover, besides providing shelter and crisis hotlines and the like, shelters also provide women with a lot of important information about dealing with domestic violence and assault, and when they build up relationships over time with law enforcement personnel, they can also make a big difference in how law enforcement operates. This particular shelter also helps women get to the various places they need to go to in order to file for protective orders, get medical help, and deal with the legal system; given the sheer size of the reservation, this is invaluable.

I emailed the woman who runs the shelter (they don't have much of a web presence), and she says that they can use whatever help they can get. Most of their staff is volunteer, and they seem to work on a shoestring. nbier at dKos has more information, and is starting a ChipIn page (so far, not linked to the shelter.) I sent them some money; anyone else who wants to should send a check to:

Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O.596
McLaughlin South Dakota 57642

Thanks.

Comments

[mofuzz]

sending a donation now...

[Joe Thomas]

Yeah, oppression of the First Peoples is truly ludicrous. I have good friends from SoDak, and the description of the law is, and I quote, "Birmingham in '65." White man drunk drives and kills pedestrian Native woman. Penalty: Six months. Six months in jail, seems kind of light for manslaughter. Oh, wait, not six months in jail. Six months without his license. No jail time. None.
Read On the Rez for a general overview of how fucked the reservation system is. If genocide is murder (by ethnicity) on a large scale, it's like negligent manslaughter (by ethnicity) on a large scale.

[liberal japonicus]

Though I love Ian Frazier's book (and it seems to me that the only way to make any sense of the situation that Native Americans find themselves in is thru someone with such a keen sense of the absurd as Frazier) I don't think that it really gives a good overview of the problems of the reservation (and note, Frazier is mainly talking about the Pine Ridge reservation, and reservations are like Tolstoy's point about unhappy families in that they are each screwed up in their own way)

For more incandescently angry writing, one might go to Deloria, esp. Custer Died for your sins. Since we have a large number of lawyers here, there might be some interest in Sayer's Ghost Dancing the Law, about the Wounded Knee Trials.

This is not to disagree with Joe Thomas' main point, and mass negligent manslaughter is a good descriptor.

[Jay Jerome]

As far as I can tell, the case that established this peculiar principle, Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, wasn't based on positive law, but on the absence of any explicit provision, combined with various treaties, etc., that led the Court to assume that Congress must have assumed that tribes lack jurisdiction over non-members.

Do you think it's a 'peculiar principle' for American citizens to be tried by a jury of their peers?

Part of the decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe which found that Indian tribal courts don't have criminal jurisdiction to try and/or punish non-Indians was based on the fact that non-Indians were excluded from Suquamish tribal court juries. Only Indians were allowed to serve on Suquamish juries.

Even if you're a non-Indian who has lived on a reservation your whole life, you aren't allowed to serve on a jury there. Only tribal members can do that. And to be a tribal member you have to have a certain percentage of 'Indian Blood.' In other words, tribal juries are racist in composition -- Indians allowed, other 'races' verboten.

Look at it this way: If an American Citizen robs or shoots a Russian diplomat in his office (technically sovereign soil) should the Russians be able to try him and hang him in the vestibule?

[liberal japonicus]

The point that tribal rolls are determined by blood is true, but the whole concept was imposed upon Native Americans as the determinative factor by the US government in the treaties and are enforced by a web of legal decisions, so the impression I get that you are blaming 'Indians' for racism falls short of the mark. In addition, the 1978 decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish tribe relied on an 1834 report(!) by the commisioner of Indian Affairs to support the notion that Indian reservations were "without laws" which allowed the Supreme Court to substitute its own interpretation for that of the Suquamish tribe, so I tend to disagree with what I take is your argument that the Supreme Court simply operated from the extension of logic. In fact, at any given time, there are any number of people who are not permitted to serve on juries, so the argument that whites are being deprived of some right which forces the Supreme Court to trample on their treaty guaranteed sovereign rights is a bit dubious to (IA)NAL me.

Perhaps this is a case of when they _really_ stand up, we can begin to stand down...

[Francis]

a very complex area of the law, in which the US is supposed to treat reservations as, essentially, foreign countries and yet, at the same time, recognize the US's trust relationship with tribal members and assets.

google indian trust litigation for an example of how the fed govt, including the Clinton admin, utterly scr*wed over individual Indians with regard to certain assets, including oil and gas leases, held in trust by the US.

[CharleyCarp]

a very complex area of the law

And this is an understatement. The US Constitution doesn't really provide a viable role for Native polities, and there's no simple answer to a number of the legal issues. And the social side is worse.

Some things aren't that complicated, though. I'll never forgive Bill Clinton for failing to pardon Leonard Peltier.

[Nell]

the only shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which includes 2.3 million acres in North and South Dakota

How many people live on the reservation?

[hilzoy]

Nell: around nine thousand. Nine thousand with very high rates of sexual assault and domestic violence and few other available support services nearby, though.

[Anarch]

Look at it this way: If an American Citizen robs or shoots a Russian diplomat in his office (technically sovereign soil) should the Russians be able to try him and hang him in the vestibule?

Well, yes. That's exactly what "sovereign soil" means. I'd probably prefer it if they didn't, of course, but to assert that they don't have the right to do so is to say that American law trumps all other law even in other countries, which is just one step shy of national sociopathy.

[togolosh]

...American law trumps all other law even in other countries, which is just one step shy of national sociopathy

This principle is pretty close to the actual interpretation of the law by some conservatives.

[janinsanfran]

I read this as I about to go visit a native american friend whose long, fucked up life of sexual and physical abuse has turned her into a 450 pound wreck attached to an oxygen cannister when only a little over fifty. Once upon a time, despite a horrific childhood, this woman was a native rights activist. But it was the rapes when she was disabled after an auto accident that began what I suspect is the long final spiral...

This is an urban Indian -- folks bring it all with them to the city and it mixes and matches wth other poor peoples' suffering.

[OCSteve]

Anarch: Well, yes. That's exactly what "sovereign soil" means. I'd probably prefer it if they didn't, of course, but to assert that they don't have the right to do so is to say that American law trumps all other law even in other countries, which is just one step shy of national sociopathy.

So I can put you down for being in favor of decisive military action during the (first) Iranian hostage crisis? That is where I was BTW – do something, anything, OK, not that…

[Anarch]

So I can put you down for being in favor of decisive military action during the (first) Iranian hostage crisis?

I think that we had the right to engage in military action, yes. Whether or not this was the wisest course of action is a question I can't really answer since I've never studied the subject.

[Jay Jerome]

Anarch: "Well, yes. That's exactly what "sovereign soil" means."

Well, not exactly. Although diplomatic missions are supposed to be inviolable – meaning host country police aren’t allowed to enter without permission (Iran violated it without much punishment) but diplomatic missions and consular properties are not actual extensions of their native countries. The “sending state’s” laws don't operate within diplomatic premises. For instance, embassies have to comply with local fire, and building, and environmental safety codes.

[OCSteve]

Anarch: Thanks. Good answer.

[hilzoy]

By the way: dKos has raised $6561.26 for Pretty Woman Bird House since yesterday. This is wonderful.

[liberal japonicus]

Somehow, I think having the Squamish courthouse complying with building codes and refusing their right of jurisdiction over a crime committed on their territory are two different things...

[Jay Jerome]

liberal japonicus says:

In fact, at any given time, there are any number of people who are not permitted to serve on juries

Any of those excluded from American juries because of their blood-quantum?

... so the argument that whites are being deprived of some right which forces the Supreme Court to trample on their treaty guaranteed sovereign rights is a bit dubious to (IA)NAL me.

Well, it's not only 'whites' who are excluded. Tribal juries exclude Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics too. But the real problem isn't who gets to sit on an Indian jury: it's the anachronistically obtuse fact tribal sovereignty still exists in the 21st century.

[Jean Dantzler]

"One in three Native American women will be raped at some point in their lives..."

I cannot get over this very first line.
As a woman it angers me. As a white, it sickens me. Are white men in the areas raised to know that they can do this to Native American Women and nothing will happen to them?

I bet IF every time it happened, one in three Native American Women took a gun and blasted the man, there would quickly be an FBI/police response.