blog post 4
Assault Against Native American Women
Native American women face a high amount of sexual victimization in the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice did a study and Native American and Alaskan women face 2.5 times more assault than any other ethnicity. The study also found that non-Native men are the main source of assault against women. The women and girls face sexual assault, verbal abuse, and even homicide. Homicide is the third leading cause of death among Native American and Native Alaskan girls between the ages of ten and twenty-four. NamUS conducted a study that found that women in Alaskan Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Washington have higher rates of missing Indigenous women and girls than any other state in the U.S. The crisis of violent acts against Native women and girls is known as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis. The issue of assault and missing person cases is often put aside and ignored. The issue needs to be recognized globally to raise awareness and protect the Indigenous community.
The Missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis has not been adequately studied and ignored in the United States. The Savana’s Act was signed to hold the Federal, State, Tribal and local governments and law enforcement agencies accountable to respond to cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The Savana’s Act has only evaluated data but has not provided proper enforcement of the Act. The government has a strong history of systemic racism and fails to punish people who commit violent crimes against Indigenous people. The deficient proceedings of the cases cause many women to not report their cases because of fear that the problem will worsen. The Indigenous women should feel safe in going to their local, state, and national authorities. The system continues to fail the Native American populations.
Amnesty International published “Maze of Injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA”, to represent survivors and give them a platform to tell their stories if they felt comfortable in doing so. Locations such as the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota, the state of Oklahoma, and the state of Alaska were all interviewed. Amnesty interviewed the victims of sexual assault, tribal, state, and federal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and tribal judges for their research report. In the report, one Alaskan Native woman tells her story. In 2006, she was sexually assaulted by a man. The woman was rushed to the ER where the medical staff treated her as a drunk. Multiple stories end in reports of the injustices not being solved due to racist stereotypes. The Federal and State legal systems blamed the victims by saying they were intoxicated. The racial stereotype of Indigenous people being alcoholics has affected legal proceedings as well as medical care.
The other side of the argument uses “lack of funding” as an excuse to not provide the Indigenous women with justice. There are also many people that do not believe women who are victims of sexual assault. These people claim that women make up assault allegations to gain attention. The MeToo movement is a social movement against sexual abuse where people publicize sexual assault allegations. This movement was created to bring injustice to light and help women feel seen. Many people opposed this movement saying it was a “witch-hunt”. Conservative commentator, Candace Owens stated: “Any person who cannot admit that the #metoo movement has fully deteriorated into a political weapon is either a liar or a coward…” These statements are extremely harmful to victims of sexual assault and impressionable audiences. The issue of believing the victim is taken a step further when the victim is an Indigenous woman. As mentioned earlier, legal systems and medical care treat Indigenous people differently than other races and ethnicities. Women do not feel that justice will be served and are scared about facing the extreme backlash from reporting the assault.
Indigenous women and girls need to be protected. Federal and state governments should take effective measures to end the prejudice and end the discrimination against the Native people. The federal government needs to provide satisfactory funding to ensure the implementation of the Violence Against Women Act. Police officers need to respond to the case first. Many cases report that police are not the first responders. The victim then feels like their situation will not be properly investigated which causes a lack of faith in law enforcement. The officers need to take action in response to the assault. Tribal law enforcement officials need to have authority over Native and non-Native suspects. In the past, tribal authority only has jurisdiction over Native people. This does not help when a majority of the reported assaults are non-Native people. Federal authorities should provide federal funding to train and equip law enforcement officers to know how to respond to the needs of the Indigenous people. The Native women deserve to feel that the U.S. government has their best interest and will reprimand the injustices.
Sources
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/violence-against-american-indian-and-alaska-native-women-and-men
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_victimization_of_Native_American_women
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/challenge-of-archiving-the-metoo-movement/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/24/world/metoo-movement-gains-2019-intl/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeToo_movement