BS: Rape on Reservations

Subject: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: SINSULL
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 09:52 AM

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12203114


Public Radio aired a story about rape on Indian reservations. According to their statistics, ONE in THREE Native American women living on reservations will be raped at least once in their lifetime.

The real horror? If the rapist is not a Native American, he will not be arrested or charged.

Indian reservations are patrolled by Native Americans and local police. The Native American officers have the authority to arrest Native Americans but outsiders fall under local jurisdiction.

If a Native American steals a pack of cigarettes, he is arrested and does jail time. If an outsider steals the same pack of cigarettes, nothing is done. Their example, not mine.

Prosecutors do not want to waste time on rape cases when they could be handling terrorist activities, murder, and more glamorous/worthwhile crimes.

Women rarely even report the crime which adds to their pain an the rapists' sense of power. One woman holds sweat lodge ceremonies to help victims and there are so many she has to turn away victims.

As a result of this report, a long buried rape case in which the victim named her attackers and later died, has been resurrected. No one was sure why her murder hadn't been investigated.

I was horrified. Does anyone on Mudcat have contacts on reservations who can give some insight into this? Does it make any sense to allow a known rapist to go free? I am baffled.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 09:56 AM

It shouldn't matter what colour, creed, gender, race or clan a victim comes from, they should all be given the full support of the law, and the perpetrator given the same treatment across the board.

Utopia is still a long, long way away.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 10:39 AM

On Standing Rock, there are five BIA officers for a territory the size of Connecticut. On this and other reservations, police are stretched thin and often can't or won't make arrests.

It really is true; the size of the reservations is huge, the roads are shite, and there are too few officers to do much good. Add that to the poverty, the societal discrimination and intimidation as well as lack of adequate funding and it will be the women and children who suffer first. It is a common occurrence in places like Rapid City, SD, for NDN men to get beat up by whites with impunity.

Here's what Amnesty International has to say:

"Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA"
A Summary of Amnesty International's Findings

Sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA is widespread -- and especially brutal. According to US government statistics, Native American and Alaska Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the USA. Some Indigenous women interviewed by Amnesty International said they didn't know anyone in their community who had not experienced sexual violence. Though rape is always an act of violence, there is evidence that Indigenous women are more like than other women to suffer additional violence at the hands of their attackers. According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.

Sexual violence against Indigenous women is the result of a number of factors including a history of widespread and egregious human rights violations against Indigenous peoples in the USA. Indigenous women were raped by settlers and soldiers in many infamous episodes including during the Trail of Tears and the Long Walk. Such attacks were not random or individual; they were tools of conquest and colonization. The underlying attitudes towards Indigenous peoples that supported these human rights violations committed against them continue to be present in society and culture in the USA. They contribute to the present high rates of sexual violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and help to shield their attackers from justice.

Treaties, the US Constitution and federal law affirm a unique political and legal relationship between federally recognized tribal nations and the federal government. There are more than 550 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes in the USA. Federally recognized Indian tribes are sovereign under US law, with jurisdiction over their citizens and land and maintaining government to government relationships with each other and with the US federal government. The federal government has a legal responsibility to ensure protection of the rights and wellbeing of Native American and Alaska Native peoples. The federal government has a unique legal relationship to the tribal nations that includes a trust responsibility to assist tribal governments in safeguarding the lives of Indian women.

Tribal law enforcement agencies are chronically under-funded – federal and state governments provide significantly fewer resources for law enforcement on tribal land than are provided for comparable non-Native communities. The lack of appropriate training in all police forces -- federal, state and tribal -- also undermines survivors' right to justice. Many officers don't have the skills to ensure a full and accurate crime report. Survivors of sexual violence are not guaranteed access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations which is caused in part by the federal government's severe under-funding of the Indian Health Service.

The Federal Government has also undermined the authority of tribal governments to respond to crimes committed on tribal land. Women who come forward to report sexual violence are caught in a jurisdictional maze that federal, state and tribal police often cannot quickly sort out. Three justice systems -- tribal, state and federal -- are potentially involved in responding to sexual violence against Indigenous women. Three main factors determine which of these justice systems has authority to prosecute such crimes:
- whether the victim is a member of a federally recognized tribe or not;
- whether the accused is a member of a federally recognized tribe or not; and
- whether the offence took place on tribal land or not.

The answers to these questions are often not self-evident and there can be significant delays while police, lawyers and courts establish who has jurisdiction over a particular crime. The result can be such confusion and uncertainty that no one intervenes and survivors of sexual violence are denied access to justice.

Tribal prosecutors cannot prosecute crimes committed by non-Native perpetrators. Tribal courts are also prohibited from passing custodial sentences that are in keeping with the seriousness of the crimes of rape or other forms of sexual violence. The maximum prison sentence tribal courts can impose for crimes, including rape, is one year. At the same time, the majority of rape cases on tribal lands that are referred to the federal courts are reportedly never brought to trial.

As a consequence Indigenous women are being denied justice. And the perpetrators are going unpunished.

In failing to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence, the USA is violating these women's human rights. Indigenous women's organizations and tribal authorities have brought forward concrete proposals to help stop sexual violence against Indigenous women – but the federal government has failed to act.

Amnesty International is calling on the US government to take the first steps to end sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women:
- Work in collaboration with American Indian and Alaska Native women to obtain a clear and accurate understanding about the prevalence and nature of sexual violence against Indigenous women;
- Ensure that American Indian and Alaska Native women have access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations without charge to the survivor.
- Provide resources to Indian tribes for additional criminal justice and victim services to respond to crimes of sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women.

This report and action is part of the international SVAW campaign project on stopping violence against Indigenous women globally. This project will encompass not only this current work on sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA, but also ongoing work on AI Canada's 2004 report "Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada", and work now under development by other sections and I.S. country teams.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,Sapper, pulling into Preston
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 10:40 AM

We have a similar problem in the UK where some Asian men are, quite literally, getitng away with murder because the police are afraid to investigate abuses of their wives for fear of being called rascist.
As a result, so-called honour killing are on the rise.
Not a nice situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: SINSULL
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 11:36 AM

The report cited one instance when the woman was raped and the rapist was hiding in her closet. Local, Federal and Native law officers were on the site but no one could figure out who had jurisdiction so they stood outside argunig over who could or should go in.
This came from an eyewitness account of the Victim's Rights rep who was called to the scene when the rape was reported.

I just don't get it. Rapists are ignored. Do they not return to the general population and pose a threat? Shouldn't that alone force a legal response?

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Tinker
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 11:48 AM

I've got cold chills.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 12:00 PM

It's a rez thing, Sins. All legal things on a rez are tangled up in a myriad of red tape and it is typical for the authorities to argue about who has jurisdiction and no one claiming responsibility. The "Great White Father knows best in certain circumstances" has prevailed for over a century and most tribes have been fighting against that and FOR self-rule ever since. Couple that struggle with extreme poverty, racism, and depression, along with all of the wonderful things the modern age has introduced, i.e. drugs, alcohol, etc. and it is a MAJOR, ongoing struggle. There is often so much contempt in the white communities for the NDNs that crime is not considered a crime. In some ways it is worse than the old South ever was. Here's a bit on how it can be:

On a cold January night in 1984, while Mrs. Aliene Lee and her daughter, Priscilla Lee Yazza, were watching television in Priscilla's trailer in Fort Defiance, on Arizona's Navajo Indian Reservation, the lights went out and the two women were confronted in the darkness by a man with a gun.

After a violent struggle, the gunman dragged Priscilla into her mother's car and drove off, leaving Mrs. Lee for dead on the floor of the trailer with two gunshot wounds to her head and Priscilla's baby crying on a couch nearby. The next morning, Priscilla's naked body was found in a nearby gully. She had been raped repeatedly and shot in the back of the head as she struggled up a roadside embankment.
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Mrs. Lee survived the attack and still lives with her husband on the Navajo Reservation. She asserts that crucial evidence was destroyed by incompetent tribal police officers and that a lazy FBI agent, who made no effort to hide his prejudice against Indians, failed to follow up on important leads. Ultimately, the case lapsed into obscurity along with hundreds of other unsolved murders and rapes on the reservation.

Eddie Lee is convinced that if the crime had occurred in Phoenix or Albuquerque the murderer would have been caught within 24 hours. "Just because it's on the reservation it seems like it's all neglected," Mr. Lee said. "And it's been the same way for other people and other investigations. Just because we're Indians they're not getting in here and solving these crimes."
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The government's own statistics support Mr. Lee's charges. On reservations in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, Bureau of Indian Affairs officers investigated 2,456 felony cases in 1986 and the first half of 1987 but arrested only 181 suspects; that's a rate of 7.4 percent. By comparison, 23.6 percent of felony cases elsewhere in Arizona led to arrest. During this period, BIA officers presented 390 cases to the U.S. Attorney, of which 233 were rejected for prosecution. From 1984 through the middle of 1987, there were 974 serious crimes reported on six Montana reservations, but only 87 convictions.

In those rare instances when people who commit crimes on Indian reservations are prosecuted and convicted, the criminals tend to serve much shorter sentences than those convicted in Anglo communities. Although new federal sentencing guidelines may have some effect in the future, recent prosecution statistics from the U.S. Sentencing Commission show that murderers serve about a third as much time for crimes committed on Indian reservations as do those committing the same crime elsewhere. The disparity is even greater for bank robbery, auto theft, and transportation of stolen property.

Statistics compiled by the FBI suggest that this miserable enforcement record contributes to Indians being victims of violent crime almost twice as often as the general public.

The murder of Priscilla Yazza is a textbook example of what is wrong with law enforcement on Indian reservations. Investigators from several different agencies--federal and local--showed up. FBI and BIA agents were already in Fort Defiance, investigating a rash of violent assaults and rapes against the nurses at the local hospital, when the call came in about the shooting of Mrs. Lee and the abduction of her daugther. The FBI, BIA, and Navajo Tribal Police all converged on the crime scene. Col. Jonas Hubbard, the Director of the Navajo Department of Public Safety at the time, admits that there was a great deal of confusion. "Nobody took overall responsibility for the investigation," Colonel Hubbard said. "Everybody took it as 'my investigation.'" To compound the confusion, the investigators were indifferent, if not incompetent.

The Anglo file

Mr. Lee, after rushing to the hospital to see his wife, returned to the crime scene with some friends and relatives. They offered to help the police search for Priscilla but were told to go home. Mr. Lee later examined the embankment where Priscilla was shot and believes she escaped as many as five times before being killed. If only he and his friends had been allowed to help in the search that night, he says, the first place they would have looked would have been along the road where Priscilla was taken.

BIA investigators later claimed they combed the area completely, but were unable to track the killer from the place where he abandoned the car. Mr. Lee and his friends did their own investigation and found tracks leading to a nearby hogan. They also found a bloody towel and a piece of the pink shirt Priscilla was wearing that had been overlooked by the initial investigators.

The principal FBI agent assigned to the case was a six-foot-four-inch Anglo with blue eyes and red hair named Charles Moffett. Mr. Lee argues that it would have been better to have had Indian agents investigating the murder on the reservation since it would have been easier for them to collect evidence and get witnesses to talk. "If it's a white man with a red head and blue eyes who looks like a big carrot, he's going to stick out like a sore thumb out here," Mr. Lee said.

For more, please click here. There are at least seven more pages on this. Well worth the read.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 12:03 PM

Here's some of the crucial bits form another page re' jurisdiction:

Under the Major Crimes Act, the federal government has jurisdiction over major crimes committed on Indian reservations, and these crimes are violations of federal law. Public Law 280, passed by Congress in 1953, allows the states to choose to share responsibility with the federal government for investigating and prosecuting a variety of criminal cases. Tribal police forces, which have the greatest interest in maintaining law and order on their reservations, have very limited authority, as a result of recent United States Supreme Court decisions.

In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, the Supreme Court held that tribes do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. In Duro v. Reina, decided this year, the Court extended this principle to anyone who was not a member of the tribe. In both cases the Court reasoned that because Indian tribes have only limited sovereignty, they cannot prosecute an outsider unless Congress delegates this authority, and the Court concluded that Congress had not done so. According to Michael Hawkins, a former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, the precedent set by the Supreme Court's decision in Oliphant "is a significant impediment to maintaining law and order and safe

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 12:06 PM

Page three is especially telling:

The results of the statutes and Supreme Court opinions is a confusing maze of jurisdictional responsibility that paralyzes effective law enforcement on reservations. The FBI, the BIA, the state police, the local county sheriff's office, and the tribal police all have limited jurisdiction over crimes committed on Indian reservations, and it is not unusual to have all five agencies involved in at least the initial investigation of a single crime. But each agency's jurisdiction is so limited that violent criminals often fall through the cracks and avoid arrest, particularly if they happen to be white.

For instance, if a person is assaulted on a reservation, that crime is usually handled by the tribal police. But if the person assaulted is not a member of the tribe, the tribal police have no jurisdiction and the local police must be called in--if they are willing to investigate in the first place. Or if it is determined that the victim was sexually assaulted, the tribal police must hand the case over to the BIA police. And if the victim later dies, it becomes a murder case, which can be handled only by the FBI.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: SINSULL
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 12:26 PM

I am in shock. I can't imagine not being safe in my own home. If a woman was abducted after her mother was shot on my street, the entire town would get involved. Shocking disgraceful, etc - now what do WE do about it?

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 12:52 PM

They are aware of the problem. The bigger problem is getting Congress and other governmental agencies to act.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 01:04 PM

Hmm. Well, I don't doubt that the above reports are true.

I went out with a Native American woman who was born on a reserve west of Sudbury, Ontario. I was with her for about 3 years. What she told me would indicate that rape and abuse of children and young women was quite common in her community, as was rampant alcoholism and drug use...and suicide. Alcoholism and drug use tend to lead in the direction of sexual abuse. Both she and her sister were certainly raped and abused by relatives and "friends" of the family. In this case it would mostly have been violence perpetrated on Native Americans by other Native Americans. That doesn't tell me anything intrinsic about Native Americans...it tells me something intrinsic about poverty, loss of culture, unemployment, despair and reservation life in general.

It would have happened to any race or cultural group placed in similar historical and economic circumstances, in my opinion.

I'd be inclined to approach this whole issue less on the very divisive and potentially nasty basis of "race relations"...and more on the basis of haves and have-nots.

When you look at issues primarily on the basis of "race" it leads to all sorts of ugly attitudes, accusations, and vendettas. It leads to guilt trips and arrogance. When you look at issues on the basis of economic and social justice, you're looking reality straight in the face. Every race of people can be rapidly reduced to a miserable level when they are denied economic and social justice. It is the poor who are most discriminated against, in any society, because it is they who are most powerless.

But I just offer that as a different angle on the discussion. I am not disputing that the present setup of law enforcement is set up badly to deal with crimes committed on reservations, and that that is contributing to these problems, as noted above.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 01:24 PM

Yes, LH, poverty etc. do enter into it in a big way, BUT there is no denying the prejudice experienced by NDN's in this country.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 01:41 PM

Are these rapes by Anglos or other Indians?

I hope that it's not a racial thing, but I am reminded of an incident that happened years ago in Ohio. A couple young men came into the library were I was working. They wanted a picture of a "naked Indian broad riding a buffalo like they used to" to airbrush on the side of their van. I don't think they believed me when I expressed doubts about ANY Indian riding a buffalo; they left unsatisfied.

There seems to be a group of white males who seem to think that because someone's skin isn't "white" sexual activity is not only acceptable but probably deeply desired -- and a privilege by virtue of being "white."

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 02:15 PM

Sounds like some of Shane's buddies, Rapaire...

Those types figure that the entire female half of the race deeply desires them, but yeah, they do figure they have special advantages when it comes to getting favors from non-white girls. It's race prejudice. It's class prejudice too.

People are always curious, sexually speaking, about people of a different race, religion, or culture. It's the old "grass is greener on the other side" thing...or it's the "forbidden fruit" concept.

For instance, when I was down in Mexico I noted the very keen interest Mexican men had in blonde women with Anglo or Nordic features. Matter of fact, the Mexican women seemed to find blonde men pretty attractive too. ;-) (This didn't help me any...I've got dark brown hair. And I was painfully shy at the time, anyway.) I had a friend who was blonde, and he got hit on like you wouldn't believe. He was too young at the time to be quite ready to take full advantage of the situation, though. In another year or two he would have been in heaven.

That kind of cross-cultural attraction thing gets a lot nastier when a group of people feel more powerful, dominant, and culturally privileged...as in the case of the young men you mention.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Alice
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 02:36 PM

Domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug use, high unemployment, poverty, common on many reservations.
In our news this morning, report of a man on the Blackfeet reservation being beaten to death while he was on his morning walk.
Violence on the reservation is a long standing problem along with the high rate of unemployment and of drug use and alcoholism.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 02:49 PM

By and large the majority of the ones who do not get pursued are whites, Rapaire, as in the original case which Sins posted about.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 04:19 PM

I was afraid that would be the case. I also know of cases of the rape of Amish women and girls (and beatings and robberies of Amish men) because their religion strongly frowns on dealing with authorities, including the police.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 04:58 PM

"By and large the majority of the ones who do not get pursued are whites" -

Do you have a source for that, katlaughing, or did I miss it in one of the above articles?

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 07:04 PM

Well, then we need a law that anyone who can not be prosecuted arrested etc. on reservations because they are not Indian should not be able to enter them at all....or there should be a second police force to take care of outsiders....That is a law that makes no sense at all...mg

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 07:08 PM

Or simply say that such crime is tried and sentenced according to the law of the res where it occurred.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 07:53 PM

American Indians and Alaska Natives experienced the worst rate of violent crime in the nation in 2000, according to a Department of Justice study. Natives were victimized at a rate of 52.3 per 1,000, twice the rate reported by Hispanics (27.9 per 1,000) and whites (26.5) and one and one-half times that of African-Americans (34.1), according to Bureau of Justice statistics.

meself, you may have missed this:

According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.

Here's page 2 of the 8 page article I posted the link for:

The results of the statutes and Supreme Court opinions is a confusing maze of jurisdictional responsibility that paralyzes effective law enforcement on reservations. The FBI, the BIA, the state police, the local county sheriff's office, and the tribal police all have limited jurisdiction over crimes committed on Indian reservations, and it is not unusual to have all five agencies involved in at least the initial investigation of a single crime. But each agency's jurisdiction is so limited that violent criminals often fall through the cracks and avoid arrest, particularly if they happen to be white.

For instance, if a person is assaulted on a reservation, that crime is usually handled by the tribal police. But if the person assaulted is not a member of the tribe, the tribal police have no jurisdiction and the local police must be called in--if they are willing to investigate in the first place. Or if it is determined that the victim was sexually assaulted, the tribal police must hand the case over to the BIA police. And if the victim later dies, it becomes a murder case, which can be handled only by the FBI.

In one case, a non-Indian living on the Navajo Reservation repeatedly broke into the house of his ex-wife, a Navajo, and assaulted her. "When she called the tribal police for help, she was told that they couldn't help her because they didn't have jurisdiction over the crime," recalled her lawyer, Donna Chavez.
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The woman then called the county sheriff's office begging for help. She was told that nothing could be done to help her because the sheriff's office did not have jurisdiction over crimes committed on the reservation. Finally, Chaez, went to the BIA to see if their agents could do something to prevent the repeated beating of her client. After looking into exactly who had jurisdiction over the crimes, the BIA eventually decided that the woman could file a complaint with the federal magistrate in Flagstaff, almost 200 dusty miles from her home. "As it turned out, the complaint was never filed with the magistrate in Flagstaff, which is what happens in a large majority of the cases where Navajos are victimized on the reservations by non-Indians," Chavez said.

In another case reported in The Christian Science Monitor, the local police arrested a man for raping a woman on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They could not charge the man with rape because in South Dakota only FBI agents or BIA police are empowered to charge a suspect accused of commiting a felony covered under the Major Crimes Act. The local authorities charged the man with public drunkenness in order to hold him until the federal authorities arrived. But anyone jailed on a minor charge has a right to bail or to a "temporary release" for time to pay his fine. The day after the arrest the man was out on a "TR." A young Sioux jailer shrugged, commenting with a bitter smile, "Of course, what it really means is that if the guy wants to sky out and go to places unknown, he can."

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: SINSULL
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 07:56 PM

Follow the links, meself. That is the case. Native authority deals with Native offenders. They have no legal standing with outsiders and for a variety of reasons neither the federal nor state governments choose to go after the offenders even when they know who and where they are.

After NPR started looking into a rape/murder case which had been ignored by authorities, it was reopened. A young woman was beaten and raped. While locked in a bathroom she took some medications hoping that someone would call an ambulance if she appeared seriously ill. An ambulance was called. In the hospital she identified her attackers and then died from her injuries. No investigation was made.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 08:49 PM

I don't care who you are -- you do the crime, you "do the time". Although for some crimes, such as child abuse or child rape, I have some VERY inventive penalties I'd like to see applied.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 09:46 PM

Thanks, kat - I did need to read that a second time.

There are two distinct issues here that I think have been conflated in one or two posts. One issue is that of non-residents of reservations getting away with serious crime, specifically rape. It would seem a reasonable conclusion, based on the information in the various articles, that most of these perpetrators who escape prosecution are white, as katlaughing stated.

The other issue is that of the rate of rape/sexual-assault, and the percentage of whites as opposed to Natives who are committing these crimes. This issue is more problematic, based on the limited information provided in the articles:

First, there is a study indicating that one out of three Native women will suffer rape.

Secondly, a survey reveals that the "majority" of Native women who were raped, were raped by someone from outside the reserve.

Thirdly, there is the statement that 86% of the reported perpetrators of rape/sexual-assault on Native women were white men.

Now, in the case of the first study, we aren't told if the result given is based solely on cases reported to the Justice Department, or if it is based on some sort of survey or research that includes rape victims who did NOT report the crime to legal authorities. This is an important distinction. If this result includes only 'reported' rapes, then the actual rate is undoubtedly far higher - appalling as that may be. If, on the other hand, that result includes both 'reported' and 'unreported' rapes, then the provided information gives us no idea of what percentage of the total number of rapes/sexual-assaults were committed by white men - because the figure of "86%" only applies to 'reported' rapes.

I wanted to point that out, because a cursory reading of the quoted statistics/statements might give the impression that 86% of the TOTAL number of rapes/sexual-assaults were or will be committed by white men, and we simply don't know if that, according to the studies, is the case.

My own feeling is that a victim would be far more likely to report a rape committed by a non-resident of the rez than one committed by a fellow-resident, because in most instances there would be less fear of reprisal against herself and her family, and less social pressure not to report. Furthermore, in the case of child-victims, the family may be quick to report an assailant who is an outsider, but reluctant to report an assailant from within the family or community.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 12:46 AM

Just a quick note about your last paragraph meself:

From my experience, I would disagree. I think they would be less likely to report a rape by an outsider. There is no hope that an outsider will be dealt with...which brings about a sort of hopelessness...a "why bother" because the feds, etc. won't do anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:10 AM

Perhaps the situation south of the border is very different from that in Canada - certainly the legal issues seem to be far more complicated. But based on my own, um, not-unsubstantial experience (but with no statistics on hand to back me up}, I am certain that the number of rapes commited by white men on Canadian 'reserves' is a negligible percentage of the total, simply because in the normal course of things very few white men ever happen to be near a reserve. Canadian reserves tend to be fairly if not extremely isolated geographically. And that is one thing that people on-reserve often have to take into consideration before reporting crime - there may not be very much in the way of police protection for them after they make their report ...

Sadly, there is a tremendous amount of sexual abuse that occurs on many reserves, 'Native-on-Native', so to speak. Much of this seems to be a legacy of what went on in the mainly church-run 'residential schools', but keeps being fueled by alcohol.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Alice
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:14 AM

Listening to an update of the story on NPR radio news right now.
www.npr.org

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 02:15 PM

I want to support LH's view of the situation. In Alaska, where there is a great deal of violence in the Native communities including rape, there is little or no non-Native access to those communites. Furthermore, although alcohol and drugs is frequently involved, people who are witness to the situations are aware that alcohol and drugs are just as often an excuse for bad behavior, not necessarily the source.

I worked for a couple of organizations with substantial Native involvement if not ownership, and we were treated to some cultural education/ sensitivity training and information. One thing I remember quite well was a movie "No Word For Rape" indicating that a great deal of the situation was cultural and Native on Native. As LH says, there are a lot of reasons for this, but making it into a racial issue is to leap to ready-made and inaccurate impressions. One situation I witnessed personally was of a single family with some aggressive men in it who pretty much dominated their town. They did not hesitate to use any reason to protect their situation including stigimatizing any non-Native in the village who might pose a threat to their domain. I was told they'd chased out a priest.

Natives and Native American history cover a great deal of variation across the country. Each tribe or territory has its own history, had its own language, and the intricate developments that come out of the combination of the two.

In world history, the treatment of most women as other than a kind of property is relatively recent.

The NPR series, which I heard, covers a specific nasty situation where legal and protective services cross boundries, and for whatever reasons probably including bureacratic indifference and protection of turf, are unwilling to share powers, distribute powers, or take the trouble to get together some procedures to cover these situtations, and a lot of bad buys know this and take advantage of it. The whole point of the situation is that when it's non-native perps the law is stymied, so naturally that is what happens.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 02:32 PM

In the case of the Native women I knew, most of the assaults were committed by family members and "friends" of the family on the Reserve. Friends and family are the people least likely to be reported by a rape victim, for a great many obvious reasons. A rape victim is more likely to report an assault by a complete stranger.

There were also some assaults of those girls by their foster parents (several different foster parents over a period of maybe 8 or 10 years). Whether the foster parents were Native or White seems to have had little bearing on the issue.

It's a case of the illegitimate use of power. Those who have power, and who have little idea or inclination to use it responsibly, are those who may commit rape or assault.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 04:16 PM

(I think you may have been confusing me with LH, robomatic).

" ... people who are witness to the situations are aware that alcohol and drugs are just as often an excuse for bad behavior, not necessarily the source." -

I don't know what the basis could possibly be for that observation. It seems far more obvious to me that countless instances of 'bad behaviour' would not have occurred without the consumption of alcohol. The real 'source' is often psychological/emotional/psychic disturbance resulting from abuse, neglect, etc., etc., which leads to alcoholism, and bad behaviour as an effect of alcohol consumption. I have known far too many otherwise good, decent, even gentle, Native people, who under the influence of alcohol have hurt others and destroyed themselves to be able to agree with that (above) interpretation.

"In world history, the treatment of most women as other than a kind of property is relatively recent."

I trust that one or two of our female contributors will clobber you over this one ...

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 04:39 PM

"I have known far too many otherwise good, decent, even gentle, Native people, who under the influence of alcohol have hurt others and destroyed themselves..."

Me too. I've known any number of people, both Native and White who did destructive things under the influence of alcohol that they would never have done if sober. Was the alcohol the sole cause of their behaviour? No. But it was the key that unlocked Pandora's box and let the demons out.

I knew two Native men when I was in University, and they were brothers, about 1 year apart in age. They were normally softspoken, kind, unaggressive, and they got along with everyone. When they drank, however, they would always end up getting in terrible fights, usually with each other, and you would see them the next day with black eyes and busted teeth, both feeling very foolish about their behaviour of the night before. They normally could not remember what they had been fighting about.

It's a real Jeckl and Hyde thing with some people and alcohol. There are people who drink just a little, to relax. I call that "social drinking". Then there are other people who drink a hell of a lot, fast, in order to get drunk and escape the pain or boredom of their normal reality. That's "binge" drinking. The binge drinkers are the ones who tend to lose control and do violent things.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 05:28 PM

Considering it hasn't even been one hundred years since women finally won their right to vote in this country, I don't think I'll clobber robomatic just yet.:-) There are of course exceptions to his statement.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 06:09 PM

Kat: Yes there are. ['meself': You seem to jump to the conclusion that by mentioning very obvious things I'm laying myself (not YOU, 'meself') open to some kind of clobbering]. The fact that they are viewed as exceptions endorses my point, and of course there are still vast populations of the world where women are still viewed as more (or less) property, which is why we yet have such horrid practises as sex selective abortion, bride murder, female genital mutilation, sex slave trades.

meself, LH: I actually was not confusing you over the comment on alcohol as excuse. I am familiar with the situations you describe about the effect alcohol has on people. I have witnessed what you're talking about as well, one case in which a person I worked with pulled a knife on me while liquored up and had no memory of it the next day (he said). My point is in addition to that, I have also heard more than once the perception that alcohol is also used as an excuse for a genuinely bad act from someone who knew what he was doing. And of course this behavior knows no race.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 04:24 AM

There have been many cultures and societies throughout history and pre-history in which women have had considerably more status than that of property. Some of these cultures, in fact, were indigenous North American cultures. One of the best known for its matriarchal organization was the Iroquoian.

"alcohol is also used as an excuse for a genuinely bad act from someone who knew what he was doing."

Agreed.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Mr Happy
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 08:13 AM

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation


Many Native Americans who live on reservations deal with the federal government through two agencies: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service.

Some Indian reservations offer a quality of life that is among the poorest to be found in the United States. Life qualities in reservations are sometimes so poor that they're easily comparable to the quality of life in the developing world. Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is routinely described as one of the poorest counties in the nation.


**************

As a UK resident,I'm astonished that these segregation ghettoes still exist.

The South African Bantustans have been got rid of long ago, as have the racial bars on non-white Americans of other ethnicities.

So why do these anachonisms still exist?

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 11:46 AM

More from NPR:

At 14, Bonnie, a Cherokee Indian, needed a ride home. She grew up near the small city of Talequah, on the eastern side of Oklahoma. A woman she knew from town offered her a ride, instructing Bonnie to wait at her house.

The woman's husband was home, drinking with four of his friends.

"I was in the other room, and they came in and threw me on the bed," Bonnie said. "And they all held me down."

Bonnie never reported the rape. She says she had been told many times by her mother and other relatives that nobody was going to take a case involving an Indian girl getting raped.

"I just didn't figure anyone would believe me — a child against five white men," Bonnie said.

In the years that followed, Bonnie worked as a bartender and struggled to put the incident behind her. She said she would sometimes catch men bragging about similar things they said they had done.

"I've even heard a couple of white men just through the years talking about it, but I never say nothing," Bonnie said.

'Almost a Lawless Community'

Chickasaw Tribal Police Chief Jason O'Neal has heard these stories, too. One day recently at the Chickasaw police headquarters, a call came in from a Native American woman who said she had been raped and didn't know where she was.

Standing in the doorway of the command center, O'Neal looked antsy.

"I know they're working on it — to locate her position and see if everything is OK," he said.

The identity of the woman and her attacker — and especially, her exact location — mean everything to O'Neal. If the woman is Indian on Indian land with an Indian attacker, he can help her. If not, there's often little he can do – and he says that's usually the case. According to a Justice Department report, 80 percent of Indian victims describe their attackers at non-native.

"Many of the criminals know Indian lands are almost a lawless community, where they can do whatever they want," O'Neal said.

In this case on this day, the woman turns up outside of tribal land, which means he cannot intervene and won't know what happened to her.

Situations like this are excruciating for O'Neal and tribal leaders, who are trying desperately to stop sexual assaults after what they say has been years of neglect by federal officials.

Thanks to casino money, the Chickasaws have one of the most well-funded, highly equipped police departments in the state. They have their own emergency command center, as well as more training and officers than most of the surrounding sheriff's departments.

What they don't have, however, is the power to arrest the men raping women on Chickasaw land.

The Complicated Laws on Indian Land

At a gas station just outside Ada, Okla., O'Neal stood next to the ice machine as he tried to explain the intricacies of the law on Indian land.

Beneath the gas pumps and mini-mart is land that has belonged to the Chickasaw people for more than a century.

If a Native American man walks into the mini-mart and steals a carton of cigarettes, O'Neal can arrest him. If a non-native man commits the same crime, O'Neal would let him go and forward a report to the U.S. attorney's office.

When asked what happens to those reports, O'Neal replied, "Well, I really couldn't tell you. I don't think I've ever been called back on one of them."

Tribal police cannot charge non-Indians with a crime on tribal land — only the U.S. attorney's Office can. Tribal leaders say that in too many cases, no charges are filed at all.

But for O'Neal, the layout of the land itself is a problem. Indian land in Oklahoma is a patchwork quilt. The gas station, for example, is tribal land, but the highway that runs adjacent to it belongs to the state. Across the street is the entrance to town, and the building next door is not tribal property.

Unprosecuted Sexual Assaults

The people who pay the biggest price for this are often Native American women, who are two and a half times more likely to be sexually assaulted than other women. In fact, one Justice Department study found one in three Indian women will be raped in her lifetime. Tribal officials say that's because the assaults often go unreported, uninvestigated and unprosecuted.

On many rural reservations, there are often few Bureau of Indian Affairs police officers. But in Oklahoma, many tribes have their own police departments. The law itself is what prevents them from stopping the perpetrators, and without enforcement, many women don't come forward.

To work around this, tribal police can partner with neighboring police departments, but some, like one sheriff's office near Ada, won't sign on, O'Neal said.

"The sheriff had told his deputies that he didn't care if they [his deputies] were lying on the side of the road bleeding to death, they were not to call on our agency to help them," he said. "And you know what, that just goes back to plain old racism. There's nothing else to explain that."

Several sheriffs interviewed by NPR openly questioned the competence of tribal police departments, but they deny allegations of racism. Rather, they say, they don't want to share law-enforcement powers with officers who don't report to them.

An Inability to Punish

Even when tribal police get past their limited powers and land issues and haul someone into court, the inability of the tribes to exact a punishment goes right up the chain.

At the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in central Oklahoma, the tribe has built a courthouse like any other, equipped with benches and a jury box fashioned from wood.

The only people sitting in the defendant's chair, however, are Native Americans. Tribal prosecutors like David Hall are only allowed to handle misdemeanors, like public intoxication, speeding and shoplifting.

"The fact that I am not allowed to prosecute felonies that occur on tribal land irritates me. It angers me. I don't understand that," he said.

Hall said that he can't get federal prosecutors to take the cases he's not allowed to try, including two recent rape cases across the street: one in the parking lot at the casino, and one in the parking lot at the supermarket.

Renee Brewer, who works at the courthouse as a victim's advocate, remembers a case from a year ago. A woman who had been assaulted called the police and told them that her attacker was still hiding in her closet.

"I get there, and there are four different law-enforcement agencies on the front lawn with the victim, arguing, 'Well this is your case, you have jurisdiction of this.' You could go on and on with scenarios," Brewer said. "Then you wonder why these cases are not getting prosecuted — because the United States government made it as difficult as possible for us to handle our own prosecutions on our own land."

Oklahoma U.S. Attorney John Richter said he'll take any sexual assault case from a reservation that he can.

"I'm open for business, willing to take more," he said. "I'm not aware of serious cases that have not been investigated in the western district of Oklahoma. Where we hear about it, we are firmly committed."

But he said that there's no way to know how many Native American rape or assault cases they've tried or declined. The cases are brought to them by the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Neither agency's Oklahoma office would grant NPR's request for an interview.

If cases are declined, Richter said, it's because many rapes are inherently difficult to try, and federal courts place a high burden on prosecutors for evidence.

"We have to live in the real world," he explained. "Just because a case is not brought, doesn't mean we don't wish a case could be brought."

But federal law-enforcement officials who spoke to NPR believe that U.S. attorneys find the sexual assault cases insignificant compared to their usual work — terrorism, organized crime, drugs, racketeering.

Seeking Comfort in Tradition

A 2003 report from the Justice Department found that U.S. attorneys take fewer cases from the BIA than from almost any other federal law-enforcement agency — a bitter reality for women on the reservations.

Without hope of punishment for their attackers, many women turn within, seeking comfort in tradition, like a ritual called a Sweat Lodge.

At sunset on a recent night in northern Oklahoma, just outside the Otoe-Missouria Indian reservation, Juskwa Burnett hosts a healing ceremony for women who have been victims of sexual assault.

As a fire burns over a pile of large rocks, a prayer man welcomes dead ancestors. The guests are usually women whom Burnett counsels at the community center.

As the ceremony gets underway, guests enter a dome-like structure made of willow branches and covered in blankets. Burnett fills a pipe with tobacco.

The guests spend the next several hours praying, singing and talking about what has happened to them. Afterwards, they head to nearby showers, as an honored man whose Indian name means Little Bear waits for the fire to die.

Little Bear's job in the dome is to douse the rocks to create steam. Night after night, he hears the stories women tell about being sexually assaulted.

"It's a burden when you hear about all these prayer requests, all these things that people are praying about, crying about, things that happened to them sexually," he said. "Sometimes it makes it hard to go to sleep at night."

For Little Bear, the issue is personal, too. When she was just a teenager, his sister was raped on the side of the road by a man in a passing car.

"She was walking home, and a guy raped my sister in the back of a car. Just left her in a ditch," he said. "That's the worst I've encountered with, you know, not even half a mile from our home — almost made it home."

And, in addition:

Indian Territory: Tracing the Path to Oklahoma

by Monica Villavicencio

The Cherokee were forcibly removed from their land in Georgia. Their 1,200-mile trek to present-day Oklahoma is known as the "Trail of Tears."

About one in 12 residents of Oklahoma is a Native American — a higher percentage than in any other U.S. state.

These demographics are in large part the fruits of America's 19th-century expansion to the South and West. As white settlers sought more land to harvest cotton, they encountered an obstacle: The Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole nations already lived on the lands in question.

From 1814 to 1824, Andrew Jackson, then a military commander, took the lead in negotiating treaties that traded the Indian-held lands that whites desired for plots further West. The U.S. acquired parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina, as well as three-quarters of Alabama and Florida.

Tribal leaders agreed to the treaties in hopes of preserving peace and retaining some of their land. Those hopes were dashed in 1823, when the Supreme Court ruled that Indians could not hold title to lands within the boundaries of the U.S.

Some tribes in the southeastern U.S. voluntarily relocated westward after the Supreme Court decision. Many more resisted — some by attempting to assimilate or cooperate with white settlers, others through defiance and even warfare.

In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the U.S. to set aside lands west of the Mississippi River for tribes. Another act, passed in 1834, created what became known as Indian Territory; it included modern-day Oklahoma.

The laws helped set the stage for mass, forced migrations of tribes, as the U.S. government claimed their lands in the North and East by force. Within less than five decades, more than 60 tribes had willingly or forcibly relocated to Indian Territory.

In one of the most infamous forced migrations, bayonet-wielding U.S. soldiers evicted thousands of Cherokees from their lands in Georgia. At least 4,000 Cherokee are believed to have perished during a grueling 1,200-mile trek known as the "Trail of Tears."

Indian Territory itself didn't last long. The growth of railroads brought more white settlers west of the Mississippi. As the U.S. population swelled, Congress opened large swathes of the territory for settlement.

By the early 20th century, Indian Territory had been abolished. The remaining lots of land were reassigned from tribal entities to individual Indians. That made it possible for Oklahoma to gain statehood in 1907, but it also scattered Indian holdings.

Today, more than three-dozen federally recognized tribes live in Oklahoma. Before statehood, U.S. authorities and tribal leaders had agreed that tribal governments would be dissolved. Nonetheless, tribes continue to hold limited sovereignty on their lands.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 11:47 AM

I'd guess that it is because of the almost irresistible power of any existing bureaucracy to sustain itself regardless of changing realities around it, primarily because there's a lot of money involved in maintaining things as they are. Changing things would cause those presently receiving that money to have their jobs and their incomes threatened. Can't have that!

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 11:56 AM

Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: anyone is free to leave their reservation/reserve and to move anywhere they want within our respective countries. After that, it gets very complicated. In Canada, if there were any collective expression of will on the part of Aboriginal people for an end to the reserve system, that would undoubtedly occur. But: in the 1970s, Prime Minister Trudeau presented what was called The White Paper, which was a proposal to do away the Indian Act (the legislation outlining the relationship between government and 'Treaty Indians'), and to establish all the rights and responsibilities of 'ordinary' citizenship on Treaty Indians - this was angrily rejected by Treaty Indians (their represenataive, anyway), and is still a sore point with them (with the politically aware, that is) ...can

The reservations/reserves were established in most cases by treaty. A treaty is a legal contract, and it outlines the terms of a 'sale', promising certain things to the 'seller' (treaty-signing Indians) and buyer (government). Treaty Indians as a group are, understandably, reluctant to give up the benefits guaranteed in the various treaties, even if there are other aspects of the treaties they are unhappy with.

It can get very messy when you come back a hundred or more years later and try to re-write a contract, however unsatisfactory that contract may be.

Subject: RE: BS: Rape on Reservations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 12:30 PM

Yup. The law, like a bureaucracy, is hard to change. Why? Because people can't reach a common agreement on how to change it.

It's a gigantic example of how "too many cooks spoil the soup".