May 2, 2007

It seems to be open season on indigenous women. We are three times more likely to be raped than white women, two and half times more likely to be abused by our partners and most of our assailants go unpunished.

These statistics are highlighted in a recent Amnesty International report, but for
Native American women, it's an old story -- one that goes back hundreds of years.

"We have lost our status as sacred," says Karen Artichoker, director of Cangleska, a women's shelter on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. "We were never subservient to men. We were respected as lifegivers. We lost that status with colonization."

Before European contact, rape was uncommon and punishment was severe, often
banishment. Even centuries after contact, Native women enjoyed an equality that was envied by early feminists. But that status has since been eroded, in large part by the federal government's failure to live up to its trust responsibility to tribal nations. These responsibilities, which were meant to ensure that the interests of Native people would be protected, were guaranteed through treaties negotiated at great cost to Native people.

But with a chronically understaffed and underfunded justice and law enforcement system and its confusing jurisdictional lines, that protection is severely compromised.

Not surprisingly, most Indian women never report sexual assaults. When they do, they risk further pain and humiliation only to watch the perpetrator usually go free.

They go free for a number of reasons. Because tribal law enforcement is spread too thin. Because health clinics lack rape kits needed to collect evidence and the personnel trained to use them. Or because tribal courts lack the authority to prosecute many of these crimes to the fullest.

"When a rapist rapes and is not punished, it sends out a strong message," says Charon Asetoyer, director of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center in Lake Andes, S.D. "It says we're not worth protection."

The message that sends to white men is that Indian women are fair game, and it gives Indian men the idea that it's normal to abuse their girlfriends or wives.

Amnesty International reports that 86 percent of the sexual violence against Native women is perpetrated by non-Native men. These statistics come from the U.S. Department of Justice, which has jurisdiction over non-Natives who commit crimes on reservations.

What's missing from the picture, however, is the sexual abuse that Native women endure at the hands of their partners, fathers, uncles, cousins and other relatives. There are no numbers to tell these stories, but Native people know it is happening in epidemic proportions.

The report makes some significant recommendations, among them the need to collect this kind of data in order to more accurately assess the violence Native women experience.

It also calls for timely access to forensic exams, extending tribal authority to all crimes committed on tribal lands whether the offender is Indian or not and increasing federal spending on Indian law enforcement and health clinics.

Native organizations have been advocating for some of these proposals for years. It took Amnesty International to spotlight the issue, but it is Native women who are changing things. And that is an old story, as well.

According to Lakota belief, it was the White Buffalo Calf Woman who brought the Sacred Pipe to the Lakota and taught us how to pray. She vowed to return one day and restore harmony to the people.

Perhaps in some ways she has: Her spirit is alive in the women who are telling their stories and fighting to reclaim their sacredness.

Rita Pyrillis is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe and a freelance writer living in Evanston, Ill. She teaches media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.