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Bitch_PhD

Bitch_PhD

I'm lost
February 2007

JUL 26, 2007 02:24 PM



If you listened to NPR today, you might have heard this story. If not, go listen to it now. It's part of a series about tribal governments, Indians in America, and crime on Indian lands; other links are at the bottom of the page.

Ironroad told the officer how she was raped and said that the men locked her in a bathroom, where she swallowed diabetes pills she found in the cabinet, hoping that if she was unconscious the men would leave her alone. The next morning, someone found her on the bathroom floor and called an ambulance.

A week later, Ironroad was dead — and so was the investigation. None of the authorities who could have investigated what happened to Leslie Ironroad did — not the Bureau of Indian Affairs, nor the FBI, nor anybody else.


Isolated case? Not hardly.

one in three Native American women will be raped in her lifetime. In many cases, on rural reservations like Standing Rock, NPR found that there aren't enough police to investigate sexual assaults, and few of the cases are prosecuted.
. . . .
On Standing Rock, there are five BIA officers for a territory the size of Connecticut.
. . . .
Money for new officers can only come from one place: Washington, D.C. The Bureau of Indian Affairs' director Pat Ragsdale . . . says he knows cases may be falling through the cracks. He . . . expects the situation to improve with $16 million in new funding that the Bush administration has proposed, which would add about 50 new BIA police officers.
Spread among 200 tribal jurisdictions, 50 new officers comes out to well below one per tribe.
. . . .
On Standing Rock, getting an officer to respond to a call for help can mean waiting for days or even months. The reservation's only women's shelter is still waiting for police to come after someone cut all of their phone lines two months ago.


It's not just a question of there not being enough officers, either. If a rape happens on Indian land, then the Indian police can investigate the crime--unless the rapist isn't an Indian. Then it falls under federal jurisdiction. According to NPR, this means that most rapes of Indian women--which are not committed by Indian men--go unprosecuted, even uninvestigated.

Justice officials and local U.S. attorneys say they can not provide the number of sexual assault cases they decline from Indian reservations or even the number of cases they take.

A 2004 study conducted by the department found that the number of suspects investigated by U.S. attorneys for crimes on Indian land declined 21 percent from 1997 to 2000.


In other words, the American government's doing just what white guys have done to Indians ever since Europeans arrived on this continent.

Bitch_PhD is kinda myopic, so for her fellow nearsighted readers, the text from the image runs as follows:

WE, THE WOMEN OF THE IROQUOIS: Own the land, the lodge, the children. / Ours is the right of adoption, of life or death: / Ours the right to raise up and depose chiefs; / Ours the right of representation at all councils; / Ours the right to make and abrogate treaties; / Ours the supervision over domestic and foreign policies; / Ours the trusteeship of the tribal property; / Our lives are valued again as high as man's.

American feminism draws on Inidian models as well as European ones (as do parts of the American constitution, actually); this book chapter traces some of the connections between American feminism and women's roles in different American tribes.

pariah002

pariah002

Yugoslavia
July 2003

JUL 26, 2007 04:16 PM

"I'm proud to be an American" etc. Fun times for everyone.
This is just another chapter in the book called "This World is Fucked"
mad

Pilkington

Pilkington

USA
October 2005

JUL 26, 2007 04:29 PM

well, if they wouldn't do so much meth.....

unfiltrator

unfiltrator

San Francisco, CA
April 2004

JUL 26, 2007 04:29 PM

I don't understand why we don't love Native American culture more. We love just about every ethnicity and yet Native American culture is the only one that, if it disappears into normative culture, it's really actually gone.

thunderbunny

thunderbunny

USA
OLD SKOOL

JUL 26, 2007 04:34 PM

Great piece, and an important and under-reported subject. The status of women on the rez need a great deal of attention, as this is, sadly an iceburg-tippy sort of thing.

The connections to the US Constitution are pretty specious, though, whatever the claims. Although it's been frequently claimed that Franklin cribbed the idea for the Albany Plan of Union (an abortive 1754 attempt at a colonial league for mutual defense against the French and their allies) from the Great League of the Iroquois/Six Nations, no documentation (that I've seen) exists that makes that connection explicit. Also, given that Franlkin, like most of the founders preferred to festishize Greek and Roman precidents, I'm guessing he missed the strong example right under his nose. You're giving him too much credit.

Yours in nit-pickery,

tbunny

mynameiscricket

mynameiscricket

Cincinnati, OH
January 2007

JUL 26, 2007 04:45 PM

Pilkington, that was a pretty dumb remark. Look @ everything the native americans have gone through, they have nothing left, so what else is there better to do? We took everything away from them and now native american woman just sit around hoping not to get raped.

SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

JUL 26, 2007 04:53 PM

publicAnemone said:
I don't understand why we don't love Native American culture more. We love just about every ethnicity and yet Native American culture is the only one that, if it disappears into normative culture, it's really actually gone.



Fear of lawsuits?

SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

JUL 26, 2007 04:54 PM

mynameiscricket said:
Pilkington, that was a pretty dumb remark. Look @ everything the native americans have gone through, they have nothing left, so what else is there better to do? We took everything away from them and now native american woman just sit around hoping not to get raped.


+1

bairdduvessa

bairdduvessa

Centerville, MA
April 2005

JUL 26, 2007 04:56 PM

mynameiscricket said:
Pilkington, that was a pretty dumb remark. Look @ everything the native americans have gone through, they have nothing left, so what else is there better to do? We took everything away from them and now native american woman just sit around hoping not to get raped.



its because then the American people would have to acknowledge the genocide we commited

unfiltrator

unfiltrator

San Francisco, CA
April 2004

JUL 26, 2007 04:56 PM

SockPuppet said:

publicAnemone said:
I don't understand why we don't love Native American culture more. We love just about every ethnicity and yet Native American culture is the only one that, if it disappears into normative culture, it's really actually gone.



Fear of lawsuits?



Liticaphobia? I don't get the joke.

Esoteric

Esoteric

Portland, OR
January 2005

JUL 26, 2007 05:08 PM

I see that there are some serious problems with the federal government runs things on indian land, but didn't a few things in this article seem a bit weird? It says the government doesn't provide enough money for indians to police themselves, and then goes on to blame "white guys" for their troubles.

But isn't the criminal ultimately responsible for the crime? If a guy goes out one night and rapes an indian woman, then points a finger at some washington official and says " he made me do it." is he to be believed? If I run a red light when there are no cops around, I'm still committing a crime, and I'm still responsible for the consequences.

I think the knee-jerk response of blaming "white guys" is a bit counter-productive here.

Roethke

Roethke

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

JUL 26, 2007 05:25 PM

Esoteric said:
I see that there are some serious problems with the federal government runs things on indian land, but didn't a few things in this article seem a bit weird? It says the government doesn't provide enough money for indians to police themselves, and then goes on to blame "white guys" for their troubles.

But isn't the criminal ultimately responsible for the crime? If a guy goes out one night and rapes an indian woman, then points a finger at some washington official and says " he made me do it." is he to be believed? If I run a red light when there are no cops around, I'm still committing a crime, and I'm still responsible for the consequences.

I think the knee-jerk response of blaming "white guys" is a bit counter-productive here.


Frankly, I didn't see the article blaming the federal government and redeeming the criminal.

THe point here is, the Native police CANNOT do anything about a crime committed by a non native. And the federal government, who can do something about it, fails to do so in nearly every case. Tribal police also can't do anything about crimes committed on county land, which seems straight forward, except that most reservations are swiss cheesed with county land, and you often don't know what jurisdiction you're on from mile to mile.

Of course the response is the blame the white guys. Why? Because they're the ones committing the crimes.

DhD_No_Pants

DhD_No_Pants

Katy, TX
May 2006

JUL 26, 2007 05:32 PM

Esoteric said:
I see that there are some serious problems with the federal government runs things on indian land, but didn't a few things in this article seem a bit weird? It says the government doesn't provide enough money for indians to police themselves, and then goes on to blame "white guys" for their troubles.

But isn't the criminal ultimately responsible for the crime? If a guy goes out one night and rapes an indian woman, then points a finger at some washington official and says " he made me do it." is he to be believed? If I run a red light when there are no cops around, I'm still committing a crime, and I'm still responsible for the consequences.

I think the knee-jerk response of blaming "white guys" is a bit counter-productive here.



No one is blaming the white guys for the crime.

Just that the white guys aren't doing anything about it.

Roethke said it a little better, but I thought simpler might be best, in this case.

bean

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

JUL 26, 2007 05:35 PM

DhD_PillowPants said:
No one is blaming the white guys for the crime.


Nobody was, but...

Roethke said:
Of course the response is the blame the white guys. Why? Because they're the ones committing the crimes.


They might be the ones responsible for the lack of funding and enforcement, but I don't see anything about the race of the perpetrators of the crimes.

SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

JUL 26, 2007 05:39 PM

publicAnemone said:

SockPuppet said:

publicAnemone said:
I don't understand why we don't love Native American culture more. We love just about every ethnicity and yet Native American culture is the only one that, if it disappears into normative culture, it's really actually gone.



Fear of lawsuits?



Liticaphobia? I don't get the joke.



Not a joke. bairdduvessa said it right, about a minute after my lacklustre attempt.

Roethke

Roethke

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

JUL 26, 2007 05:44 PM

bean said:

DhD_PillowPants said:
No one is blaming the white guys for the crime.


Nobody was, but...

Roethke said:
Of course the response is the blame the white guys. Why? Because they're the ones committing the crimes.


They might be the ones responsible for the lack of funding and enforcement, but I don't see anything about the race of the perpetrators of the crimes.



Oh, I listend to the show the article deals with, and the race of the rapists is mentioned a few times, and I don't recall it ever being not white.

I recently heard a show about rape of Alaskan native women, and they also said that their rapists were white men.

DhD_No_Pants

DhD_No_Pants

Katy, TX
May 2006

JUL 26, 2007 05:49 PM

Roethke said:

bean said:

DhD_PillowPants said:
No one is blaming the white guys for the crime.


Nobody was, but...

Roethke said:
Of course the response is the blame the white guys. Why? Because they're the ones committing the crimes.


They might be the ones responsible for the lack of funding and enforcement, but I don't see anything about the race of the perpetrators of the crimes.



Oh, I listend to the show the article deals with, and the race of the rapists is mentioned a few times, and I don't recall it ever being not white.

I recently heard a show about rape of Alaskan native women, and they also said that their rapists were white men.



Wow, I looked over the article again, and you are right, it says the rapes are mostly being done by non-native men.

Guess I failed my reading comprehension test for the day. blackeyed

Cockzombie

Cockzombie

San Diego, CA
July 2006

JUL 26, 2007 06:04 PM

I have a hard time believing some of the things in this article, first of all, why can I get pulled over on a rez for speeding by tribal police? and I'm sure that if something happened in a casino on a rez- the tribal police would be able to to do something- otherwise whitey would be robbing the casinos left and right. So I don't feel they totally have thier hands tied.

A lot of these reservations are milking the government- I'm sorry I need to be the one who says it, but being that I am surrounded by native land, I see it. They are making a ton of money at the casinos, they get gas at a discount from the goverment and charge less, so more people go to tribal lands to fill up. They are charging upwards of 3x the normal fine on a traffice violation, and I just recently read an article about how an entire reservation didn't pay thier water bill for 3 years and then bitched when whitey turned the water off. their excuse for not paying? They weren't used to paying it. good one.

Where does all of this money go? Where does the money go the government is paying them for the injustaces our ansestors did to them? Maybe they should reprioritize where their money goes if this is such a huge problem. Becides, how does whitey even get onto tribal land? That requires traspassing..
confused


Pilkington said:
well, if they wouldn't do so much meth.....



mynameiscricket said:
Pilkington, that was a pretty dumb remark. Look @ everything the native americans have gone through, they have nothing left, so what else is there better to do? We took everything away from them and now native american woman just sit around hoping not to get raped.



Hopefully native women aren't just sitting around hoping to not get raped because they have nothing better to do. They could, maybe... get a job and contribute to the tribal police 'find the white rapist' fund.

swedrock

swedrock

Louisville, KY
October 2005

JUL 26, 2007 06:05 PM

Bitch, I have lived near tribal lands, and I wish they were a part of the USA. They need the resouces that we have, and the commerce. If they don't get the "gamblin thing" they suffer.

It really is like having a Bosnia 70 miles from you.

We integrated the black slaves, you would think we could bring in the native indians.

MrStitches

MrStitches

Brooklyn, NY
November 2003

JUL 26, 2007 06:17 PM

Yeah, I heard that story at work today.
What the fuck is wrong with us that after all this time we're still fucking over american indians? You'd think we would have gotten it out of our system after killing most of them.
Land of the free indeed.

Kleio

Kleio

Winona, MN
January 2006

JUL 26, 2007 06:28 PM

This has to be the fourth or fifth time in the past couple of years that I've read an article about this.

For those that like statistics, this report, submitted in 1999, has some about halfway down the page that are pretty disheartening.



Between 1992 and 1996, the overall crime rate dropped about 17 percent, and homicides were down 22 percent. For the same period, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported that murders on America's Indian reservations rose sharply. Some tribes, the Justice Department report says, "have murder rates that far exceed those of urban areas known for their struggles against violent crime." And other violent crimes parallel the rise in homicide.




The study finds that American Indians experience per capita rates of violence which are more than twice those of the U.S. population.[46] From 1992 through 1996 the average annual rate of violent victimizations among Indians 12 years and older was 124 per 1,000 residents, compared with 61 for blacks, 49 for whites, and 29 for Asians (see table 2).[47] The rate of violent crime experienced by American Indian women is nearly 50 percent higher than that reported by black males.[48]





The report also found that in 7 out of 10 violent victimizations of American Indians the assailant was someone of a different race, a substantially higher incidence of interracial violence than experienced by white or black victims (see table 3). Among white victims, 69 percent of the offenders were white; similarly, black victims are most likely to be victimized by a black assailant (81 percent). For American Indian victims of rape/sexual assault, the offender is described as white in 82 percent of the cases.[49]



xazapdmytinu

xazapdmytinu

Fort Collins, CO
July 2007

JUL 26, 2007 06:33 PM

swedrock said:
Bitch, I have lived near tribal lands, and I wish they were a part of the USA. They need the resouces that we have, and the commerce. If they don't get the "gamblin thing" they suffer.

It really is like having a Bosnia 70 miles from you.

We integrated the black slaves, you would think we could bring in the native indians.



I don't think it's as simple as all that...I'm not privy to reservation politics, but I get the feeling that "integration" would be sort of like admitting that the native americans have some ownership of the US or something like that....like I said, shots in the dark. Most likely neither the Natives, nor the federal government can come to a satisfactory agreement about it and as a result the debate rages on.

It seems that by wanting the right to police themselves and their borders they are losing quite a bit of rights in general. Since they have their own police the state and county police haven't got much jurisdiction and since the federal government says they can't prosecute non-indians rapists go free and you're stuck paying a citation

but the real question is, why all the rapes? I mean, rapists can't be privy to all this info, I mean, there have got to be a few rapists who listen to npr who are NOW aware of it, thanks a lot, but before? So they are deliberately seeking out memebers of a certain ethnic group, so shouldn't that fall under hate crimes or something? Isn't that more severe and therefore a higher priority with respect to prosecution and conviction (not that rapists aree really all the easy to convict, looking at the current record of NON RACIALLY motivated rapes.)

ugh, that shit just makes me sick. and the idea meth/nothing better to do thing made me throw up in my mouth a little...I mean, there's comments like that on SG and we wonder why the country at large has a poor opinion of them? Sure they aren't the peace pipe smoking, feather and fringe wearing noble savages from the westerns of yore, but give them a little respect. I suspect there may have been some sarcasm there, but try a little harder next time to make it less dry and more over the top to make sure no one is confused that you're being cynical and we should all just chill.

One last thought...the Amish have a similar arrangement with the government, both state and federal. I'm willing to bet that they don't have the same problem,<sarcasm> which is strange what with all thoseMilky white young virgins running around in petticoats </sarcasm> (i really hate to bring up the whitey mcwhiterson thing again, but honestly people, anyone can fucking see it...just because you aren't racist and nobody you know is racist doesn't mean that there still aren't a lot of racists out there...can you honestly say you know even 3% of the entire population of America well enough to say they aren't racists?)

Roethke

Roethke

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

JUL 26, 2007 06:39 PM

cockzombie said:
I have a hard time believing some of the things in this article, first of all, why can I get pulled over on a rez for speeding by tribal police? and I'm sure that if something happened in a casino on a rez- the tribal police would be able to to do something- otherwise whitey would be robbing the casinos left and right. So I don't feel they totally have thier hands tied.

Tribal police can pull you over, and ticket you. But if you didn't pay that ticket, they can't necessarily do anything about it. Tribal lands vary in who enforces law on them, fromt he FBI, BIA, Tribal police, or county police.

A lot of these reservations are milking the government- I'm sorry I need to be the one who says it, but being that I am surrounded by native land, I see it. They are making a ton of money at the casinos, they get gas at a discount from the goverment and charge less, so more people go to tribal lands to fill up. They are charging upwards of 3x the normal fine on a traffice violation, and I just recently read an article about how an entire reservation didn't pay thier water bill for 3 years and then bitched when whitey turned the water off. their excuse for not paying? They weren't used to paying it. good one.

Where does all of this money go? Where does the money go the government is paying them for the injustaces our ansestors did to them? Maybe they should reprioritize where their money goes if this is such a huge problem. Becides, how does whitey even get onto tribal land? That requires traspassing..
confused



You just said you got pulled over on tribal land. Were you trespassing? Most tribes DO NOT have casinos. You seem to think that all of the natives in America are lush with cash and f they simply spent some of it on law enforcement they'd be ok, but that isn't the case. The O'odham Nation is one of the poorest places in the USA, and that is the same for many of the tribes.

Once again, someone failed to even read the article. Tribal police do not have jurisdiction over non natives. Lack of funding is a problem, but in this case, even if they were funded more, they cannot legally prosecute a non native.

And seriously, where are you getting you're facts? You mention money the governemtn is paying to tribes, but this is the first I've heard of it. I wonder if you realize how paternalistic your post reads.

DownNeck

DownNeck

Jersey City, NJ
March 2006

JUL 26, 2007 06:42 PM

DhD_PillowPants said:
Just that the white guys aren't doing anything about it.



neither are the white girls, the black guys, the black girls, the hispanic guys, the hispanic girls, etc.

currently 13 women hold seats in the senate and 61 in the house of representatives.

apart from bitch_phd's myopic, tiresome, and ultimately dissociative focus on blaming men for things it's an excellent article. this is definitely a problem that needs more time in popular media and, ultimately, some real tangible solutions implemented by our government.

Roethke

Roethke

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

JUL 26, 2007 06:46 PM

xazapdmytinu said:
but the real question is, why all the rapes? I mean, rapists can't be privy to all this info, I mean, there have got to be a few rapists who listen to npr who are NOW aware of it, thanks a lot, but before? So they are deliberately seeking out memebers of a certain ethnic group, so shouldn't that fall under hate crimes or something? Isn't that more severe and therefore a higher priority with respect to prosecution and conviction (not that rapists aree really all the easy to convict, looking at the current record of NON RACIALLY motivated rapes.)


If this happened on state or county land, it would fall under the jurisdiction of state police, and thus more likely to be prosecuted. There's a great deal of racism still in regards to Native Americans, though. But that's not really the issue at hand.

Reservations are practically lawless for non natives, and if you live or work near a reservation, or likely to know that. And if you're a total waste of useable foodstuffs and inclined to misogyny, it's probably easy to figure out that if you hit a native woman, nothing will happen to you. There was a story recounted by one of the women in the program, who was gangraped by a group of white men as a girl, and she's now a bartender. She said she's overheard men bragging about what they've done to native women more than once.

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