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  • THURSDAY JULY 26 2007 4:00 PM

America: Raping Indians For Over 300 Years and Counting

Submitted by Bitch_PhD

Edited by Bitch_PhD

Tags: american history, american indians, indian women, rape, prosecution



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.

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Comments
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.

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