Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (6 page)

The alteration of the legal relationship of Native women to the land was another dimension in the erosion of the status and identity of Native women. In many instances it eliminated self-sufficiency, created economic and legal dependency upon a male head-of-household, and, in the case of Sally Ladiga, imposed the status of “homeless.”

Impact of Federal Indian Policy on the Safety of Native Women

Historically, federal policy toward Indian nations has eroded the protections and status of Native women within their respective nations and within the United States. Federal policy served as an additional legal dimension that supported the normalization and cultural acceptance of violence committed against Native women. The policies during the Indian Wars, the Boarding School Era, the Adoption Era, and the Forced Sterilization Era highlight the impact of some federal policies upon the lives of Native women.

During the Indian Wars, Native women and their children were targeted. Phrases such as “kill and scalp all, big and little” and “nits make lice” became a rallying cry for the troops. “Since Indians were lice, their children were nits—the only way to get rid of lice was to kill the nits as well.”
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This policy of extermination legalized the killing of Native women. To avoid being killed or having their children murdered, Indian women were forced to assimilate. Assimilation for Native women meant relinquishing honored multifaceted roles within their nations for the role of non-Indian women within the United States. As a result Native women were instructed in the domestic tasks of servants.

The Boarding School Era, from the 1880s to the 1950s, followed by the Adoption Era from the 1950s to the 1970s, removed the children of Native women in order to further the federal policy of assimilation. This policy was clearly a violation of the concept of
mother’s right
. Further, the cultural responsibility for raising children, according to customs and traditions of many Indian nations, is that of the mother and the maternal relatives. Therefore, these policies took from women the privilege of raising and passing on cultural traditions to their children. The intent of these two eras is captured in the following statement of the 1886 Commissioner of Indian Affairs:

It is admitted by most people that the adult savage is not susceptible to the influence of civilization, and we must therefore turn to his children, that they might be taught to abandon the pathway of barbarism and walk with a sure step along the pleasant highway of Christian civilization.... They must be withdrawn, in tender years, entirely from the camp and taught to eat, to sleep, to dress, to play, to work, to think after the manner of the white man.
⁸³

There was a specific intent to disrupt the bond in order to assimilate Indian children. The cultural genocide committed through the forced removal of Native children is well documented as having lifelong detrimental effects on Indian families. One girl later wrote, “I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.”
⁸⁴
The consequences for resisting the removal of their children to government boarding schools were severe for parents.
⁸⁵
Further, the physical and sexual violence committed against girls within the government schools by employees further normalized violence committed against Native women.
⁸⁶

More recently, Native women were the subjects of a policy described as “forced sterilization”
⁸⁷
by the Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Services, and other health care facilities. Congress investigated the permanent sterilization of Native women at Indian Health Service facilities and contract facilities. In 1976, the comptroller general released a summary report.
⁸⁸
The investigation, while limited to four areas of the United States for a period of three years, revealed that Native women, without their informed consent, were being permanently sterilized. The report states:

Indian Health Service records show that 3,406 sterilization procedures were performed on female Indians in the Aberdeen, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix areas during fiscal years 1973-76. Data for fiscal year 1976 is for a 120 month period ending June 30, 1976. Of the 3,406 procedures performed, 3,001 involved women of child-bearing age (ages 15-44) and 1,024 were performed at Indian Health Service contract facilities. On April 18, 1974, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued regulations to address the sterilization of persons by the Indian Health Service.

The policy of “sterilization” was operational beyond Indian Health Service facilities as recounted by a victim of the policy:

I was badly beaten by my husband and left on the street outside our apartment building. An ambulance took me to the hospital. When I woke up I felt my stomach and there were stitches. I asked the nurse, “Did my husband do this?” She said, “No, the doctor did that.” I asked why. The nurse said, “The doctor gave you a hysterectomy.” I didn’t know the meaning of the word. No one in my family knew the meaning of the word.
⁸⁹

The depth of the erosion of the physical safety and respect for Native women caused by this genocidal practice is societal and intergenerational.

These legislative acts of Congress, Supreme Court cases, and policies implemented by the executive branches of the U.S. government are not directly responsible for current statistics showing that Native women are the most victimized population in the United States.
⁹⁰
The social extension of the federal laws and policies discussed above is, however, culturally significant to the acceptance of violence committed against Native women. The fact that Native women are victimized at a rate more than double that of any other population must be understood in this historical context.

The Journey Home

The Violence Against Women Act of 2005 provides Indian nations unprecedented access to resources to improve the governmental response to violence against Native women.
⁹¹
The accomplishments of this decade, 1995-2005, provide life-saving services to Native women seeking safety. The shift in federal law and policy over the last ten years is a beginning. Indian nations not only receive unprecedented resources under the act, but an affirmation of their inherent sovereign authority to respond to crimes of violence against women such as domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
⁹²

Indian nations and advocates for the safety of Native women are pursuing a strategy reflective of this reality. Similar to slaying a mythical two-headed monster, Indian nations and advocates must hold accountable both the individual perpetrator and also the justice systems charged with the responsibility of protecting Native women. While individual perpetrators are held accountable for specific acts of violence, legal reforms must be implemented to address gaps in tribal, federal, and state justice systems that increase the vulnerability of Native women to violent victimization as a population. As women’s advocate Karen Artichoker remarks:

We are working to re-shape a western, imposed, punitive criminal justice system into a system that utilizes consequences for bad behavior in combination with the tribal concept of relatives. A system based on this concept allows us to show compassion for offending relatives and will offer the opportunity for offenders to look at themselves and the impact of their behavior on themselves, others, the community, nation, and cosmos.
⁹³

The prevalence and severity of such crimes committed against Native women today cannot be disconnected from the process of colonization that has occurred since contact with European countries. It is not merely a distant historical period, but a continuing process lived and remembered by Native people on a daily basis. This living memory is evident in the stories and experiences of the survivors. Effie Williams, an Athabascan elder of the Native Village of Allakaket, recounts her first encounter with non-Natives and watching as children were forcibly removed to boarding schools. Marlin Mousseau, an Oglala Sioux traditional pipe bearer, remembers his great-great grandmother, who survived the mass graves of the Wounded Knee massacre at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Juana Majel-Dixon, of the Pauma-Yuima Band Luiseño Indians, speaks of her forced sterilization in 1967 at an Indian Health Service contract care facility in Escondido, California.

Through education and increased awareness of the origins of violence against Native women, tribal nations can create a path toward its elimination. Understanding the connection of contemporary violence to policies of colonization is a social process important to reforming justice systems and unraveling myths that support cultural acceptance of violence against Native women. The Violence Against Women Acts of 1994, 2000, and 2005 are important historic points to begin the legal process of restoring social protectors of safety for Native women. The act can go further by continuing to support essential services that assist Native women in danger, strengthening the authority of tribal governments to address the safety of women, and establishing a policy that develops services to assist Native women directed by the customs, practices, and beliefs of that community.

The election of advocates for the safety of Native women to positions of tribal leadership is perhaps the clearest political statement by Indian nations of the commitment to eliminating violence against Native women.
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Federal Indian Law is often analogized to the swinging of the pendulum. The last ten years is clearly one reflection of that swing in federal policy. For all that understand this reality the successes of the last ten years represent a challenge to continue to move forward until Native women and all women can live free of violence. In the words of Tillie Black Bear:

As Indian women we have survived, as Indian nations we have survived. We have survived because of our beliefs, teachings and traditions. One of our strongest beliefs is in the teachings of White Buffalo Calf Woman. One of the first teachings brought to the Lakota people is that, even in thought, women are to be respected.
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Notes

1
  
Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005
(H.R. 3402).

2
  
Violence Against Women Act,
Title IV of the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
(Pub. L. 103-322), as amended by the
Victims of Trafficking Protection Act of 2000
(Pub. L. 106-386), as amended by the
Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005
(H.R. 3402).

3
  H.R. 3402, Title IX, Safety for Indian Women.

4
  H.R. 3402, Sec. 902 (2). See also inherent right of self-government codified in the
Indian Reorganization Act of 1934,
ch. 576, 48 Stat. 984 (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 461-479 (1994 & Supp. IV 1998));
Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968,
Pub. L. No. 90-284, 82 Stat. 77 (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1341 (1994 & Supp. IV 1998));
Indian Education Act of 1972,
Pub. L. No. 992-318, 86 Stat. 873 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 7,12,16, and 20 U.S.C.);
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975,
Pub. L. No. 93-638, 88 Stat. 2206 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 5 U.S.C. and 25 U.S.C.); and
American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978
, Pub. L. No. 95-341, 92 Stat. 469 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 1996 (Supp. IV 1998)).

5
  Throughout this chapter, the term “Native” is used in lieu of “American Indian” or “Alaska Native” when not specifically citing or paraphrasing other work. Native Hawaiians are not included in this reference because they have a distinct historical and contemporary legal relationship to the United States. See
Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen
(Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 1990[1898]) (International plea for justice by Queen Liluokalani for restoration of the Hawaiian throne and her nation to determine its own destiny);
Apology Resolution of 1993,
Pub. L. 103-150 (S.J. Res. 19) (Apology to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii);
Policy of the United States Regarding Its Relationship with Native Hawaiians,
Hearing on S. 2899 Before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs (2000) (statement of Jacqueline Agtuca, Acting Director of Office of Tribal Justice, USDOJ).

6
  See U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country
(2003), available at
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/na0703/na0204.pdf
.

7
  H.R. 3402, Title IX, Safety for Indian Women, Sec. 901, Findings.

8
  See Lawrence A. Greenfeld and Steven K. Smith,
American Indians and Crime
(Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, USDOJ, February 1999, NCJ 173386); Steven W Perry,
American Indians and Crime
(Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, USDOJ, December 2004); Calli Rennison,
Violent Victimization and Race, 1993-1998
(Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, USDOJ, 2001); Ronet Bachman,
National Crime Victimization Survey Compilation
(Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, USDOJ, 2004).