violence against Indian women

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center is Hiring for New Native Helpline

Victoria Sweet

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) in partnership with the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH), is excited to announce that the StrongHearts Native Helpline, to be staffed by Native advocates, is scheduled to launch on January 4, 2017. The goal of the StrongHearts Native Helpline is to ensure that Native victims of domestic violence can access safety in a culturally relevant manner and eventually live their lives free of abuse.

As a result of an unexpected acceleration of our development timeline, NIWRC has agreed to house StrongHearts in Austin, Texas with the National Domestic Violence Hotline, to allow StrongHearts staff to receive direct support and mentoring from the NDVH. This is important in building a strong base aimed at enhancing services and outreach to tribal communities and Alaska Native villages. New Hires are expected to live in Austin, TX for initial start up time frame, then relocate to permanent Helpline office in Tulsa, OK. 

Available on our website are the current vacancies as well as attached to this email are the job announcements and NIWRC job application forms. Please feel free to forward these on!

NIWRC’s positions available are:

Strong Hearts Advocate

Strong Hearts Assistant Director

Strong Hearts Communications Manager

Strong Hearts Data Specialist

Strong Hearts IT Coordinator

*Please review individual job announcements for details. To submit your application electronically you must first DOWNLOAD THE PDF.

Please contact Tang Cheam if you have any questions at tcheam@niwrc.org

NIJ Report: “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher4 Comments

Here:

Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men_NNIJ_20…

The NIJ released new survey results this week, and things are as bad as they’ve ever been.  The results say that 4 out of 5 women and men are victims of violence:

More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women (84.3 percent) have experienced violence in their lifetime. This includes —

■■ 56.1 percent who have experienced sexual violence.

■■ 55.5 percent who have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner.

■■ 48.8 percent who have experienced stalking.

■■ 66.4 percent who have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner.

Overall, more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime.

More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native men (81.6 percent) have experienced violence in their lifetime. This includes —

■■ 27.5 percent who have experienced sexual violence.

■■ 43.2 percent who have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner.

■■ 18.6 percent who have experienced stalking.

■■ 73.0 percent who have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner.

Overall, more than 1.4 million American Indian and Alaska Native men have experienced violence in their lifetime.

New Scholarship on Protecting Indian Women

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

The University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law has published “Too Many Gaps, Too Many Fallen Victims: Protecting American Indian Women from Violence on Tribal Lands.”

 

 

“Alaska, We Have a Rape Problem”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

Alaska, we have a rape problem. Apparently that’s acceptable to most of us or we’d be storming the castle for change.

My blood pressure is still in the stratosphere after reading a recent fundraising letter from our governor. As part of his pitch for money, Sean Parnell listed his “accomplishments.” Most of them were your garden-variety political credit-snatching and posturing, but one had me apopletic.

“… Our Choose Respect initiative has freed Alaskans from domestic violence and sexual assault.”

I’ll wait while you re-read that sentence. …

As the cliche goes, “I may have been born in the morning but not this morning.”

I’m tempted to take off on a name-calling tear, but let’s look at the facts instead.

Alaska was recently rated as the third most violent of the 50 states. (The FBI apparently didn’t get Parnell’s letter, so it continues to work with these things called “crime statistics,” a practice I would recommend to the governor’s office.)

New Video Campaign on Ending Violence Against Women and Redefining Native Love

Kirsten Matoy Carlson

New Video Campaign on Ending Violence Against Women and Redefining Native Love

October 21, 2013

(Helena, Mont.) —  The Indian Law Resource Center and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) have launched the first videos in a new campaign to raise awareness of and help end violence against Native women and girls.

The campaign is two-fold, featuring a series of “Survivor Stories” with Native women who have experienced domestic and sexual violence as well as a series of videos on the theme of “Native Love” with Native youth expressing what Native love means to them and the changes they want to see in their communities.

“With one in three Native women raped in their lifetimes, creating awareness to end violence against Indian and Alaska Native women and girls is the first and foremost priority for this campaign,” said Jana Walker, Senior Attorney and Director of the Center’s Safe Women, Strong Nations project.  “The epidemic of violence against Native women and girls cannot be tolerated.”

The first survivor story released in the series features Sheila Harjo, the First Lady of The Seminole Nation and Councilwoman.  In the video, Harjo describes the eight years of abuse she endured by her former husband.

“I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor,” declares Harjo in the video. “I now have the opportunity to share my story and let people know it can happen to anybody. It’s not drunks. It’s not the poor people. It’s not the uneducated. It’s anybody.”

Harjo has been a driving force in helping The Seminole Nation establish a domestic violence program and shelter for abused women and their children.

The “Native Love” video series raises awareness about violence against Native women and girls and is aimed at empowering tribal members, particularly young people, to speak out.  Justin Secakuku, a member of the Hopi Tribe of Arizona, shares a Hopi tradition involving white corn, and its symbolism of the value of women to give and produce life.

“Women should be appreciated, honored, and loved,” says Secakuku in the video. “In the concept of Native love, we have to respect what women have to contribute to society as a whole.”

The Indian Law Resource Center and the NIWRC will release four survivor stories and four “Native Love” stories through the end of the year.  The videos and other online resources including posters, Facebook banners, a domestic violence toolkit, FAQs, and a guide on how to share the campaign, will be available at www.indianlaw.org and www.niwrc.org.

“We hope to stimulate and support a national dialogue about what Native love is — and what it is not — in order to create change that will help restore safety to our Native women and girls,”  said Lucy Simpson, Executive Director of the NIWRC.  “We encourage people to watch the videos, share them through Facebook and other social media channels, and help us create change.”

The videos were co-produced by the Center and Native filmmaker Ryan Red Corn, co-founder of Buffalo Nickel Creative.  Red Corn also produced “To The Indigenous Woman” which was released by the Center in October 2011.  For more information or to download and share the videos, visit www.indianlaw.org or www.niwrc.org.

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About the Indian Law Resource Center

The Indian Law Resource Center is a nonprofit law and advocacy organization that provides legal assistance to Indian and Alaska Native nations who are working to protect their lands, resources, human rights, environment, and cultural heritage. The Center’s principal goal is the preservation and well-being of Indian and other Native nations and tribes.  The Center, which is headquartered in Helena, Montana, and has an office in Washington, D.C., has been working for justice for indigenous peoples for 35 years. For more information, visit www.indianlaw.org.

About the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) is a nonprofit organization that provides technical assistance, policy development, training, materials, and resource information for Indian and Alaska Native women, Native Hawaiians, and Native non-profit organizations addressing safety for Native women.  The NIWRC’s primary mission is to restore safety for Native women.  For more information, visitwww.niwrc.org.

White House Blog Post on VAWA 2013 and Indian Health

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

Because of the successful 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which President Obama signed into law on March 7, 2013, tribal courts and law enforcement will soon be able to exercise the sovereign power to investigate, prosecute, convict, and sentence those who commit acts of domestic violence or dating violence or violate certain protection orders in Indian country, regardless of the defendant’s Indian or non-Indian status. The tribal provisions of this landmark legislation were originally proposed by the Department of Justice in 2011 to address alarming rates of violence against native women.  We believe today, as we did then, that this is not only constitutionally sound law, but it is also a moral prerogative and an essential tool to ensure that non-Indian men who assault Indian women are held accountable for their crimes.

New Student Scholarship on VAWA’s Tribal Jurisdiction Provisions

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Laura Saylor has posted “Back to Basics: Special Domestic Violence Jurisdiction in the Violence Against Women Reactivation Act of 2013 and the Expansion of Inherent Tribal Sovereignty” on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

Indian Country is home to some of the highest rates of violent crime in the United States. Specifically, Indian women are at least twice as likely as women in any other demographic in the United States to be victims of domestic violence, dating violence, and sexual violence, and most Indian women report that their attacker was non-Native. On March 7, 2013, President Obama signed the Violence Against Women Reactivation Act of 2013, which contained provisions to help alleviate this crisis in Indian County. These provisions include Sections 904 and 905, which outline special criminal jurisdiction over certain non-Indian perpetrators of domestic violence, dating violence, and sexual violence in Indian Country. This Student Note proposes a method of interpretation of Sections 904 and 905 and argues that, upon a constitutional challenge to this special domestic violence jurisdiction, the Supreme Court should find that that these provisions validly expand inherent tribal sovereignty and do not represent a delegation of Congressional power. To reach this conclusion, Court should first return to the texts that form the foundation of tribal sovereignty, namely the Constitution and the Marshall Trilogy. Incorporating these early principles of robust inherent tribal sovereignty, the Court should then look to the legislative intent of Congress, as it has many times in Federal Indian law, to confirm that Congress has validly exercised its power to expand inherent tribal sovereignty. However, in explicating Congress’ power to enact such legislation, this Note further proposes that the Court should clarify that Sections 904 and 905 are consistent with a more limited understanding of Congress’ power to legislate in Indian Country that requires legislation to be rationally related to Congress’ unique obligations to the Indian tribes. Thus, on a constitutional challenge, this Note argues that the Court should uphold Sections 904 and 905 because they are both a valid exercise of Congress’ power to expand tribal inherent sovereignty and consistent with Congress’ unique obligations to the tribes.

New Scholarship on Domestic Violence and Alaska Natives

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Laura S. Johnson has published “Frontier of Injustice: Alaska Native Victims of Domestic Violence” (PDF) in American University Law School’s “The Modern American.”

An excerpt:

This paper will present three pieces of a strategy to better combat domestic violence in Alaska Native communities. First, cooperation among sovereigns is critical to ensure that laws are enforced. Second, effective law enforcement can be enhanced by creative, community-based, culturally-sensitive models that respond to domestic violence through alternate forms of dispute resolution in Alaska Native communities such as tribal courts. The State of Alaska should actively encourage the development of tribal courts to offer victims alternative forms of dispute resolution because they can offer victims more immediate, culturally-sensitive and community-based remedies. And finally, Alaska Native tribes should exercise regulatory civil jurisdiction over domestic violence crimes in their communities to help Alaska Native victims of domestic violence achieve justice and be protected from their abusers. Part I lays the foundation for a discussion of legal remedies available to Native Alaskans by briefly examining the limitations on tribal jurisdiction in Alaska. Part II presents the remedies that are currently available to Alaska Native victims of domestic violence. Part III expands from the Alaska Supreme Court’s monumental decision in John v. Baker to argue that Alaska’s courts should recognize tribal jurisdiction in domestic violence cases just as Alaska’s Supreme Court recognized tribal adjudicatory jurisdiction in the family law context.

NYTs: Timothy Egan on Indian Country Crime (“Science and Sensibility”)

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here.

An excerpt:

For American Indians, living nearly invisible lives on archipelagos of native culture, irrational Republican philosophy has been particularly cruel. There are more than 300 reservations throughout the land — nations within a nation, sovereign to a point.

Non-Indians are responsible for most of the domestic violence in Indian country. The tribes can’t prosecute them — without the blessing of Congress — and the distant and detached feds usually won’t. Thus, the need for the change written into the renewed Violence Against Women law.

“We have serial rapists on the reservation,” Charon Asetoyer, a Native rights health advocate in South Dakota, has pointed out, “because they know they can get away with it.”

Oh, but bringing these brutes to justice in the jurisdictions where they commit their crimes would be unconstitutional, says Representative Eric Cantor, the House Majority leader. A jury of Indians, well — they’re incapable of giving a white man a fair trial. Such was the view expressed by Senator Charles Grassley, the mumble-voiced Iowa senator known for his 19th-century insight.

Both men voted against the act, and both are flat-out wrong in their interpretation. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused a right to a jury trial in “the state or district” where the crime was committed. It says nothing about ethnicity. The latest census found that almost half of people living on reservations were non-Indians. And more than half of Indian women are married to men who are not tribal members by blood.

Louise Erdrich NYTs Op\Ed on Violence against Indian Women

Matthew L.M. Fletcher3 Comments

Here.

A excerpt:

What seems like dry legislation can leave Native women at the mercy of their predators or provide a slim margin of hope for justice. As a Cheyenne proverb goes, a nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.

If our hearts are on the ground, our country has failed us all. If we are safe, our country is safer. When the women in red shawls dance, they move with slow dignity, swaying gently, all ages, faces soft and eyes determined. Others join them, shaking hands to honor what they know, sharing it. We dance behind them and with them in the circle, often in tears, because at every gathering the red shawls increase, and the violence cuts deep.