Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (15 page)

15
  Vicki Ybanez, “The Evolution of Domestic Violence and Reform Efforts Across Indian Country,”
Introductory Manual to Domestic Violence in Indian Country
(Mending the Sacred Hoop STOP Violence Against Indian Women, 2002), p. 7. Funding was slow to reach Indian Country. Advocating for change, a vocal group of Native women campaigned for VAWA “set-aside” funds to be designated for tribes and to ensure that resources reached the tribes. As a result, the STOP Violence Against Indian Women Grant Program was created to encourage tribal governments to develop and strengthen the tribal justice systems’ responses (including law enforcement, prosecution, victim services, and courts) to violence against women and to improve services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

16
  Chapman,
We, the People of the Earth,
p. 201.

17
  Gloria Valencia-Weber and Christine P. Zuni, “Domestic Violence and Tribal Protection of Indigenous Women in the United States,”
Saint John’s Law Review
69 (1994): 69.

Questions

1. Do you agree with Ybanez that respect for a woman because she is sacred is a traditional value and that those values should be used to combat domestic violence? Why does Ybanez point out that tribes do not want to return to precolonial times?
   
2. Why is it important for law enforcement officials and advocates to look at patterns of abuse and not individual instances when working with victims?
   
3. How do jurisdictional issues on reservations complicate the response of law enforcement to domestic violence cases? In PL 280 states?
   
4. How do Native women’s current roles within tribal governments and within American society differ from their traditional roles within Native communities? How does this contribute to domestic violence?
   
5. How can tribal communities respond effectively to domestic violence? What are some of the difficulties tribal justice systems face that non-Native communities might not deal with?
   

In Your Community

1. What are some misconceptions or myths you believed true regarding domestic violence? Why is it so important to break down these myths and educate people about the reality?
   
2. Do you agree with Ybanez’s call to traditional core values to fight domestic violence? How would you conceptualize this for your community? What are some common cultural values that could be integrated into a domestic violence response? Why might this be difficult?
   
3. At the end of the chapter Wilma Mankiller is quoted regarding “indigenous solutions” to contemporary problems? Can you think of any examples of this within your community? Could these be used to address domestic violence?
   

Terms Used in Chapter 3

Complacency:
Self-satisfaction; contentment with the way things are.

Escalate:
To increase in intensity or extent.

Lethality:
The quality of being deadly.

Punitive:
Inflicting or aiming to inflict punishment; punishing.

Retaliation:
To pay back (an injury) in kind.

Sovereign:
To act independently as a person or nation.

Suggested Further Reading

Brownridge, Douglas A. “Male Partner Violence Against Aboriginal Women in Canada.”
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
18 (2003): 65.

Chester, Barbara, et al. “Grandmother Dishonored: Violence Against Women by Male Partners in American Indian Communities.”
Violence and Victims
9 (1994): 249.

Fairchild, David G., et al. “Prevalence of Adult Domestic Violence Among Women Seeking Routine Care in a Native American Health Care Facility.”
American Journal of Public Health
88 (1998): 1515.

Murray, Virginia. “A Comparative Survey of the Historic Civil, Common, and American Indian Tribal Responses to Domestic Violence.”
Oklahoma City University Law Review
24 (1998): 433.

Norton, Ilene M., and Spero M. Manson. “A Silent Minority: Battered American Indian Women”
Journal
of Family Violence
10 (1995): 307.

Valencia-Weber, Gloria, and Christine P. Zuni. “Domestic Violence and Tribal Protection of Indigenous Women in the United States.”
Saint John’s Law Review
69 (1995): 69.

Wahab, Stéphanie, and Lenora Olson. “Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault in Native American Communities”
Trauma, Violence
&
Abuse
5 (2004): 353, 357.

Zion, Jim and Elsie Zion. “‘Hazho’Sokee’—Stay Together Nicely: Domestic Violence under Navajo Common Law.”
Arizona State Law Journal
25 (1993): 407, 411—413.

Run

When the morning comes
I am happy the sun is shining,
The birds are singing and I think
Of times of walks in the park
Hugging on a park bench with you.
How you loved me.
What wonderful times we had.
I come back to reality
Sitting at the kitchen table
Holding a bag of ice
To my cheek
The swelling will go down
I pray.
I have to work tomorrow
Worry about people
Hiding battle wounds.
I tell myself
I am going to leave
Had enough
There has got to be something better
The Greyhound Station has
Storage Lockers
The key is in my work locker
He won’t find it there.
Little by little I stash
Jeans, shirts, toothbrush, underwear and
Money for my trip home.
What will I do when I go?
What will Mom say?
He comes home from work
Yes I am here I say happily
As not to let him know my plans
You know he can read my mind by now.
He is tired and goes to lie down in bed.
I tell him I need to go to the laundry
He doesn’t want to go.
I am relieved.
I take only my clothes
He doesn’t notice.
Heart beating hard
Hands shaking I go outside.
Drive to the bus station
Get my stuff
On the road I am singing a little tune
Run, Run, Run ... Runaway.

Lea Krmpotich Carr (White Earth Ojibwe)

Chapter 4

Special Issues Facing Alaska Native Women Survivors of Violence

ELEANOR NED-SUNNYBOY

T
he state of Alaska covers a region one-fifth the size of the contiguous United States. Alaska covers 586,412 square miles, with a total population of 622,000, which includes approximately 98,043 Alaska Natives. Alaska is home to 229 tribes. Of these 229 tribes, 165 are “off-road” communities, meaning that they are only accessible by air for most of the year. Ninety of these 165 off-road communities also do not have any form of contemporary law enforcement. Native people live either within 229 federally recognized tribes or in the urban areas of Alaska. When Alaska became a state in 1959, Public Law 280 (PL 280) was applied to the Native communities, meaning that tribal authority and state authority often overlap (see chapter 14). Many state and tribal officials are still not clear on exactly what this means in cases of violence against Native women. This is compounded with the fact that in
Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government,
¹
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “Indian Country” does not exist in Alaska outside of the one reservation, Metlakatla. This devastating loss of territorial jurisdiction has created more questions than answers for village governments. These are just some of the barriers that advocates face in their attempt to address violence against Native women in Alaska.

Alaska has one of the highest
per capita
rates of physical and sexual abuse in the nation. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report in 1999, Alaska reported 83.5 rapes per 100,000 females compared to a U.S. average of 31.7 per 100,000 females. In 1992, 30 percent of state child abuse, neglect, and injury reports involved Native children (94 per 1,000 Native children), with little improvement to date. Natives make up 36 percent of Alaska’s inmate population. Fifty-nine percent are incarcerated for violent crimes and 38 percent for sexual offenses. Alaska also has the highest per capita rates of child sexual abuse in the nation (the official FBI data is available at
www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cins_99/w99+bl05.xls
).

These high rates of violence are well-documented in the larger cities. According to the 1999 Crime Report by the Anchorage Police Department, there were approximately 1,400 sexual assaults between 1995 and 1999. Six hundred (almost 42 percent) involved Alaska Native women. A majority of these cases remain unresolved today. From 1989 to 1998, reported cases of domestic violence in Anchorage alone increased by 120 percent. The percentage of Alaska Native victims in the Anchorage area was 24 percent, which is extremely high when one takes into consideration that Alaska Natives comprise only 8 percent of the Anchorage population.
²

On October 30, 2003, it was reported that “Anchorage is expecting to be ranked No. I in the nation per capita on sexual assault. Statistics show that there were 374 cases of reported sexual assaults in the first six months of 2003. There are only seven detectives investigating all of them. Of the cases that are being investigated, averages of 35 are assigned to each detective” The report went on to quote a local official: “With a new sexual assault case being reported in Anchorage every day, detectives who work the front lines in these cases say they simply don’t have the resources to work all of those crimes.”
³

Recent interviews with Native women indicate that violence against women and children has reached epidemic proportions. Precise statistics are unavailable for the rural communities in Alaska. Until recently, violence against Native women has been an invisible crisis with little or no studies conducted as to the scope of the problem. In informal polls taken by advocates in some off-road communities, 100 percent of the women reported that they have experienced domestic or sexual abuse.

Respect: A Traditional Foundation for Nonviolence

Historically, domestic and sexual abuse did not plague Alaska Native communities to the extent that they do today. For the most part, people lived in balance and harmony with one another and nature. This problem of abuse is a fairly new crisis that arrived with the onset of the Westernized (European) systems that interrupted our core set of values and beliefs. Our cultural systems were based on the concept of respect for all things and one another. Respect is an intricately intertwined element of the Alaska Native culture, and there is no single word in our languages that reflects this concept. It encompasses the entire way of knowing for our indigenous people. This concept of respect was deeply embedded in our lifeways. It was the focal point of all teachings and learning. This was evident in the educational, political, social, economic, and spiritual realms of our native worldview. “Most indigenous peoples’ worldviews seek harmony and integration with all life, including the spiritual, natural, and human domains.”
⁴

With the influx of Western society came the increase in incidents of violence against women. Disruption began in the late 1800s with the arrival of the first Russians, who came at different times throughout Alaska. The coastal communities suffered the first encounters. The early 1950s and statehood brought another influx of contradictory values and a belief system from a different society into most of our tribal communities, resulting in chaos and turmoil. The Western society carried many mixed messages for the Native people of Alaska. These messages
infiltrated
our educational, spiritual, political, economic, and social systems. The Boarding School Era (lasting until the late 1960s and early 1970s) led to a breakdown of traditional cultural values and beliefs. The removal of children from Native villages was one of the most destructive factors in the deterioration of our social well-being and safety. Young native teens were sent off to boarding schools at a time when they should have been learning these valuable traditional life skills. The impact of this gap in traditional learning is being felt in most remote Alaskan villages to this day.

Preconstitutional Law

Up until the late 1800s, Alaska Native people lived in balance and harmony with one another and with the environment. The concept of respect was deeply embedded in our worldview—respect for oneself, for one another, for the environment, and for all living things. This was observable in the language and in our daily interactions with all living things. Respect was integrated into our creation stories, songs, and ceremonies. Children learned these lessons from a very young age and these lessons were consistently reinforced throughout the lifecycle. The most effective lesson learned was that when you disrespect anyone or anything, you bring dishonor not only to yourself, but to your ancestors and future generations. This was the biggest deterrent to violence against women and children. Indigenous scholar Tuhiwani Smith expresses this concept of respect best: