Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (41 page)

Native spirituality has also been exploited for financial gain through appropriation of our culture and traditions. Andrea Smith describes this phenomenon:

A variety of Indian medicine men and purported medicine men moved into white society where there were easy pickings. Whites would pay hundred of dollars for the privilege of sitting on the ground, having corn flour thrown in their faces, and being told that the earth was round and all things lived in circles. The next step was performing sweat lodges for non-Indians. Another step was to cut out the best-looking blonde for a “special ceremony” in which she would play Mother Earth while the medicine man, or whoever had conned the blonde, would be Father Sky. They would couple to preserve the life on the planet. In short, the arena between cultures became a scene of intense exploitation.
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Some additional warning signs that a medicine man could be dangerous include, but are not limited to:

• Prefers to meet with you privately
  
• Prefers to meet with you in inappropriate places (e.g., hotels)
  
• Legitimizes his inappropriate behavior as being ordered by the “spirits”
  
• Makes you believe that he is powerful and must be obeyed
  
• Makes you feel special with his flirtatiousness
  
• Has a history of “womanizing,” infidelity, and battering
  
• Has a history of fathering children that he has abandoned
  
• Makes you pay for expenses, fees, ceremonies
  
• Has a history of untreated alcohol/drug abuse
  
• Fosters incestuous feelings of secrecy, fear, shame, and confusion
  
• Makes you begin to feel his needs are more important than yours
  
• Advertises himself on the Internet
  
• Encourages the relationship to become sexualized through looks, language, touches, and rape
  
• Makes you believe that you must give up everything
  
• Makes you feel inadequate, even evil
  

The ultimate goal for the “false medicine man” is the sexual abuse or assault of vulnerable women and children in order to satisfy his own need for power, control, and sexual gratification. He lures victims, grooming them and eventually seducing them or inducing them to have sexual intercourse by making them believe that they can only achieve enlightenment by serving his sexual needs.

The effects of this type of abuse run deep and affect every fiber of a victim’s being. Women who have experienced this type of abuse have reported extreme losses, including loss of their spirituality; loss of faith in the Great Spirit; loss of feelings of safety from the perpetrator, the perpetrator’s family, and from the community due to the backlash of people defending the perpetrator, by either blaming the victim or not believing her; loss of learning healthy intimacy and sexuality; and loss of trust. These are only a few examples of the effects. There is nothing more harmful than breaking a person’s spirit, and when it is perpetrated by someone who is held in high esteem, someone who is revered and trusted, the effects can be devastating.

The problem of sexual assault/exploitation by spiritual leaders has been a slow evolution starting with the European invasion, followed by a long history of colonization and genocide and the subsequent acculturation of Indian people into white mainstream submission. It is also clear that Indian women’s sovereignty and status in tribal communities was compromised for the benefit of elevating the status of Indian men in accordance with the Eurocentric and Christian hierarchical system. Cultural subjugation was successful because Indian women and children were the primary targets of that subjugation.

This problem has many contributing factors. As discussed earlier, sexual assault by spiritual leaders stems from the systematic dissolution of tradition and destruction of inherent values whereby Indian women’s status in tribal societies was compromised due to Judeo-Christian indoctrination. The lack of accountability and the silence and secrecy that surrounds this problem has caused it to reach epidemic proportions. Indian people must be ready to hear disclosures from victims and demand that tribal leaders and legal systems hold these false medicine men and their peers accountable through criminal prosecution. We must avoid blaming the victim and hold the perpetrator accountable for his actions. A conviction sends a resounding message to the community and particularly to the perpetrator that a crime has been committed against the tribal, state, or federal government. There are reported cases of false medicine men who have been charged and convicted of criminal sexual conduct that have drawn national media attention.

In the case of
United States v. Dale Johns,
a practitioner of traditional Indian spirituality was convicted in September 29, 1992, of three counts of rape and five counts of sexually abusing his stepdaughter when she was between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. Johns, thirty-nine, a former social services director on a reservation in northern Minnesota, was sentenced to nine years in prison by Judge Harry McLaughlin. In sentencing Johns, McLaughlin admonished him by saying, “You have betrayed your standing in the community, your role as a religious leader and your role as stepfather to the Victim.”
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In a 1996 case,
State of Minnesota v. Jeffrey David Wall,
a thirty-one-year-old Kiowa Indian received twelve years in prison for three counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Wall represented himself as an American Indian spiritual advisor and operated an Indian art gallery. He held art classes in his home and would often invite schoolchildren into his home to learn about American Indian culture and art. After he gained their confidence, prosecutors said, he had sex with three girls, two of whom were then thirteen and one of whom was fourteen, under the guise of American Indian “spiritual rituals.” Days before his court appearance, Wall told the
Pioneer
Press newspaper that authorities were mistaking time-honored Indian spiritualistic traditions for cult activity. Al Zdrazil, the assistant Ramsey County attorney who prosecuted the case, said, “Wall is a manipulator who put on a good show. This was not a racist prosecution. He claimed that what he was teaching was American Indian spirituality. We claimed it was not.” Zdrazil continued, “Wall told one of the girls that God told him she was supposed to have his children. That’s not American Indian. He also advertised as a shaman. American Indian healers don’t advertise.”
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Community members can demand increased penalties for convicted perpetrators. In the case of Jeffrey Wall, a group of Indian people called Strong Hearts of the Circle, who were organized to address violence in the Indian community, wrote a letter to the judge admonishing Wall for misrepresenting Native culture. They protested his attempts to justify his abuse and to circumvent the charges by claiming religious persecution. The Strong Hearts asserted that “there is no aspect of their culture that would excuse such behavior.” Their letter helped in securing a longer sentence for the defendant in this case.

In other cases, spiritual leaders/medicine men are often asked to perform healing rituals to help people suffering from a variety of physical ailments. In a more recent case,
United States v. Hebert Yazzie,
a Navajo medicine man was charged and convicted of false imprisonment, criminal sexual penetration, and intimidation. He was sentenced to eighteen years in prison in May 2003. Yazzie had been asked to perform a healing ceremony to ensure the safe delivery of a couple’s baby that was turned in an odd position in the mother’s womb. The woman testified that Yazzie told her to wear a dress and then during the ceremony told her to take off her underwear and spread her legs. She said she knew something was wrong, and she refused. Instead, he offered to pay for sex, the woman testified. She refused, and said he pushed her into the car and raped her. Because he held her against her will, Yazzie was convicted of false imprisonment. Yazzie was also charged and convicted of an intimidation of a witness charge because he threatened that he would destroy her family if she told anyone about the rape.
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Although these cases represent successful prosecutions, there are many unreported cases of medicine men who continue to exploit, abuse, and rape in the name of tradition and spirituality. Additional contributing factors include, but are not limited to:

1. Having private or intimate access to patients such as hospital rooms and bedrooms
   
2. Being glorified and sanctified. Many Indian people tend to put false medicine men on pedestals and forget that they are human and are capable of hurting others by not following the unwritten rules that guide their roles.
   
3. Operating in isolation without supervision
   
4. Serving multiple roles, which results in boundaries becoming blurred and possibly violated
   
5. Denying the power (whether real or perceived) that medicine men possess. Medicine men do wield power due to the positions they hold in the community and are capable of misusing that power.
   
6. Appealing to the benevolence of those they are helping by appearing to be burned out and needy. A medicine man who does not take care of his own spiritual, physical, and emotional needs may turn to those he is supposed to be helping to satisfy his own needs. Those individuals may feel indebted to him and may want to reciprocate by putting the needs of the medicine man first. Women who have been abused may be more apt to fall into this trap due to Christian indoctrination inherited from our ancestors who are boarding school survivors. The tendency to glorify suffering is consistently reinforced by images of the Crucifixion, which “encourages women to be more concerned about their victimizer than about themselves.”
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There are many options for communities to stop this kind of violence against women. Some of those responses include, but are not limited to:

• Removing perpetrator from community (banishment)
  
• Boycotting him/his ceremonies
  
   
  
  • Don’t refer people to him
    
  • Don’t utilize him for spiritual purposes
    
• Don’t attend his ceremonies
  
• Warning people about him
  
• Creating a list of reputable spiritual leaders
  
• Demanding accountability
  
• Demanding increased penalties
  
• Incorporating this violation into tribal codes
  
• Imposing traditional sanctions
  
• Creating awareness by addressing the problem
  
   
  
  • Tribal newspaper
    
  • Incorporate into program brochures, materials
    
• Creating website of convicted spiritual leaders
  
• Referring to/utilizing medicine women
  
• Validating victims of sexual assault
  
• Educating children about sexual abuse
  
• Consulting with local shelter program before utilizing medicine men
  
• Removing barriers that prevent victims from reporting
  

Most importantly, call upon the medicine men association in the community and insist that peers hold one another accountable. An example of this would be the Traditional Elder’s Circle declaration of October 1980, where they issued this warning:

It has been brought to the attention of the Elders and their representatives in Council that various individuals are moving about this Great Turtle Island and across the great waters to foreign soil, purporting to be spiritual leaders. They carry pipes and other objects sacred to the Red Nations, the indigenous people of the western hemisphere. These individuals are gathering non-Indian people as followers who believe they are receiving instructions of the original people. We, the Elders and our representatives sitting in Council, give warning to these non-Indian followers that it is in our understanding this is not a proper process, that the authority to carry these sacred objects is given by the people, and the purpose and procedure is specific to time and the needs of the people. The medicine people are chosen by the medicine and long instruction and discipline is necessary before ceremonies and healing can be done. These procedures are always in the Native tongue; there are no exceptions and profit is not the motivation. There are many Nations with many and varied procedures specifically for the welfare of their people. These processes and ceremonies are of the most Sacred Nature.
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Community response necessitates a return to our traditional beliefs, which uphold the sanctity and sovereignty of Indian women. Communities must safeguard the old beliefs and unwritten rules that remind Indian people of what could befall someone who violates the most sacred laws of Indian people. Indian communities have seen many false medicine men fall from their pinnacles by encountering severe hardships (e.g., loss of their partner/family, contracting serious illness, loss of face and dignity). As affirmed by Winona LaDuke, “White man’s law was all paper,” yet Indians possessed some of the most effective consequences for violations of traditional values and unwritten rules. A traditional sanction for a “false medicine man” who chose to misuse his position to abuse women and children was banishment, which historically was one of those “unwritten rules.” With tribes taking back their sovereign rights to define their own criminal jurisdiction and refining their tribal codes, this penalty can be included in tribal codes, and this is being done by a few tribal communities. The Grand Portage Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota approved a banishment law in October 2003.
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There is no consequence more serious than to be expelled by your own people. It sends a resounding message that violence against women will not be tolerated.

Additionally, tribal community members can organize their communities to create broader, more collective responses. In 1997, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a group of concerned Indian people joined together to address the problem of spirituality abuse as a response to several well-known spiritual leaders who were convicted of sexual assault. This group wrote grants and held a conference called “Strengthening the Circle of Trust.” Over the course of five years, the conference grew to encompass a national perspective, generating widespread attention to this well-kept secret. The conference has given many survivors a voice and encouraged Indian people to confront this issue.