Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (42 page)

Indian people can no longer participate in their own subjugation. Violence against Indian women and children has been a powerful tool of that subjugation, oppression, and cultural genocide. Sexual exploitation, assault, and rape perpetrated by anyone tears at the very center of an Indian person’s very being because it is there where the spirit resides. Sexual exploitation and rape in the name of spirituality is a complete and total mockery of Indian traditions, defiling the sanctity of precious and cherished spiritual ceremonies. It is the very people who are the keepers of those traditions and medicines who are committing these atrocities. Indian people must rely on the wisdom within them to confront and end this assault on our spirituality and preserve and protect the sovereignty of Indian women from those who attempt to destroy it. Women’s sovereignty is central to Indian sovereignty because nations cannot be free if their Indian women are not free.

Notes

1
  Paula Gunn Allen,
The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 17.

2
  Black Elk and John G. Neihardt,
Black Elk Speaks
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), pp. 4—5.

3
  Lee Irwin, “Freedom, Law and Prophecy: A Brief History of Native American Religious Resistance,” in
Native American Spirituality: A Critical Reader
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 2.

4
  Gregory Evans Dowd,
A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity 1775
—
1815
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

5
  Francis Prucha,
Documents of United States Indian Policy,
2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990).

6
  Robert A. Trennert, “Educating Indian Girls at Non-Reservation Boarding Schools, 1878–1920,”
The Western Historical Quarterly
13, no. 3 (July 1982): 271—90.

7
  See Genesis 2:22, 3:16, 19:1-8; Exodus 20:17, 21:7-11, 22:18.

8
  Celia Haig-Brown,
Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School
(Vancouver, BC: Tillacum Library, 1988), pp. 14—15.

9
  Allen,
The Sacred Hoop,
p. 38.

10
  Anne A. Simpkinson, “Soul Betrayal,”
Common Boundary
(November/December 1996).

11
  Black Elk and Neihardt,
Black Elk Speaks,
p. 204.

12
  Becky Blanton, quoting John Gisselbrecht in, “Beware: False Medicine Men,” Sierra
Times.com
(January 13, 2004).

13
  Vine Deloria, Jr.,
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion,
3rd ed. (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2003), p. 39.

14
  Vine Deloria, Jr.
God is Red,
p. 39.

15
  Donna Halversen, “Indian Medicine Practitioner Gets 9 Years for Abuse,”
Star Tribune,
December 20, 1992.

16
  Ben Chanco, “Indian Shaman Pleads Guilty to Having Sex with Teenagers,”
Pioneer Press,
May 16, 1996.

17
  “Poser Medicine Man Convicted in Rape Gets 18 Years,”
Gallup Independent,
January 2003.

18
  Joanne Carlson Browne and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World,” in
Violence Against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook,
Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune, eds. (New York: Continuum, 1995).

19
  Communique No. I (Northern Cheyenne Nation Rosebud Creek Two Moons Camp, Montana, October 5, 1980), available at
http://www.twocircles.org/comque_01.html
.

20
  
Grand Forks News,
December 6, 2003.

Questions

1. What are some general traits or values that precolonial medicine people displayed? How can you use these indicators to tell if someone is not a real medicine man?
   
2. How did the history of colonization and boarding schools effect the role of Native spiritual leaders within their communities? What attitudes have changed as far as how the spiritual leader views himself?
   
3. Why do you think there is such a prevalence of “instant” or self-proclaimed medicine men, both Native and non-Native? What is their effect on Native communities?
   
4. Why are the warning signs of sexual assault by a medicine man so difficult to identify?
   
5. How can tribes hold medicine men perpetrators of sexual assault accountable for their crimes? How can they assist in the prevention of assaults? What about in urban settings versus reservations?
   
6. Why do you think women who have been previously abused are more apt to be abused by false medicine men?
   

In Your Community

1. What is the role of women in healing ceremonies and spiritual guidance in your community? Are there any stories or anecdotes that you have heard that demonstrate this?
   
2. What point of view is Clairmont writing from? How are her descriptions of medicine men similar or different from what you know of medicine people in your community?
   
3. What has your community done to support victims of sexual assault by medicine men? If there are no examples from your community, what do you think are effective steps a tribal government can take to show that it takes these issues seriously?
   

Terms Used in Chapter 13

Egalitarian:
Promoting equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

Proselytize:
To induce someone to convert to one’s own religious faith.

Rites:
A ceremonial act or series of acts.

Subjugation:
The act of bringing under control; conquering.

Sustenance:
Something, especially food, that sustains life or health.

Suggested Further Reading

Smith, Andrea.
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005).

Did I Know Your Dad?

Ponytail, brown wide eyes, muscles tensing, you ask,
“Did you know my dad?” I do not respond, mind flexing,
I remember what I don’t want to see—his stocky short body,
beer in hand, full wavy hair, like yours, dull probing stare . . .

Brown veiny hands, held me tight one night, on the office floor, eighteen years old, squirming youth’s confusion, hardened and numb, he ripped at me, stale breath sucking trust through a hole in my universe—piercing Christmas Eve’s to come. My boyfriend joking uncomfortably in the next room at a party he never wanted to attend, me, fitting in, employed insecurity, gasping for pride, fighting insides, thrusts that pinned me raw against my boss’s desk, and out of upper-hand desperation, I ask for more.

Your pained youthful face studies my deadened look, asking again, Did I know your dad? And I say, “I remember him,” and your slightly relieved smile lifts your doleful eyes to mine, and I look away, mumbling, “How is he?” But I don’t hear your response in that eternal second. My conscience falling, I hear “mother” and nausea building I query, “Where is she?” You reply, “She moved back to the village”—my body soaring through memory, of bizarre misgivings, my abused youth seeking familiar in a mind rape of lust, with your dad.

A six-year-old girl’s sprawling passage on dirty carpets and stained sheets of a neighbor’s bedroom—my continual journey—when I met your dad, when I met your dad, looking at me in the same graspable way. It was familiar. His gross clumsy efforts, loose belly bumping me, mouth tearing blood from Me. I knew your dad. And, you tell me “He died.” Strangely, I cried. Not in front of you. I just went home. And I cried.

Diane E. Benson (Tlingit)

IV

TRIBAL LEGAL SYSTEMS

Survival

The ghosts haunt me
Spirits taken, souls removed
—Culture, families, beliefs—
We are a nation within a nation

Beaten down, forced to submission
Children cry out in the night, unheard
—Education, knowledge, power—
We have risen to a new level of strength

We are a nation within a nation
Souls restored, spirits renewed
No longer taking the back seat
Knowledge is power, and now we know

Our voices will be heard—We are women
A force with the ability to give life
The ability to make a difference
For ourselves, for our children
For our people

Venus St. Martin (Colville/Nez Perce)

Chapter 14

Jurisdiction and Violence Against Native Women

B. J. JONES

O
ne of the most effective ways to prevent future violence against Native women is to hold offenders accountable through the various criminal justice systems that exist in Indian communities. Tribal, state, and sometimes even federal courts play various roles in assuring that those persons who perpetrate violence against Native women are prosecuted, punished, and reformed in accordance with the law. When the law is blurred as to who has the responsibility and authority to prosecute and punish perpetrators of domestic violence against Native women, the security of women is compromised and the legal system is diminished in the eyes of both victims and offenders. This chapter is an attempt to explain what role the federal, state, and tribal justice systems play in protecting Native women who are the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Unfortunately, many of the rules described in this chapter will appear complicated and legalistic, and sometimes void of common sense. However, having a basic understanding of them is critical to assuring safety for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and holding perpetrators of domestic violence accountable.

Jurisdiction in General Terms

What Is “Jurisdiction”?

The authority of a government to prosecute and punish a person who commits domestic violence depends upon which government has “jurisdiction” over the act of domestic violence. Jurisdiction is a simple concept that Indian tribes recognized from time immemorial: when a person lives or travels within a community, that person is subject to the laws of that community and will be punished for violating those laws in accordance with the values of that community. A person cannot, for example, claim that he or she is not subject to the laws of a particular community by asserting that he or she had no voice in deciding what particular laws should be upheld. Therefore, an Indian from the Blackfeet reservation in Montana who marries a Navajo wife and lives among the Navajo should, it would seem, be subject to the values and community norms of the Navajo people and should not be able to claim that he is not because he has no right to vote for the leaders of the Navajo nation. This would also seem to be a fair proposition for a non-Indian who marries a Navajo woman and lives in the Navajo community. Unfortunately, as this chapter will demonstrate, because Indian tribal courts have been stripped of authority over certain persons, the basic rule that a person who lives within a community is subject to that community’s values and punishments does not accurately describe jurisdiction in Indian Country. This makes it both confounding and potentially dangerous for victims of domestic violence when it is unclear who has the authority to arrest and punish a perpetrator of domestic violence.