our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." When governor of Virginia (1780), Thomas Jefferson stated: "If we are to wage a campaign against these Indians the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes of the Illinois River. The same world would scarcely do for them and us." Contextualizing Violence To understand the violence perpetrated upon Native Alaska women it is important to understand the pervasiveness of violence in history and contemporary times. It begs the question, why do humans kill, maim, torture, harass, intimidate, threaten, rape, murder, abuse, enslave, exploit, and hurt one another? The answer is not simple. Whether or not violence is a natural, normal human condition has forever occupied the minds of scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, historians, and journalists. Violence in its many dimensions, from postured threats to what journalist Chris Hedges (2006) calls war – organized murder – has been a sickeningly constant visage in the face of all societies throughout human history. Whether one lived in a hunter-gather community, a village, town, city, or an empire, the specter of violence has haunted all humans. In other words, “We are always shadowed by the threat of other humans harming us” (Sapolsky, 2017, p. 2): We have the means to create thousands of mushroom clouds; shower heads and subway ventilation systems have carried poison gas, letters have carried anthrax, passenger planes have become weapons; mass rapes can constitute a military strategy; bombs go off in markets, school children with guns massacre other children; there are neighborhoods where everyone from pizza delivery guys to firefighters fears for their safety. And there are the subtler versions of violence – say, a childhood of growing up abused, or the effects on a minority people when the symbols of the majority shout domination and menace” (p. 2) Beyond our fear and anxiety of human on human violence, as a part of our evolutionary heritage, we have learned to fear the violence that comes from being crushed, swallowed, eaten, stomped, and squeezed to death by large animals (Dunn, 2012). In other words, we are primed to
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