A Glance at Violence Against Alaska Native and American Indian Women

A glance at the violence against American Indian and Alaska Natives

“And Indian-hating still exists; and, no doubt, will continue to exist, so long as Indians do. – The Confidence Man: His Masquerade, Herman Melville, 1857

In a major report examining violence against Native women, Harper and Entriken

(2006), citing Native women violence scholars conclude that there are two fundamental reasons

that give rise to the violence: “One explanation is that the attempted destruction of Native

culture has created an atmosphere in which violence directed against Native women is condoned,

tolerated, or ignored. A second explanation is that the federal prohibitions that restrict tribal

governments’ ability to protect their women citizens perpetuate violence against Native women.”

According to a 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS)

(Rosay, 2016), 84.3 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native women reported that they had

experienced violence in their lifetime compared to 71.0 percent of Non-Hispanic White Only

women. The “relative risk” of violence towards Native women was 1.2 making them 20 percent

more likely to have experienced violence in their lives. In regard to sexual violence, 56.1 percent

of American Indian or Alaska Native women reported at some point in their past they had

experienced this type violence. 49.7 percent of Non-Hispanic White Only women reported past

sexual violence. Interestingly, the “relative risk” between the two samples was not significant

(NS), which means there may be no difference between the two groups.

What about stalking? The National Center for Victims of Crimes says stalking refers to “a

course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.”

Some examples include “following you and showing up wherever you are,” “sending unwanted

gifts, letters, cards, or emails,” and “driving by or hanging out at your home, school, or work.”

The stalking that has occurred in the lifetime between Native women and Non-Hispanic White

Only women is startling. Nearly fifty-percent (48.7%) of Native women reported being stalked

compared to 26.8 percent of Non-Hispanic White Only women. The relative risk of being

stalked was 1.8, meaning that Native women were 80 percent more likely to have been stalked in

their lifetime.

Another disturbing statistic from the study is the amount of interracial violence directed

towards Native women and men. Incredibly troubling is that in their lifetime, 97% of Native

women and 90 percent of men reported experiencing violence by an interracial perpetrator.

Comparatively, 35 percent of Native women and 33 percent of Native men experienced violence

from their own race. Interestingly and importantly, the wide differences in these numbers suggest

that the rates of violence against Alaska Native women might drop significantly if interracial

violence was eliminated or significantly reduced.

Adding greater validity to the continuing impact of interracial violence, the results of an

earlier national study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice from 1992 to 1996, suggests

that interracial violence against American Indians and Alaska Natives may have increased in the

last 15 years. 2 In this study “At least 70% of the violent victimizations experienced by American

Indians are committed by persons not of the same race — a substantially higher rate of

interracial violence than experienced by white or black victims. (Greenfield and Smith, 1999, p.

7).

Sadly, the interracial violence of American settler populations and governments

perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples in the United States has existed, nearly continuously, for

more than 500 years. Despite the incendiary rhetoric by anti-Indian/Native voices and the

2 While the it appears that interracial violence against Native people has increased, it is difficult to draw this conclusion since there may be significant differences in the research design, sampling, and methods between the Department of Justice and National Institute of Justice (NISVS) studies.

second-rate research and “comfortable fictions”3 of settler scholars, who are quick and eager to

point out that Indigenous Peoples committed atrocities against one another, history shows that all

the inter-tribal wars, the “sacrificial and revenge killings” and “cannibalistic behavior,” that

Indigenous Peoples are accused of, pale in comparison to the brutal, genocidal private and state-

sponsored campaigns that non-Indigenous Peoples carried out against Indigenous Peoples.

Another theory that may help to partially explain some of the disproportionate rates of

violence against Native women may be that they are the least likely of all American women to

meet the image of America’s “ideal woman.” In this regard historian Stephanie Coontz (1992, p.

63 – 64) writes:

“The more that women are defined in terms as an ideal myth, for example, the more possible it is for men to ignore or actively abuse women who do not meet that ideal. Thus in the nineteen century, the cult of True Womanhood was perfectly compatible with the exploitation of female slaves and factory workers. In the twentieth century, a recurring theme in rape and sexual harassment cases have been the notion that if a woman has ever departed from the ideal behavior in any way, she has no real ‘womanhood’ to be violated or offended. The wives and mothers of rapists almost invariably, and usually in good faith, defend them as the soul of chivalry – at least toward women’s who conform to the prevailing myth.”

Settler violence against Indigenous Peoples is an historical structural phenomenon that

stubbornly persists. Comparing the U.S. Global War on Terror (GWOT) to the previous U.S.

wars on Indians, John Brown (2006), a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who resigned over the

war in Iraq, wrote an essay entitled, “Our Indian Wars are Not Over Yet”:

The essential paradigm of the War on Terror -- us (the attacked) against them (the attackers) -- was no less essential to the mindset of white settlers regarding the Indians, starting at least from the 1622 Indian massacre of 347 people at Jamestown, Virginia. With rare exceptions, newly arrived Europeans and their descendants, as well as their leaders, saw Indians as mortal enemies who started the initial fight against them, savages with whom they could not co-exist. The Declaration of Independence condemned "the inhabitants of

3 Deloria, Vine, Jr (1990). Comfortable Fictions and the Struggle for Turf: An Essay Review of the Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies