A new report from Amnesty International USA shows that Native American women are more than twice as likely to be raped as other U.S. women. The report also noted that at least 86 percent of the reported rapes of Native American women are by non-Native American men.
The human rights group said Tuesday that at least one in three Indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted, compared with fewer than one in five U.S. women overall.Confusion about whether state, federal or tribal police should respond means victims might not see a police officer or a nurse for hours or days, if at all. Even if a rape victim is taken to an Indian Health Service clinic, almost half lack staff trained to provide emergency services to victims of sexual violence, researchers said.
"What this amounts to is a travesty of justice for the tens of thousands of indigenous survivors of rape," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. He contended the U.S. government's treatment of Indian rape victims is a violation of human rights.
Cox said they would be pressing Congress to fully fund VAWA for $683 million; tribes would get about 10 percent of different grant programs under the act.
Amnesty International USA has more info, including ways to take action and a slideshow.
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this is so upsetting. Thanks for the link about how to take action.
In Canada, they estimate 8 out of 10 women. Just absorb that for a moment.
Thank you for bringing attention to this. I do a lot of work for Amnesty, and I think this issue is widely ignored.
The New York Times put out an article today about this. You can link to it at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/us/25rape.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
It elaborates on the legal entanglements Native American women encounter after being assaulted.
As a Native (mvskoke) woman I want to thank Feministing for highlighting this report.
jesus. what an onslaught of injustice: historically and currently and then again by what sounds like a mess of either 'not my problem' or 'i am ill-equipped to help you.' awful.
"one in three Indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted, compared with fewer than one in five U.S. women overall"
this would read better like so:
"one in three indian women will be raped or sexually assaulted, compared with more than one in four U.S women overall"
fewer than sounds like there is an acceptable level of rape
kee-rist.
Did any read the stat. in the article that said 86% of the rapists are non Indian males? That seemed really alarming to me. I was always under the impression that interracial rape is not very "common" but so if that's true, then what does the fact that most rape of Indian women is committed by another race? I had an extremely difficult time finding any numbers to confirm that intra racial rape was more common that interracial, except some statement on one gov. website that said "interracial rape is extremely rare" Anybody have any insight on this or know where I can find some data?
The interracial nature of the rape of Native women is an anomoly in criminal justice. Part of the reason probably lies in the screwed-up jurisdictional laws that say tribal governments cannot prosecute non-Indians. Sexual predators are legally saavy. They look for loopholes like this.
From what I understand (I've seen this study refered to in another article) weren't the majority of the male perpetrators "European American" (white)?
This is the article I remembered reading:
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/
articles/2007/03/11/news/top/news05.txt
It says: