On September 27, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee held a hearing to examine the prevalence of, and solutions to, violence against Native American women.
Alex Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International U.S.A (AIUSA), testified about a recently released report on the prevalence of violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women. Using data collected in 2005 and 2006, the report found that such women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the United States. “Amnesty International’s research confirmed what Native American and Alaska Native advocates have long known: that sexual violence against women from Indian nations is at epidemic proportions and that Indian women face considerable barriers to accessing justice,” she said. Ms. Arriaga continued, “Native American and Alaska Native women may never get a police response, may never have access to a sexual assault forensic examination, and, even if they do, they may never see their case prosecuted. As a result of barriers, including a complex jurisdictional maze and a chronic lack of resources for law enforcement and health services, perpetrators of sexual violence are not being brought to justice.”
Ms. Arriaga said that several factors contribute to the difficulty in prosecuting these violent offenses. First, jurisdictional issues, such as whether the victim and alleged perpetrator are members of a federally recognized tribe, whether the crime took place on tribal, reservation, or state land, and which body of law (tribal, state, or federal) should be applied, pose a challenge. Second, a lack of resources for tribal and reservation law enforcement can cause delays in responding to criminal reports. Even when law enforcement is present, the rural and isolated nature of Indian lands can make it difficult for officers to reach victims in a timely manner. Third, many tribal areas lack sufficient health resources, including forensic examiners. Ms. Arriaga said, “[A] 2005 survey conducted by the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center found that 44 percent of Indian Health Service facilities lacked personnel trained to provide emergency services in the event of sexual violence”; the same study revealed that “30 percent of responding facilities did not have a protocol in place for emergency services in cases of sexual violence.”
“There are many obstacles that we face in our attempts to create a coordinated community response (CCR) that is Alaskan Native-specific,” said Tammy Young, co-director of the Alaska Native Women’s Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. She continued, “The primary obstacle is the lack of resources at the village level. While our lower 48 [states] and urban counterparts are considering non-profit victim advocacy agencies, health care, social services, and criminal justice systems in their development of a CCR, most Native Alaskan communities do not have the luxury of these resources.” Ms. Young said that 40 percent of the 229 villages in Alaska have no form of local law enforcement and that “this fact creates the dangerous reality that frequently the only people standing between women in need of protection from a batterer or rapist is the local community.” Ms. Young recommended several improvements to the Indian Health Care Improvement Act Amendments of 2007 (S. 1200), including funding for shelters and rape crisis centers for Alaska Native women and ensuring adequate training for tribal and local law enforcement officials. Without these resources, women are re-victimized as “they are losing their children, their jobs, their homes, and forced to leave their villages and culture due to the fact that they choose to leave an abusive relationship or because they are in one.”
Director of Sacred Circle Karen Artichoker said, “Our experiences providing services to women show that the high levels of violence against Indian women is linked to the particular vulnerabilities of Indian women as a population and is compounded by the social realties facing most Indian communities in the United States. The gaps in federal law and inadequate resources to support tribal justice systems allow perpetrators to commit acts of violence again and again with little or no accountability for their crimes. People often say that the justice system is broken. Indian women seeking safety understand this reality.” Ms. Artichoker praised the passage of the Safety for Indian Women Act (part of the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, P.L. 109-271) as “a historic turning point in United States history in the recognition by the United States of its unique legal responsibility to assist Indian tribes in safeguarding the lives of Indian women.” However, “[g]iven the crisis in the lives of Indian women and the present lack of adequate resources to properly safeguard Indian women, it is clear that more must be done at every level, from increasing funding through the Office on Violence Against Women, to better coordinating the handling of cases by the FBI and United States Attorneys, to addressing the problematic release of perpetrators by the Bureau of Prisons.” In particular, Ms. Artichoker expressed concern that the Department of Justice had not issued training or guidelines to implement a provision that prohibits assailants convicted in tribal courts from owning firearms.
Jami Rozell, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and Riyaz Kanji, founding partner of Kanji & Katzen, PLLC, also testified.
