Widespread rape of indigenous women in the US

Indigenous women are at least 2.5 times more likely than other women in the US to be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime, according to a report released by Amnesty International (AI) on Apr. 23, entitled "Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA." More than one in three indigenous women will be raped in their lifetime, according to the report, the latest in AI's Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women. In the population at large, the attacker and victim are usually of the same ethnic group, but the report says at least 86 percent of reported rapes or other sexual assaults against indigenous women are committed by non-Native men, most of them European American, who are only very rarely prosecuted or punished. The failure to pursue justice in such cases is due to a number of factors, AI noted, including chronic underfunding of police and health services and a "complex maze of tribal, state and federal jurisdictions that is so confusing that it often allows perpetrators to evade justice entirely." Registered Native Americans, who make up about 1.4 percent of the US's 300 million citizens, are distributed among 560 tribal governments around the country. While these governments are given substantial autonomy over their internal affairs, the federal government has steadily eroded their authority, including their justice systems, over time, particularly in areas that involve non-Native individuals or interests. In one of the most far-reaching cases, Oliphant vs. the Suquamish Indian Tribe, the Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that tribal governments cannot prosecute criminal defendants who are non-Native, even if the crime of which they are accused takes place on tribal lands. Sarah Deer, an attorney at the Tribal Law and Policy Institute, says the fact that non-Native perpetrators cannot be tried in tribal courts has actually drawn sexual predators to tribal areas to assault women, because they know that federal prosecutions are rare in those areas. Indigenous women are "living in a virtual war zone, where rape, abuse and murder are commonplace and sexual predators prey with impunity," Deer said. Tribal authorities, many of whose communities suffer the highest poverty rates in the US, are also chronically underfinanced, leading to major gaps in law enforcement and the availability of social and health services compared to non-Native communities. The report, which was based on Justice Department data and research in three states with proportionately large indigenous populations–Alaska, South Dakota and Oklahoma–found these girls and women suffered most from deficiencies. Alaska had the highest incidence of rapes of all women, AI said, and Native Alaskans in Anchorage were nearly 10 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than non-Natives. AI says these statistics may understate the violence suffered by indigenous women because fear of retaliation and lack of confidence that authorities will take allegations seriously reduces sexual assault reporting throughout the US, as well as in Native American communities. One support worker in Oklahoma, for example, told AI that only three of her 77 active cases of sexual and domestic violence had been reported to the police. "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 AI's US section. AI is calling on Congress to extend tribal authority to all offenders on tribal land, and to expand federal spending on law enforcement and health clinics for Native American communities.