The US's Systemic Failure to Address the Sexual Violence Crisis in Indigenous Communities

So we're gonna skip over my usual introduction and just gonna have a really quick trigger warning at the top instead of any usual chit chat . So this week's episode, we are going to be talking about sexual violence against indigenous women and girls. So if this is something that you are not in a head space for today, please come back at a later time. Or if you just need to give this an episode, a pass, totally completely understand, do what you need to do to take care of yourself.

I also wanna make sure that we're sharing some resources. If you need help or need someone to talk to or chat with online, there's some really amazing resources out there to give you the help you need. So let's start with strong heart's native helpline. It is a 24 7 safe, confidential and anonymous domestic dating and sexual violence helpline for native Americans and Alaska natives. They offer culturally appropriate support and advocacy.

You can visit their [email protected] , or you can call them at one eight, four, four, seven native . Another great resource is the national domestic violence hotline. You can reach [email protected] , or you can call them at one eight hundred seven, nine, nine safe , or you can reach out to the rape abuse and incest national network or rain , and you can visit them at their website rain . And that's R a I n.org . Or you can call them at one eight hundred six five six .

Hope so , please take care of yourselves if you need to leave, but I hope those of you are able to stay enjoy this episode. It's a really important topic, and I'm just very grateful to have two amazing guests on to talk about it. First, we're talking about amnesty International's recent reports , um, the never ending maze , the continued failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the us . And I'm gonna talk to my friend, Tara deman at amnesty international.

She is gonna do the second half of this interview to talk all about the report. And Tara very nicely connected me with Jessica Burnett , who does work with the native community on sexual violence within the community. And it was really wonderful to talk to her and hear her perspective. She was a contributor to the report and it was really important that we have an indigenous voice speaking to start the conversation. So we'll turn to my conversation with Jessica .

And then after that, we will turn to my conversation with Tara to talk about the report . Hi Jessica . Thank you so much for being here today .

I've, you know , taken breaks here and there and gotten training in some of the issues around the United States and the United States Indians , which are very similar to what Canada indigenous people have just with a little different support is different in Canada than its down here. So that's kinda what I've been doing .

I just steadily move along forward when , uh, I , for an organization called moccasins of hope and we came up with the name , thinking that if we , if we talk about moccasins on the ground , that's where we wanted to be . We wanted to be on the ground, working with women and children , victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and being in the court system . And prior to I was in the court , quite a bit , both the state court and the tribal court .

And I'm still , I'm not doing too much of that right now , but I'm planning on getting back into it again , I've spoken with a couple of the judges and I'm still in their court , so , I'll go do that .

And sometimes more than one , one offender, that's probably one of the things that I , I find so frustrating and sad because it , what it does is it leads into all sorts of other things . And if you have a parent who hasn't been able to you and then you become a parent, do you have the ability to protect your children or do you overprotect , or do you just simply not know how to parent , because there's that issue too .

You know , we're still struggling from , from the , um, the schools , the boarding schools, where we've got intergenerational issues coming out of that. And, and like, I've tried to explain to people in particular social workers, you're expecting, first of all , them women to parent their children , the way that you want them to parent .

But you're not realizing that they don't know how to do that because perhaps their parent or their grandparent was in boarding school from the time that they were six or seven years old and got kicked out at 17 or 18 , there was no parenting done in that whole time . And they came out expecting to be adults and take on adult things and usually had children. And so if they didn't know how to parent , how can they teach you to parent?

Plus we parent our children in Indian communities different than non-Indian communities. And they're what I find the , one of the biggest things that I fight against, or try to find solutions for, I guess, an understanding for is the apathy. It's just so commonplace for sexual assault. And the blame on the victim is so high.

That that's, that's a lot of what I do right now is, is support, try and find proper counseling, which is not easy because again, most of the counselors who have master's degrees, which is what you have to have to be a licensed counselor in this state really don't have any idea or very little idea of the background of indigenous people. Even though they live in the state, there's too much expecting, there's still too much assimilation, I guess, is what I'm thinking .

And so that's what I do work the IHS of human .

But what we have to remember , if we get one person in the system to understand, then it'll , it'll , hopefully there'll be more because they'll say, listen, listen to what they have to say, listen to, you know, listen to the respect that you say you're gonna provide them . And you haven't been ,

And, and I'm saying first, because it's so common with indigenous women, that it , and it may not even be the same person. And so you can imagine you either numb yourself up or , or you get very angry . That's how you , the only way for you to express it is to be that's . I think why we have so many violent women in our prison system , indigenous nonindigenous too . I it's definitely there that .

I mean , if you've other way, and you've been taught no other way, and you've encouraged spiritual part of any spiritual activity, one of the things that I counsel in with my clients is find something that helps you spiritually, that helps you connect with, with great spirit with, with tan helps , helps you do that. And you know, my background is certainly quite traditional, very traditional. And that's what I'd like to see all of our Indian people do.

But at this point I really don't care as long. I don't care if they go to church or tabernacle or a mosque, I don't care where they go. As long as they find some place that gives them that spiritual, oh , that quality of life that they feel that they need, because that piece is all part of life . If you have , if you give up on God , if you give up on then what if you got , you know , you you're missing a part of it.

And I, and I truly believe that people will say, you know, you'll find hair , some women, so what's , what's God ever do for me, you know, well , you've got beautiful children, you know, you're alive, you're breathing, you know, so, so even just the ordinary things. And, and I find that when we take women into sweat lodges that have been injured, you know , it becomes very emotional.

And if it's done in a , in a way that gives them permission to be angry, to , um, to let go of all those feelings and you know, most people who pour water will say, when you come out of that, of that prayer place , you're gonna crawl out on mother and you're coming and can allow yourself to reborn.

You can allow yourself to be a , and you know , that's what, you know , they , lot of times when you I'll hear women say, well, I've made this mistake and that , you know , or whatever , you know , up , let you know, if you still got outstanding court issues, let's take responsibility for that, but let's move forward.

And this was like 25, 30, 30 years ago , I guess , my gosh can't believe it was that long . And she actually got involved this man on a , who turned be a serial rapist and suspect and law and suspect . That was a murderer . We , we suspected that he was, there was quite a few women that he had murdered, but there was no evidence to anything. And she disappeared for two weeks at one point.

And in those days we didn't have the kind of things that we have now to search for people and the internet , everybody go look help . I just didn't know what to do. I was completely, you know, just blindsided when I realized that she cause she always would call on Sunday. And when she didn't call for two Sundays, then I knew something was wrong. But you know, that was two whole weeks. Yeah. She managed to get away from him.

And I won't go into all of that, how she managed to do it, but she managed to get away from him and literally went into a catatonic state in the, she went into a, I guess I sort of have to , she went into a seven 11 and went right up bravely up to the gentleman that was at the front of the counter . And she said , please hide me. There's, there's somebody that's , that's kidnapped me. And I'm trying to get away . And this guy pulled her in to the counter and put her down at his feet.

Well , she slipped herself into the cupboard at that point . And she was cat pretty much a CATA state for about probably a week after that . And then they discovered that she was probably the only survivor of this guy that could actually identify him in the meantime he managed country .

And didn't years when he came , had against brought , realized how, I mean, I lived with all of this kind through her and, you know, as she was healing and sharing things, and it wasn't just about that particular incident . It was about that whole life that I was not even aware of . And you know , it brought the sense of what we miss and how we think of, of women in particular are they're putting categories.

You know, you're , you're up here in a financial category, you are on the reservation, you're an urban Indian , you should know better, cuz you're an urban Indian . We talk about indigenous communities all the time . You should up , you know , like you should , you , you there's , we , we still play a game . We still a game of blame . So my daughter survived that she did very well.

I'm really proud of , of the work that she actually started to do other women and support that only that's been that can share someone , a good advocate without like used to some of the victim or some of the , um, domestic violence victims that I help train or , or advocates that I help train. If you've not ever been through it, then you can have empathy , but it's gonna be very difficult for you have sympathy because you don't , you've not been there and understand that fear that is so deep.

And, and that goes as far as I'm concerned with every instance of domestic violence and sex assault and to put it in layers like , oh , well that only happened once. Or that's

And I started working on these issues and like could look back and see, oh man , I got , I feel like I got lucky , but also yeah.

And, and certainly, you know, the alcohol issue or the drug issue, you know, with, with victims of sex assault, if they're in the drug communities, the drug using communities, then their chances of getting sexually assaulted again are like almost a hundred percent . And you know, how do you feel? I mean, I can't answer that. How would you feel being sexually assaulted over and over again? Not only as a child, but then as an adult, like where's yourself worth . Yeah .

You know , and that's where we have to work as advocates of building up these women, but we can't build them up. We have to give them the tools to build up. And it's just, it's really frustrating because a lot of times you'll, you will get workshop where we'll get grants in here in one of the Indian communities. And I'll hear who's working in the programs and I'll roll my eyes because first of all, I went to trainings with them and they never went to trainings.

They went out shopping or whatever else it was that they wanted to do . And , and you know, the trainings , you have to take those trainings and bring them back , you know ? And if you truly don't wanna help, if you're just there for, for a check or there, because your uncle Johnny's on council , you know, we're not doing the women , any, any service, we're not doing the families , any service , no , we're virtually not doing the communities , any service .

And you know, that's what I find frustrating. And the other thing is, you know, two year grants, like we just get rolling on a two year grant and have a really good program. And then we can't get refunded. Yeah . Like we're not , you know , we're not providing that program anymore . You'll have to apply for something else . And , and I feel like even when I was reading grants and I haven't been for a number of years now, but even then it was like , oh , these guys got one already .

These guys had this grant or they've had it renewed twice . You knows in don't . So healing part gets left to somebody like my organization who are , we're very poorly funded, but that's not why we're in it . So

And, you know, I think it's the big thing is to just listen and take opportunities to find out from your indigenous communities and , and look for people who really know, and that may not be the person with the master's degree, that's running the program. So not that I think we shouldn't be educated. It's just that I think that sometimes the , the education of knowledge is different than the education of advocacy . And I just wanna encourage people to , you know, my , my sisters to look at that.

So thank you very much.

So the reality that indigenous women face today is generations upon generations in the making and oftentimes purposely in the making. And this starts with colonial settler contact with the forced movement of indigenous peoples with the forced erasure of indigenous cultures. And oftentimes rape was used as a weapon of the us government explicitly by the us government.

But this isn't just, I think it's also really important to understand that this isn't just something that's like, oh, well forced removal's really far back. And this type of like government sponsored violence is really far back the forced removal of native American, Alaska native children from their homes to so-called boarding schools, where their cultures were erased, where many experienced, horrific physical and sexual abuse and where many, many children died. This was a us policy.

It wasn't like an accident. It was a purposeful policy by the us government. And some of the women that we talked to for this report who are now leading the work to end sexual violence are survivors of boarding school, right? The us policy to sterilize indigenous women is documented and purposely intentionally sterilized as us policy indigenous women is documented as late as the seventies and then beyond as practice, if not policy, right?

So these are things that aren't like distant pass in terms of state sponsored violence. So when we talk about violence against indigenous women in the USA, that's happening here by non-state actors, it's important to understand that the state being the United States has set up this system to make this reality happen. And its failures are oftentimes part of a legacy of intentional violence.

So, so it's important to see it in that context, not just because it , we don't wanna erase the reality that indigenous people have faced sense settler contact, but also because it's not like , oh, what a weird coincidence that indigenous people experience such high rates of violence because it's not it , the system was set up for this and it's operating exactly as the system was set up.

And I , I should just note as a clarification that, you know, there are many indigenous peoples in what we call the United States, including in our territories. And this report focuses explicitly on Alaska native women and native American women. So unfortunately we're not able to cover the realities facing native Hawaiians, ORs or indigenous people in like Guam, America Samoa are the Marshall Islands .

So, and that's partly because of us policy, which is different to different indigenous groups and us policy towards Alaska native and native Americans is one the ones that we looked at in terms of like jurisdiction and why we're in the place we are in terms of sexual violence rates .

And that means like 56% of native women have experienced sexual violence. That's over half so than one , two native American native women . That that is epidemic . That's a health crisis . That's a reproductive health crisis . The United States has created this system , this so that survivors of sexual violence, they face maze , which means that they can't access the , the basic care . They need the basic sexual reproductive healthcare that they need or justice .

And that it's not preventing further harm from happening . The root of this has been the us' erosion of tribal authority . That's really created the circumstances for this crisis to flourish .

And, you know, as your , as your listeners know, the United States has multiple human rights obligations in regard to sexual reproductive health and rights, but they also have a clear obligation to protect respect and fulfill the human rights of indigenous people specifically in ways that are, that are they're treaty bound to many of these ways. And that also they're bound in , in terms of their obligations under UN declaration of the rights of indigenous people.

So like all people, indigenous women , indigenous people have the right to live free from sexual violence. Like all people indigenous people have the right to the highest of healthcare , but they also then have rights because of their indigenous status , which recognize that indigenous people's worldwide and in the us , you know, really obviously have been specifically targeted because of their indigenous status.

And so therefore governments need to understand and address the realities for indigenous peoples and what the United States has done instead is the opposite is that they've created a system in which indigenous people are instead targeted because of their identity that they are , they have targeted less healthcare .

They have targeted less access to , to timely and law enforcement response that they have this jurisdiction that's been set so that wherever with , if you're tribally enrolled and the crime happens in Indian country , which is like is federally designated land like reservation land. And it just depends on so many factors , which police show up .

And it depends on so many factors which court can take it on and it becomes this incredible , what we call this maze of injustice that ultimately means all these like real complicated , extremely complicated issues mean that ultimately no one shows up no courts take it . And that survivors are left without , you know , the basic process of care or law enforcement support or court and justice , right ?

It's this incredibly complex system that the United States has created that results in this crisis and has further exacerbated what's happening to indigenous peoples to indigenous women , particularly. So that's the , the basic reality is that more than one and two native American Alaska native women have experienced sexual violence . And that they're the least likely to be able to access, you know, the , the care and support and health that they need in our reporting.

We , we look at this in sort of four different ways . And the first is the question of jurisdiction, which is that the United States forums this incredibly complex inter relation between federal government, state , government and tribal government that undermines tribal authority and allows perpetrators of violence against indigenous women to evade justice .

So because of these very complicated laws about whose land gets to be, you know, policed or courts get to run in which land depends on who the perpetrator is, who the victim is , what type of crime it is , what level of crime is where it happens. I mean, it's just like this monster, like jurisdictional maze . The reality then is that perpetrators walk free .

So the first thing we look at is this question jurisdiction and Congress has created centuries of contradictory law regarding country and indigenous people , which has created the system . So we need big there . The next thing we look at is the question of policing. There is just a , a massive lack of resources for indigenous tribal police that limit their authority to over certain crimes , particularly over major crimes .

So sexual assault and rate , for example, then there's really poor interagency cooperation. So the idea is the federal government says , oh , well , tribal police, you can't do this crime , but don't worry . We'll do it . But what , what happens is that tribal government and tribal cannot respond to a , and they're not funded to legally . And then the federal government does not to that . So that federal policing is not picking up .

That obligation means that that people's rape cases are not investigated. It means that people's assault cases are not investigated. So the third thing we look at then is healthcare , which I know we're gonna talk about in a bit and support services . So when indigenous women need post care , they just often can't access it . Many reservations and villages are located far away from health services and can't provide sexual assault services.

And for those that have healthcare , which is provided through Indian health services , it's just a real crapshoot whether or not they actually have a rape kit, which you need be able to take case criminal justice system , a real failure for post rape healthcare as well. And then finally, the piece we look at is the question of prosecutions . If a survivor wants to move through a criminal justice procedure, they have that right. They should have that, right. And they have that right on paper.

But in reality, what's happening is that the justice system that responds to crimes in Indian country is underfunded . And the response is massively inadequate. And again , part of that is based on that really complicated is like who justice system is responding, right?

If you don't live in country , if you say California crime against you , depending on whether it's major or minor crime , it might , the city might just process the city or you go county course , we have this, you go to district and Supreme court. If there's those type of cases that move up or down . But if you're native American and Alaska native , there's an entirely separate set of rules . That to people who commit against you , who are not native , Alaska , not tribal.

And that it means there is a totally separate set of rules for people who are non committing major crimes against native people. And the federal government would say , well , in theory, like that's still a crime we're investigate , but the reality is there's just a totally separate of rules for perpetrators of violence , indigenous and perpetrators know this , know this and people who live in and near indigenous communities know this .

And that's one of the main reasons that rates of rape and sexual assault are so high . So it's this incredibly complicated system , but its a policy choice . These are choices . The government to not address this to not these of sexual violence , it's something reproductive rights advocates and folks in the community need to help understand to see this as central to our work.

This reality is central to our work like this question of sexual violence and lack of reproductive healthcare is central to our work . So I'm really grateful to be able to talk about it with you today and to direct people, not just to this report, but to the incredible work that indigenous activists , advocates and survivors are doing in their communities to talk about more , how we can help that

So the first thing is that when someone is assaulted that you call law enforcement and immediately there is a problem for native American Alaskan native survivors because which law enforcement you call or that comes or agrees to come depends on a variety of just banana factors that you may or may not know as a survivor.

So depending which police should show up, which police should you call or if they show up which police are going to be willing to talk to you or help you that depends on your tribal enrollment, whether or not the perpetrator is tribally enrolled. So sure.

Hope you happen to know that about the person who just assaulted you, whether or not this happened in what's called Indian country, which is a legal term, which means the easiest way to think about it is tribal land in terms of reservation land. And that might seem really easy if you look at a us map and you think, oh, here's where the re , but in some communities you could be across the street and it's like a checkerboard community.

And so where physically the assault happened matters in terms of the legal designation . So watch police or , or law enforcement respond. And also what is the severity of the assault? Is it a major crime? Is it a misdemeanor? And that depends on the type of sexual assault and the degree, the legal degree, right? Not the traumatic degree for a survivor, but the legal degree of that assault.

So what happens if you're a survivor and you call for health , you call nine one one and, and multiple police might show up. It could be the local tribal police. And so that would be like, if you live, I live in Washington, DC, that could be like, it'd be like the DC police showing up your local city police, right? So your tribal police, it could be the bureau of Indian affairs police, which is the federal version of indigenous policing in the United States.

It could be the local county sheriff who is not a part of the tribal government. So it could be, if you are in, for example, if you're at standing rock, many people know standing rock cuz of pipeline and full and the reversal of indigenous rights going on there that like the Martin county sheriff who is outside the reservation and outside Indian country might show up, it could be the FBI, the , the federal bureau of investigations could show up if it's a federal major crime.

So this is already four to five different policing agencies or law enforcement agencies. And what this means is this probably your , your listeners are like, what on earth is she talking about? And that is exactly the right response because what this means is what happens. And we heard multiple stories of this, whereas survivor calls, law enforcement, they show up at the door and then they argue with each other about who has to take this case or who has responsibility for this case.

So you have someone who's experienced trauma, who's reached out for help and with law enforcement, which is what they are told to do and they're being juggled around already on their doorstep. So now the next question is like, this person needs medical help too . Well. That's also oftentimes a law enforcement who will take you to that medical help or direct you to medical help.

So now we've hit a second question, which is where and how can this person get medical help and post care for most native American in Alaska native women. That is the Indian health service. An Indian health service is the easiest way I think about it is it's like the VA. It is medical care for a specific group of folks. And in this case, it is a treaty obligation by the United States government.

So this is something that was part of treaty obligations to try for a variety of things, but particularly land that was taken. So this is a treaty obligation that the us has and that's so that's Indian health service, and that might be a local clinic run on the reservation. It might be a clinic in an urban space. Um , the majority of indigenous folks in the us live in urban spaces and not a reservation. It might be an IHS hospital depending on how big your population is, right?

But these are all run by the Indian health service or contracted out. And the reality is for native women, when they show up at IHS, they are very unlikely to get the post rape care they need. It is extremely dependent on where you live. So of course in like larger spaces with more developed hospitals or clinics, you might have the care you need, but the less likely that is the more rural you are, the small , the population that you could show up to your local clinic.

And if it is open, if you happen to conveniently be assaulted at the right time, quote unquote , if they're open, you could go in and there's no rape kit like physically, there is not the evidence collection that needs to get done. So that in addition to all the other things that, that a body needs after an assault, so that eventually that could go to trial. If there is a rape kit, which again were, is not happening.

If there is a rape kit, there won't be someone there who is trained to administer it. If there is someone there who's trained to administer it, which again is very, very rarely happening there. Isn't somewhere to store it. If there is someone to store it, that person isn't the , the person doesn't testify at trial, you need the person who administered the kits by trial . So there's this like cascading failure of the Indian health service to respond adequately to rape kits.

So the American society of forensic nurses that I think I have that acronym, right , but they did a study and they found that for the majority of native American, Alaskan natives, they don't live within two hours of a center that can provide a rape kit. They don't live within two hours of a rape kit with Indian health service. That's bananas, you've been assaulted and you're like, hope you have a car. Hope you're ready emotionally, physically, financially to drive two hours to get a rape kit.

I mean, that is a level that is a threshold of care. That is, that is not a threshold of care, right? That is not care at all. The other option, obviously for a survivor, maybe not obviously would be like, well, if you go to a non-indigenous healthcare center, so a non-Indian health center, so, or Indian health service center, that is an option if you happen to live somewhere that, that a butts other spaces.

But the other thing we found is that these centers oftentimes will charge for their services on knowing that they aren't supposed to. And that it , that for survivors, they're scared of being charged. Other survivors have talked about their experience in non-Indian health centers and the incredible racism that they face and the , the way in which the care is not just not culturally appropriate, but it's actively harmful.

So we have a total failure of healthcare , and I know I'm giving so much detail here, but it's, it's sort of incredible to wrap your mind around like, look, the whole us system of healthcare is obviously a complete and utter failure of human rights in many ways. But like there is just a second reality for native American and Alaskan native people when it comes to repair . And that reality is there is just no consistency in terms of post rape care.

There is no guarantee that if you roll up that you're gonna get the care you need, what does that mean for a survivor physically and emotionally? You know, you know, that's something I think we all need to sit with, but I'll tell you what it means legally. It means that perpetrators walk free. It means that there is no criminal trial that perpetrators become repeat offenders.

And this is why in communities that we've talked to there have been some communities where not one adult woman knew somebody knew of anyone who was another adult woman who had not been raped. I mean, this is the reality that we're looking at is that the us government failures and they are policy failures, these are choices mean that we've created a system in which rapists go absolutely SCO free and prey on indigenous peoples.

Um , and that to me is mind boggling because of these like very complicated legal failures that are set up to be legal failures, right? This jurisdictional nightmare is intentional. It is meant to strip tribes of their authority. It is meant to make sure that tribes can't prosecute re offenders. Um , and that is a major sexual reproductive healthcare problem. It's a major reproductive rights crisis.

And it's just not talked about because it's an extremely disposable community for most people, certainly for the us government. Um , and that's why, I mean, I'm so grateful I'm going on and on, but I'm so grateful to talk about it on the repro podcast because that work, I think oftentimes is so siloed and , and it becomes not something in the repro community.

Even we talk about that much because it's a very complicated sort of subset of issues, but it's one that is front and center in the lives of native American and Alaska native women.

They're sort of intentionally not there. And so why there is so little trust in the healthcare system. There's so little trust in the police and in other law enforcement. And that's because of these experiences, it's not like some like theoretical distrust, right? Your sister, your cousin, your daughter has been assaulted and goes to Indian health service center or the closest clinic, which would be maybe contracted through the tribal government and the , the resources aren't there.

And that's like, again, these are policy choices. This is not that there aren't people within Indian health service who are working really hard to serve this community. There are people, people work incredibly hard and the tribes that are tribally contracted their facilities work incredibly hard. Congress funds the Indian health health service at 50% of its budgetary needs are met. So, so what does that, what does that mean?

I mean, imagine walking into a hospital or your doctor's appointment and you have, you know, five things you need to address, and they're like , eh , we have 50% , you have 50% . So choose what it is , right? Like this is the bananas . So you have these systems that are put into these incredibly impossible situation. Although Indian health service itself needs to first, it needs to be documenting where these rape cases are.

We Foy the Indian health service to get numbers in terms of like, what are rape kit provision? Where are their gaps? How can, you know, what are ways in which advocates can help fill those gaps? And they couldn't tell you where there were , we're not rape kits. Like they're not tracking that data. And that's, that's bananas like this is , you know, this is a , there's a failure on multiple levels.

So I , I do wanna say that there are so many civil servants who are working so hard within the system, but there are major system failures that mean that for a survivor. Why would you trust the health service center? I mean, the other thing to say about Indian health services, and this goes back to that legacy of violence, is that within Indian health services, this is where forced sterilization happened, right? This was the us policy through Indian health services.

Then there was very recent cases in which doctors who were committing sexual assault and rape against children in the most recent case were allowed sort of passed around different Indian health service centers, even though they knew there was a problem. So like the trust level was so low and there is just total documented failure all over of why, you know, even if you did trust the system and you show up that, that care's not gonna be there for you.

And I , I think it can, it can sound it's so mind numbing, because it sounds so extreme and so made up, you know, honestly, like when we were documenting, this is the second time we've documented this crisis, which is extremely rare for amnesty to come back to the same topic, because there are unfortunately so many human rights violations in so many places. But because , you know, we had documented this first in 2007 and you know, the us government has said, oh, we've done all these things.

We passed the tribal law order act. We pass, follow the violence against women act. And like, they've just been bandaids on the tumor because ultimately the us government is, is explicitly intentionally stripping power away from the tribes to be able to do anything about this. So we came back and when we did this, I mean , you know how the sausage is made to , to put out a report for amnesty, have to go through just a mind numbing number of reviews and fact checking and whatever.

And there were so many people who came back on our draft saying, this can't possibly be true. You need to double check this. This can't possibly be true because it was so outrageous. It is so outrageous. These failures that like people who, who document human rights abuses globally, where like this can't be true. You must have missed , missed a number. It can't be true that the rates are so much higher. It can't be true that there's so much failure across the board.

It can't be true that these laws are designed in a way to basically let non-native perpetrators of violence go free and, and that's what's happening. That's just, it's so much horrified. It's so much . Yeah . Like at the , of the day , the , the system that the us government has set means that a non-native , which is tribally , non tribally perpetrator, sexual , or rape against a tribal is almost certain to get almost certain to get off.

And that is because , again, because of this jurisdiction, who can police, whom who can try whomever, like if you are a non-tribal lane world person, and you go, let's say you go to a casino or something, and you steal a stick of gum , the tribal police, or the local police who are there can like, you know, arrest or detain, you go through whatever the process is for stealing a stick of gum or chips or whatever it's that you've stolen. Right.

But if you murder someone, the tribal police cannot detain you because of the major crimes act. And the major crimes act, which specifically there's specific provisions on the major crimes act, which limit tribal authority and these provisions by the way, are just blatantly racist. They have nothing to do with the reality of tribal law enforcement.

They are only under the assumption that tribal law enforcement can't be trusted to police fairly in the same way that the us system trusts non-tribal law enforcement to quote unquote police fairly. And I mean, this is just bananas and that's the true with court systems too.

So again, if a non-native perpetrator walks on to Indian country or say a reservation and assaults, a tribally enrolled woman, and then walks off that reservation, like there's, even if they're still on the reservation, the tribal police can't hold them . They have to wait for the FBI to show up , right. Because it's a federal level crime .

So the FBI has to show up , well , guess what the FBI's not doing , like driving randomly around and prosecuting rape cases because the that's just not the FBI's priority for, for any population , but particularly in Indian country . So there's just this cascade of failures . That means we have a reproductive rights crisis that is so complicated that it sort of gets shuffled around . So maybe we step

And there's a number of complex things that I've, I've talked about maybe in too much detail, really, but like, there's so many complex things, but at the root of this is that the United States needs to restore tribal sovereign team tribes, like any other government.

So when I lived in Oakland, it went like in Oakland city , city, government, Oakland, city police, like didn't have to ask the us federal government, if it could hold a rapist in its jails, Oakland city did not need to ask the federal government, if it could try a rapist through the local courts, through the county courts, right? Like that the , we were talking about sovereign nations whose jurisdiction and, and authority needs to be restored. That is the overarching solution.

And anything that sort of falls short of that is only piecemeal. It's not gonna do enough. So we've seen a number of really, you know, folks may know that in the last BAA of Ilaw 20, 22 , finally, Bawa 2022 included provisions that allowed for very specific circumstances, tribes to prosecute, non-native again, non tribally enrolled offenders of sexual violence. That's a huge victory . Now there's so many caveats on it and it's super, super complicated.

And I love to bore your listeners about more of that anytime . It's so interesting, but like, ultimately that is like, that's a really important thing that'll happen. And it's a bandaid because what needs to happen is the us government needs to restore jurisdiction to tribes and restore their authority. So as people are thinking about like how, what do we do as reproductive right . Defenders and reproductive right fighters.

And one of those things is we need to be serious about our partnership with indigenous nations and the , and the fight for indigenous sovereignty, because that's a system fix that needs to happen. So it's, it's something I think that we don't often think about in the reproductive rights world, cuz maybe it seems like, like a great idea, but not related.

And it is deeply, deeply related the inability of tribes to protect and , and respect and fulfill the rights of their own people is because the us government, the federal government has made that.

So, so, so that's the overarching thing I'd say, which is, as you're thinking about your work is in reproductive rights, is to understand that the intersectionality of that means we have to be fighting for tribal sovereignty and for the restoration of jurisdiction and jurisdiction is who can reply to what crime. Right. And that sounds so nerdy. But the reality is like, if, again, if tribes can't re like reply to these crimes , no one is that is reality.

In theory, the federal government is supposed to do it or in some cases, the state government for very complicated reasons, but like they're not. And so if, if tribes can't do it, no one's doing it. And the us has set up that system . So, so that's the first thing . The second thing is, is understanding that like there are things that can happen in the meantime to mitigate harm.

And one of those is that the Indian health service centers can make sure there are rape kits for survivors so that survivors can have access to justice through the criminal justice system if they so choose. And that should always, of course be up to the survivor. But right now there's no, there's no pathway for remediation. There's no pathway for, for justice. There's no pathway for, for any, any sort of sense of again, your , your human, right?

When your rights have been violated, you have the right to, to justice in some sort of, of renumeration. And, and that's not, that's not happening and that's not possible because of the failures of Indian health service. So one of the things I'd love to put in your show notes is we do have an action to reach out to Indian health service and remind them that they have an obligation to provide rape kits. This is basic care.

It's not good enough that they can't figure out who's there or that it's complicated because of staffing issues. It is complicated because of staffing issues, its complicated because of the hours of operation, but it's also not rocket science, like where are the rape kits and why our survivors showing up to Indian health service centers or tribally run service centers that are again under Indian health service and, and there's no rape kits like this is bananas. So, so that's gotta happen.

That's the healthcare piece in policing. We have got, there's got to be movement for better cross jurisdictional coordination until of course that time in which tribes have full , um, restoration of their, their jurisdiction. And, and that's a long time fight like that is a , that's a long, lifelong fight because of multiple rulings by the Supreme court, but long a while ago that that restrict that.

So that's a lifelong fight, but until then, like local and federal and county police and law enforcement must be better collaborating with tribal law enforcement. And there has to be a prioritization of these cases by the us attorney's offices. So not only did the police need to be taking this seriously or the law enforcement need to be taking this seriously, but the , the prosecutors need to be doing this right.

So in the us attorney's offices and that's the federal people who are supposed to trade these cases, which don't get done. These cases are just not getting tried. And that's because there's no funding . If you take it on, it's like extra work for you and you're already, you know, you already have this huge caseload . So , so there's a number of things that people can do .

And , and they do require a slightly higher lift because it requires being , people never understand, like , wait , what's a attorney . Like what's going on . Like at the end of the day , like if someone, if a native woman is assaulted on tribal land , she should have access to basic post re care. She should access to the highest level of care, but she certainly doesn't have access to basic post care.

She should have law enforcement that show up and help walk her through how to address her needs, how to move forward with the case, if she wants to, she should have the court system understanding and working with her towards, towards her case so that we don't have perpetrators, you know , walking free. And these are the multiple ways in which the us government has created this sort of real legacy of violence. You know, in the meantime, there's the gosh.

The other thing to , to mention is that like, of course, because of H and other restrictions, like Indian health service centers, there there's restrictions on access to abortion and abortion care. So there's a number of things that are super interrelated to this, right? So, you know , what can your listeners do? Look, they can go to , to www amnesty usa.org/maze , like maze of injustice. We are navigating a maze of injustice. So amnesty usa.org/maze .

And you can take action right now to demand Indian health service center, the Indian health services, rather make sure that all their service centers have post rape care. You can find out more there about all these sort of sub aspects . You can also donate.

Uh , if you've got a little extra money, you can donate to abortion funders that specifically fund for native American, Alaskan native women, and, and also for native Hawaiian women and that's indigenous women rising indigenous women rising, which is I w rising.org .

But if you, if you Google native abortion funder, you'll find it because again, like this is a population that because of, again, the treaty obligation of the us has less access to abortion than other populations because of the than restrictions on federal money and abortion. Right? So those are two things right away. But again, I think even I'm just so grateful to be in this conversation because it's, it's an issue that gets talked about so separately from our reproductive rights work.

And it's just so central, I think oftentimes in racial justice work, we talk about, you know, black and brown people living in a totally separate and unequal policing system, healthcare system, et cetera , and oftentimes left out of that equation is the reality for indigenous peoples as well. And this is not the oppression Olympics, right? Like we need to fix all these problems and we need to address these particularly for myself, like as a white ally, like we need to address this.

And I think one of the things we have to do better in the reproductive rights world is to understand that when we're talking about racial discrimination, that like indigenous people are often made invisible in that conversation and that they face extremely unique, legal pathways and restrictions and, and barriers to, to their care, to being able to live with dignity, to being able to access their human rights. Um , and so that's something I think we , we just need to keep that going.

So it's folks are doing reproductive rights work when you're working on Roe , when you're working on access to abortion, when you're working on access to contraception, whatever those amazing things you're act , um, acting on, like, make sure you're asking yourself, like, where are the indigenous people in this conversation ? Make sure you're asking yourself , where are the black and brown people in this conversation ? Where are the trans people in this conversation, right?

Those are all things to be asking yourself. And , and for this one, where, where are native American, lesbian , native women, where are the native Hawaiian women, why and other survivors, right. That , why are those not part of our conversations and made so invisible? And that's gonna help not only like specific populations, but to help our movement, like really be able to grow and to be successful. Like we can only win together.

We're here to shine a light on what people have been, you know, shouting for, for generations. And the us government has just not paid attention has refused to pay attention. So we're really, really grateful to, to Jessica for, for all the advocates who, who are doing work, that, that they shouldn't have to do that , that shouldn't have to be done.

And so for us to be able to come and, and really just report what lots of indigenous peoples have known for a long, long time, it is it's , it's a really important partnership and we're really do that .

Jenny J I E repro fight back.com or you can reach out to us anytime on social media, we are at repro fight back on Facebook and Twitter or repro FP on Instagram. Otherwise I will see all in two weeks for more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit us at our website at repro, fight back.com .

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