Aboriginal Women Suffer Much in Silence...

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Aboriginal Women Suffer Much in Silence...

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This commentary is also posted on Intelligentaindigena...

American history being what it is, the fact that the legacy of genocidal abuse, an abuse that began 500 years ago in the Americas, can continue without letup is nothing less than a scandal of the American mythological illusion presented as reality. In a stunningly sober report, Amnesty International has finally exposed one of the ugliest secrets of its long and dark history. American aboriginal women from Canada throughout the southern Americas are the targets of sexual abuse and virtually no one outside of the communities in question seem to care enough to make it stop.

This damming report pretty much sums up the totality of U.S. / Aboriginal relations as it has always existed in regards to how Indigenous women are seen and ultimately treated by the colonialist conundrum known as America. This is not in any way to suggest that Aboriginal males are not practitioners of sexual abuse. On the contrary, many published papers and studies have linked the post-trumatic stress disorder many if not all self-aware Aboriginals suffer from to some degree to the reality of Indigenous domestic abuse and how such "circles of violence" lend themselves to sexual abuse. But Aboriginal females are at particular risk for such abuse and it seems to exist for our women in every corner of American society. In a nation that employs rape as a torture tactic, why should anyone really be surprised by what this report by AA tells us? More, why are we allowing it to happen?

I also wish to extend my failing marks to the National Organisation for Women for ignoring this and other historical abuses towards indigenous, Asian and African women in the U.S. or any one of its third world fifedoms. American disrespect towards foreign females is a documented fact. Many nations have rejected accepting American military bases on precisely this basis. They remember the comfort women of the Philippines, Japan and Korea and their U.S. sired yet abandoned offspring littering the trail of destruction America has taken in the 20th century. Western males in general use nations like Thailand and the Dominican Republic as super-whorehouses that exist exclusively for the enjoyment of European males. And while some feminists do raise these issues, they only do so as it benefits their own causes. Minority women are habitually forgotten once the cameras are gone and the few European feminists that are sincere in their concern for minority women are on the whole, not considered by many within the movement as "committed" to social justice rather than "women's rights."

And this Kipling attitude carries on in the U.S. political arena Take disgraced Republican Tom Delay of Texas, besides his sordid history of accepting and offering bribes from private business entities as well as foreign governments and other political and fiduciary malfesence, did his underhanded best to protect child sexual abuse from continental American law in Saipan mostly, it is assumed, in an effort to support U.S. production interests in the colony. Women's rights? Where was the women's lobby on this issue? It seems there would be more concern if the victims were European. Why can I say that? Because this has been happening with little notice, interest or action in any real sense to protect women in minority communities from sexual and physical abuse.

News laws or tougher punishments will not stop abuse against Aboriginal women. Education, drug and alcohol treatment and effective de-colonialisation can. But in order for this to happen, America as well as Indian Country must come to grips with its past, present and very forseeable future of ethnic and gender bias and belligerence amongst other decidely un-American ideals inherent within the republic. just saying no isn't enough.

Indian Country also gets a big red line from me for talking about it as if there is really a mindset that says "we" as a community can stop this horror. Far too many Aboriginals have had the intense experience of running across a Native male stupefied by colonial firewater and weighed down by five centuries of oppression aggressively assaulting his companion. Every time I see these things I become physically ill. It happens everyday in Indian Country rural and urban and while we talk about it, we do little, or more honestly, nothing about unless it is a family member or friend which for Aboriginal folks is just about the same thing. Only we simply aren't as related as we used to be. That sort of tradtional worldview is nowadays derided as "primitive."

Well, I for one have decided to do something about it. While I raise women's rights and respect for all of our sisters as a matter of principled justice, I have come to a decision that I will do more to address the issue and I ask that all Aboriginal men across the Fourth World also look into their own pain to see how that pain can be misdirected against our own people. We can stop it. And we must. I was fortunate that my household as a child was free from gender abuse so I never learned that violence was permissible against women. I was lucky.

Aboriginal women and children deserve better than this. Let us all work as a community to finally make it so that our women can at least be safe within their own homes and communities. Should an Aboriginal women expect anything less? I for one do not think so. - The Angryindian

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From Intelligentaindigena:

Sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA is widespread --
and especially brutal. According to US government statistics, Native
American and Alaska Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to
be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the USA. Some
Indigenous women interviewed by Amnesty International said they didn’t
know anyone in their community who had not experienced sexual violence.
Though rape is always an act of violence, there is evidence that
Indigenous women are more like than other women to suffer additional
violence at the hands of their attackers. According to the US
Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of
rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women,
survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.

Sexual
violence against Indigenous women is the result of a number of factors
including a history of widespread and egregious human rights violations
against Indigenous peoples in the USA. Indigenous women were raped by
settlers and soldiers in many infamous episodes including during the
Trail of Tears and the Long Walk. Such attacks were not random or
individual; they were tools of conquest and colonization. The
underlying attitudes towards Indigenous peoples that supported these
human rights violations committed against them continue to be present
in society and culture in the USA. They contribute to the present high
rates of sexual violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and help
to shield their attackers from justice.

Treaties, the US
Constitution and federal law affirm a unique political and legal
relationship between federally recognized tribal nations and the
federal government. There are more than 550 federally recognized
American Indian and Alaska Native tribes in the USA. Federally
recognized Indian tribes are sovereign under US law, with jurisdiction
over their citizens and land and maintaining government to government
relationships with each other and with the US federal government.

The
federal government has a legal responsibility to ensure protection of
the rights and wellbeing of Native American and Alaska Native peoples.
The federal government has a unique legal relationship to the tribal
nations that includes a trust responsibility to assist tribal
governments in safeguarding the lives of Indian women.