"There are a hundred ways that the terror of the genocide continues to ripple through our lives, but none is more explosive than the cruel, hard fact that we beat and rape Indian women as if they were utterly without value. Consider these numbers:

-- Fifty percent of Indian women in America will be beaten in their lifetime. That is twice the percentage of white and black and hispanic women. I find this statistic impossible to believe. I talk to a counselor at the Sacred Circle resource center in Rapid City. "Could this possibly be true at Pine Ridge, or Rosebud, or North Rapid?" She shrugs. "Statistics are hard to gather on the reservations. Women are taught to keep their mouths shut. But I was beaten, and I don't know hardly any women who haven't been."

-- Indian women are raped at twice the rate of all other races.

-- Seventy percent of the violence against Indian women is committed by non-Indian spouses or boyfriends or acquaintances.

-- One in four pregnant Indian women is beaten.

-- Two-thirds of all Indian boys between 11 and 20 arrested for murder, killed the man assaulting their mother."

Get the Story:
Sam Hurst: Indian women still feel genocide (The Rapid City Journal 8/14)

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