"With brutality against women pervading the Native American population, activists are calling not only for protection, but also for empowerment of survivors. Building political consciousness as well as cultural solidarity, they say institutional racism has subjugated native women and men alike to an epidemic of violence.

Research on gender-based violence in Native American populations is limited. But Department of Justice statistics from the 1990s, drawn from crime surveys of about 570,000 individuals, showed that native women experienced violence at the hands of intimate partners � who might be non-Indians or Indians � nearly three times more frequently than did white women.

Native women were also about twice as likely to be raped by an intimate partner, according to the 2000 National Violence Against Women Survey, which focused on a sample of 8,000 women.

The Navajo Nation division of public safety reports that as of late October, 1,166 cases of domestic violence had been recorded by local law enforcement in the preceding three months. The senior prosecutor�s office told the Gallup Independent in New Mexico that domestic violence was a growing crisis in the local population, with recent incidents becoming more intense and more brutal."

Get the Story:
Rising Violence Against Native Women Has 'Colonial Roots' (The NewStandard 11/7)

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