Editorial: U.S. fails to protect Native women

Thursday, April 26, 2007  

"A fair-minded society has an obligation to protect its members, but when it comes to American Indian and Alaskan Native women, we're failing in meeting those obligations. A new report by Amnesty International finds that women in those groups are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women belonging to other ethnic groups. There's no hard data on the number of assaults in our area, but anecdotal evidence indicates that a significant number of women here have been affected by those crimes, and that the victims are left to deal with a lifetime's worth of post-traumatic issues.

Mary Pavel, the founding president of the Native American Bar Association of Washington, D.C., (who grew up on the Skokomish reservation), said that such cases generally aren't -- and because of lack of funds, can't be -- a priority for U.S. attorneys. Then there's the confounding issue of jurisdictions. Whether the state, the tribe or the feds will get involved in each case depends on the race of the perpetrator and the victim. Pavel added, "Our communities are so small, that these really scary guys are someone's family ... it's not a complete stranger. It's horrifying.""

Get the Story:
Native Women: Traumatic justice (The Seattle Post Intelligencer 4/26)

Get the Report:
Full Report | Press Release

Online Discussion:
Violence against Native American and Alaska Native Women (April 24, 2007)

Relevant Links:
Join Voices with Native American and Alaska Native Women and Take Action to Stop the Violence - http://www.amnestyusa.org/maze

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