From left: Katsi Cook, Cecelia FireThunder, Beverly Cook and Faith Spotted Eagle participated in the Women Are Sacred Conference, hosted by the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June. Photo from Facebook
Independent journalist Mary Annette Pember reports on reaction from Native women to a proposal from Amnesty International to legalize the sex trade:
“I am deeply disappointed in Amnesty International’s new proposal,” says Lisa Brunner, program director with the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. Brunner is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota. Brunner and others complain that decriminalizing the entire sex trade makes it too easy for sex traffickers, pimps and customers to profit from the sex industry while sanctioning the brutality commonly inflicted on women in prostitution. The CATW letter notes that, “Disenfranchised women of color, including Aboriginal, Native, First Nations, African American and ‘Scheduled Castes’ women, are overwhelmingly represented among the prostituted and sex trafficked.” Says Brunner, “Considering [Amnesty International’s] Maze of Injustice Report in 2007 that brought the world’s attention to the high rates of sexual assault for Native women, this latest policy recommendation is especially disappointing.” According to that report, Native American and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the U.S. “They seemed to have missed the boat in connecting sexual violence and sex trafficking,” Brunner says. “Amnesty International’s proposal represents a fundamental failure to understand that prostitution is sexual violence and in most cases not a chosen profession.” “Most trafficked women have been tortured by pimps,” say Sandi Pierce, president of Otayonih Research in Minnesota and a long time researcher on sex trafficking especially among Native women and girls. “The very organization, Amnesty International, that brought the inhumane practice of torture to the world’s attention has betrayed us.”Get the Story:
Mary Annette Pember: Sex Trafficking Experts Claim Amnesty International Has Betrayed Native Women (Indian Country Today 8/31) Amnesty International Report on Violence against Native Women:
Maze of Injustice (Fall 2007)
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