General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: All day long I have been fuming about this and I am glad that I waited to post it. I COULD BURN [View all]liberalhistorian
(20,819 posts)(for hubby's job) and this kind of thing is, sadly and sickeningly enough, quite common around here and on other reservations in the state. One out of three native women will be the victims of domestic abuse and/or sexual assault, often by non-natives, and little, if anything, is done about it due to jurisdictional and cultural issues. The tribal courts and governments do not have jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit such crimes and who use native women as their own personal punching bag, and the entity that DOES have jurisdiction, the U.S. Attorney's Office, doesn't usually give a shit or bother prosecuting unless it's a truly horrendous case (like what the OP describes) or if enough pressue is put on them. They're too busy going after Indians in federa court for minor drug infractions.
That's part of what the fight over the re-implementation of the VAWA was all about last year-provisions were included to give tribal courts jurisdiction over non-Indians and non-members in such cases, so as to better protect Indian women who were, frankly, often at the mercy of non-Indians and non-members who knew that they would likely never be held to account for their abuse and/or sexual assaults. But republicans wanted to protect white men and stalled VAWA partly based on such provisions. And the beat goes on.
Women's lives, native or non-native, have never been valued nearly as much as men. There has ALWAYS been such abuse in this society, it's just that there's a lot more awareness of it over the past several decades and it's no longer a "taboo" subject like it used to be. When women were beaten, assaulted and killed, it was under the radar or they were blamed, and/or it was considered the man's "right". You can thank the feminists that even too many women nowadays love to bash for changing that at least somewhat.