Aboriginal Affairs say it’s not forcing First Nations to sign anything on Bills C-38 and C-45. But it doesn’t say anything about Bills C-27 or S-8.
“Some of the bills that were passed on Bill C-45 and C-27 are all put into our contribution agreement and we’re saying we’re not going to sign it because it hasn’t even gotten royal assent, it hasn’t even become law and yet they’re saying we’re breaking the law if we don’t sign it, so therefore the Canadian government is more ways than one manipulating First Nations into signing a contribution agreement which they need to provide programs to their First Nation. I don’t think it’s right,” Mr. Adam said.
He said, however, that some First Nations are reluctantly signing the agreements because they need the money even though they don’t agree with some of the conditions. “The First Nations are saying no to some stuff in there, and yet they’re signing into it through this contribution agreement, so what Canada will say is that ‘look, they have no issues because they signed the contribution agreement, everything we put forward, they’ve signed onto over here.’ Well, they’re blackmailing us into signing it. That’s what they’re doing.”
Racial Americana
WARNING: This site contains graphic depictions of violence and explicit language.
THE MAU MAU UPRISING
“The Mau Mau Uprising was an insurgency by Kenyan rebels against the British Colonial administration that lasted from 1952 to 1960.”
I caution those doing further research on the Mau Mau Uprising to beware of the dangers of a single story. For a relatively decent source, browse the source below.
Source: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mau_Mau_Uprising
Image: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1375307/A-Radio-4-interview-ask-Was-dad-racist.html
-Aisha
RIP MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (January 15th, 1929- April 4th, 1968)
Beyond the Dream.
Today, I urge us to complicate the narrative we are taught of Dr. King’s political activism to reveal his changing ideologies towards a discourse of “Black Power” near the final years of his life.
“Power is not the white man’s birthright; it will not be legislated for us and delivered in neat government packages, ” he concluded. “It is a social force any group can utilize by accumulating its elements in a planned, deliberate campaign to organize it under its control.” – Martin Luther King, Jr in Where Do We Go from Here?, quoted in Waiting ‘til The Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power In America by Peniel E. Joseph
-Aisha
image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Alcatraz_Island.jpg
“Indians held a brilliant, astonishing metaphor-a defiant, isolated Rock surrounded by foreboding seas, a reservationlike piece of real estate with stark conditions conditions, and a prison that represented the incarcerated spirit of Indian people everywhere.” -Smith and Warrior Like a Hurricane
TODAY: International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
March 25th is United Nations International Day of Remembrance of Slavery Victims and the…
Police Forcefully Evict Native Brazilian Squatters After Long Resistance
Police evicted two dozen Amazon natives on Friday from an old native museum that will be demolished to clear areas adjacent to Brazil’s legendary Maracana soccer stadium, the main venue for next year’s World Cup.
The natives from different Amazon tribes had been living on the grounds of the Rio de Janeiro museum since 2006 and were resisting its demolition, which caused further delays to the overhaul of the stadium complex.
Riot police handcuffed the natives, some of whom wore feathered headdresses and body paint, and used tear gas to disperse street demonstrations by sympathizers trying to block the eviction.
The museum area was originally planned to become a parking lot for the stadium, but after the protests Rio authorities decided to build a sports museum on the site. The Indians were taken to alternative housing provided by the city.
“In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that’s not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don’t even have to go too far in terms of geography-you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.”
R.I.P Chinua Achebe
picture source: http://images.biafranigeriaworld.com/BNW-Chinua-Achebe-2005feb15-1.jpg
Day 19 of White History Month: Medical Racism
The United States (along with other countries in the Western world) has a history of medical racism. The general population is unaware of the history of medical racism, and white health professionals are as well. John M. Hoberman of UT-Austin says that medical schools do not teach students about the history of medical racism, nor do they give them proper diversity training. Many Americans of color have grown to distrust medical professionals, and many white Americans attribute this to paranoia rather than their knowledge of historical and contemporary medical mistreatment.
Medical racism has often benefitted white Americans disproportionately while simultaneously harming Americans of color, as well as people of color outside of the United States. White Americans benefit from medical advances, while individual people of color were harmed, and in some cases, large groups of people of color have been harmed. From trying to “better” the race, to making scientific advances, white people have used and disregarded the rights people of color for their own benefit. Medical racism shows the lack of value ascribed to the bodies and lives of people of color.
Eugenics
The eugenics movement in the United States became very popular and manifested itself in many different ways. Anti-miscegenation laws, birth control, sterilization, forced abortions, forced pregnancies (of white women), and the promotion of higher birth rates for neurotypical white women. Eugenics policies were first instituted in the United States. Laws that advocated the sterilization of those with mental illnesses were in effect in the early 1900s, and soon spread to other countries.
Eugenics movements advocated for the eradication of those with mental illness, those who were homosexual, “promiscuous”, and most of all, those who were outside of the “Nordic” or “Aryan” race. Eugenics was advocated for by many famous white Westerners, including world leaders such as Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge.
While eugenics was highly unpopular after the Holocaust, the eugenics tradition of the United States actually provided the background for Nazi Medicine. While most people are aware to some extent what the horrors of Nazi medicine entailed, few people are aware of the American eugenics tradition that inspired it. Eugenics societies promoted “fit families” and “better babies” through awards at contests, but they also promoted harmful legislation barring immigrants and sterilizing “undesirable” people.
Controlling Reproductive Rights of Women of Color
Black Women
Due to the eugenics movement, thousands of Black women were sterilized. In North Carolina, 7600 people were sterilized between 1929 and 1974, 85% of them women and girls, and a disproportionate number of them people of color (39% in the 1940s, 60% in the 1960s while making up only 25% of the population). The program that allowed for their sterilization was not eliminated fully until 2003. Black women were also sterilized without their consent in other states.
Puerto Rican Women
The United States has held Puerto Rico as a territory since 1898. As a solution to Puerto Rican economic problems, the US government felt that reducing the population of the Puerto Rican government would help. The US sterilized over one-third of Puerto Rican women, many uneducated and working class, between the 1930s and 1970s. Most of these women did not understand the procedure and did not know that it would render them sterile.
Additionally, the US used Puerto Rican women to test out birth control pills in the 1950s. These women were not informed that the pills were experimental – only that they would prevent pregnancy. They were not informed of the possible side effects ranging from nausea to possible death – three women died during the birth control pill trials. Women who reported side effects had their concerns dismissed by researchers.
Native American Women
Native American women who used the Indian Health Services were subject to numerous violations of their rights, particularly their reproductive rights. Some women who underwent procedures such as appendectomies would also have hysterectomies performed on them without their consent. At least 25 percent (and as high as 50 percent) of Native American women of reproductive age who used Indian Health Services were sterilized without their consent or after coercion. Largely white male doctors would use Native American women as “practice” for performing gynecological procedures on white women.
Tuskegee Experiment and Guatemala STD Experiment
In 1932, the Tuskegee Institute worked with the United States government to perform a study on a group of Black men with syphillis. The men were recruited to the study with promises of free meals, transportation to the clinic, medical exams and even treatment for minor medical concerns. The study lasted 40 years and involved the participation of over 600 Black men. This sounded like a good arrangement in theory, but researchers did not hold up their end of the bargain. By 1947, penicillin was widely used as treatment for syphillis. The researchers neglected to inform the men involved in the study in addition to refusing to treat the men.
As a result of the Tuskegee Experiment, nearly a hundred men died, and hundreds of partners and children were infected with the disease as well. Not only was this a breach of research ethics, as the participants did not give informed consent and were not treated for their ailment. The men and their families won a $9 million class action lawsuit in 1973, but this of course was not enough to make up for the damage that was done.
Similarly, the same researcher who uncovered the Tuskegee Syphillis experiment, Susan Reverby, discovered that a similar situation occured in Guatemala. The US Public Health Service and Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with the Guatemalan government to do research on 1300 Guatemalans that involved intentionally exposing them to STDs.
The experiment involved many who are considered disposable in society – sex workers, mental patients, prisoners, and soldiers. Only 700 of these people were treated, and during the study 83 people died. Some of the most disturbing incidents during the study involved injecting epilepsy patients in the back of the head with syphillis, as well as the infection of a terminal illness patient with gonnorhea (she died six months later). The Guatemalans in the study also did not give informed consent.
Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks (1920 – 1951) was a Black woman who went to Johns Hopkins Hospital to be examined for serious medical concerns. After a biopsy was performed, she was diagnosed with and subsequently treated for cancer. While she was being treated, healthy and cancerous cells were removed from her cervix without her consent. She died in 1951, but the cells stolen from her body continued to be used. Though she died poor and was buried without a gravestone, her cells were used for many medical tests. From routine tests for human sensitivity to substances to the development of the Polio vaccine, her cells were used for medical advances. Her family only learned about the removal of her cells in the 1970s, and she is largely unknown despite the contributions to science she had made.
Current medical racism
Distrust of medical health professionals, along with racist attitudes probably contribute to medical health disparities. Racially linked anxiety disorders have been linked to racism at the hands of white people. A significant number of Black women report racism and sexism contributing to their stress and to stress-linked overeating.
Stressful life circumstances are reasons for hypertension and many mental health ailments. Working and middle class Black women who report multiple forms of discrimination are more likely to have high blood pressure than those who report fewer incidents. Black Americans who are more confrontational about racism are less likely to have elevated blood pressure than those who stay silent, which can be attributed to the effects of suppressed hostility.
Today, doctors still exhibit subconscious racist attitudes. A study in the American Journal of Public Health (March 2012) showed that a full two-thirds of the doctors in the sample were racially biased. White and Asian health professionals showed anti-Black bias, but Black health professionals showed no bias.
Doctors are more likely to speak more slowly to Black patients, extend their visits, and to lecture and talk down to them. This shows that the doctors are paternalistic and don’t care about respecting their patients or asking for their input
Additionally, white doctors are prone to giving worse care to patients of color, regardless of their income. People of color are less likely to get the diagnoses and treatment that they need, for everything ranging from heart disease medication, HIV treatment, and dialysis. Black women are the least likely to receive the pain medication that they need. Mental health professionals are less likely to diagnose people of color with an appropriate diagnosis because of their race.
Aminta
“Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. The American Way describes Native American religion in these words: “These Native Americans [in the Southeast] believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature.” Way is trying to show respect for Native American religion, but it doesn’t work. Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us try a similarly succinct summary of the beliefs of many Christians today: “These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son’s body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died.” Textbooks never describe Christianity this way. It’s offensive. Believers would immediately argue that such a depiction fails to convey the symbolic meaning or the spiritual satisfaction of communion.”
— Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen
Aminta
This is a piece I did for the Native show at Emily Carr.
The names written on my body are actual names for “sexy indian” costumes that can be bought online.
This piece is a visual response to when Halloween comes around again, and people feel it right to dress up as my culture in horrible old stereotypes and pass it as honouring our culture. But it doesn’t. It only adds to more to poorly represented image of Native Americans, and objectifies Native women.
I am a real Native Women and this my body and my culture. And I have a voice
Source:http://fothefox.tumblr.com/post/45737414526/this-is-a-piece-i-did-for-the-native-show-at-emily
Aminta
The NYPD Declares Martial Law in Brooklyn
Thursday, March 14, 2013 20:11
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(Before It’s News) On the heels of three nights of protests over the police slaying of 16 year old Kimani Gray, the NYPD has turned the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn into a State of Exception, claiming emergency powers to suspend the constitutional guarantees of the citizenry.The people regularly targeted by police harassment and violence, overwhelmingly the city’s poor and minority populations, have taken to the streets to speak out against the NYPD’s draconian tactics. The police have in turn responded with even further harsh measures by suppressing the right of the people to voice dissatisfaction with that very same police force.
Cops kettled protesters at Wednesday night’s candlelight vigil, resulting in 46 arrests. Police even arrested Kimani Gray’s distraught sister, Mahnefeh.
The NYPD euphemistically calls the public spaces in which the Constitutional rights of the people are suspended “frozen zones.”
Allison Kilkenny wrote about the NYPD’s so-called “frozen zones” in December 2011:
“The ‘frozen zone’ is an arbitrary, official police business-sounding title that has absolutely zero legal merit. It’s something the NYPD made up, just as the ‘First Amendment zone’ is something [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa made up to suppress media coverage of the Occupy raids.”
According to FIERCE, the “frozen zone” in East Flatbush is being used to prevent media from covering the protests and arrests. Meanwhile, people inside the “frozen zone” can be subjected to arrest merely by exercising their constitutional rights.
“It basically means the area is under temporary martial law,” writes FIERCE. “The last times the NYPD declared a Frozen Zone was on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and during the beginning of OWS.”
An arbitrary dictate that arrests protest and free speech, set forth by the institution that is itself the target of the protests, creates a potentially dangerous precedent of placing the NYPD beyond reproach.
Occupy Austin reposted this poignant summary of events by Jen Roesch as they were unfolding in Brooklyn last night:
“East Flatbush, Brooklyn is under martial law as the NYPD declares it a ‘frozen zone’. Media are being monitored and kept from moving and reporting freely. Dozens of arrests and much brutality. Kimani was shot in the back seven times; a witness is sure he was unarmed; multiple reports are coming out that the police had been waging a campaign of harassment against the young man (including taunting him about a friend who had died in a car accident and threatening to shoot him when he tried to leave). This is just blocks from where Shantel Davis was shot, dragged from her car and left to bleed to death in the street last summer. After that shooting, police went to all the surrounding delis and confiscated their surveillance videos. Residents in the neighborhood live in a state of terror. Heartbreaking, enraging, the stuff that riots are made of. This city is at a breaking point.”
Kimani Gray’s parents are scheduled to hold a press conference this evening to address the March 9 police slaying of their young son.
WHERE IS THIS IN THE NEWS?????
Seriously, the front page of liberal news sites have five stories about Newtown and gay marriage but nothing on this???
The NYPD has declared a portion of Flatbush a “Frozen Zone”, meaning media are not allowed in and people can be subjected to arrest for not following police orders. It basically means the area is under temporary martial law. The last times the NYPD declared a Frozen Zone was on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and during the beginning of OWS.
Please call 311 to demand that everyone in connection to tonight’s Kimani vigil/march be released from the 71st precinct in Brooklyn. There’s one Malcolm X Grassroots Movement member arrested & two Justice Committee (JC) members arrested. A ton of community members who were at the vigil/march were also arrested. If you have friends/family in NYC please tell them to call 311. If you live in NYC please call 311. Let’s get them free! Please share!
NYPD decided not to release community members and Cop Watchers arrested at the vigil for Kimani “Kiki” Gray. Please call 7182502001 to demand NO charges be brought against all arrested
Quick Action Step For Folks Charged by NYPD
from FIERCE:
Thank you to everyone from the building who mobilized last night to the 71st Precinct after the arrests and beatings of dozens of people at the Kimani Gray vigil and arrests of Cop Watch organizers from Justice Committee and MXGM. Thanks especially to folks from ALP (Chelsea,…
“The institution that acted as the wedge to split Indian families apart was the Indian boarding school.These schools were often run by religious orders, mostly Catholics and evangelicals, but funded by the government. Students were famously made to burn their traditional clothes upon arrival and had their hair cut.”
-David Treuer, Rez Life pg.200
-Image from wikipedia
First the United States had to make treaties, because the Indian tribes were powerful. They had command of routes of travel, many warriors, and plenty of resources when the United States had very little of these. The second reason was cynical: paper was cheaper than bullets. Despite the power of Indian tribes it was often the case that the United States had no intention of honoring the treaties it made.
Rez Life- David Treuer pg 38
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPZ29KSHIE?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&w=500&h=374%5D
Tagged African American, comedy, dave chappelle, race What is Chapelle’s commentary about stereotypes and Native Americans? To what extent is his commentary useful and to what extent can this type of comedy be potentially harmful especially when the comedian is not from that culture?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPZ29KSHIE
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
“The reasons for this apparent nothing are varied. Red Lake suffers from one of the most crippling economic conditions of any community in the country. Unemployment stands at 60 percent. The average income at Red Lake is well below the poverty level. High School graduation rates are the lowest in the state.”
David Treuer, Rez Life
Photo:http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~woss/redlake2/7days.html
~Isabelle
“Neither side understands what a treaty is and how treaty rights work. Indians aren’t ‘allowed’ to hunt or fish. It isn’t a matter of ‘permission.’ To cast treaty rights as ‘special rights’ is to suggest that they are in some sense an expression of pity or a payment for wrongs done or a welfare system for Stone Age people. But treaty rights were not ‘given’ to Indian people because of past cruel treatment or because of special Indian status. Nor were treaty rights ‘given’ to Indians in exchange for land…Rather, when Indian bands signed treaties, they reserved land, which became reservations.”
David Treuer, Rez Life
Pg. 101
Image: http://www.infoplease.com/images/indian9.gif
Isabelle Kuhn
“When I think about the people who appear in my mother’s court and in others around Indian country, their lives seem as checkered as the reservation land itself-which was made into a checkerboard by the Dawes Act. The idea of a checkerboard might very well be the best way to describe tribal justice and jurisdiction.”
David Treuer, Rez Life (p. 148)
Image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2vAqjPSgAg4/TwimHqDVTiI/AAAAAAAAAFI/6B-aXepuXnA/s1600/Dawes+Act.jpg
-Dan
“Neither side understands what a treaty is and how treaty rights work. Indians aren’t ‘allowed’ to hunt or fish. It isn’t a matter of ‘permission.’ To cast treaty rights as ‘special rights’ is to suggest that they are in some sense an expression of pity or a payment for wrongs done or a welfare system for Stone Age people. But treaty rights were not ‘given’ to Indian people because of past cruel treatment or because of special Indian status. Nor were treaty rights ‘given’ to Indians in exchange for land…Rather, when Indian bands signed treaties, they reserved land, which became reservations.”
David Treuer, Rez Life (p.101)
Image: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0hgq7ZNd21qkz4mgo1_400.jpg
Things that make you go, hmmm.
via, NativeAppropiations.com BLOG
http://nativeappropriations.com/2013/01/new-billboard-for-florida-states-mba-program.html/fsu-mba
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn2BVM_U6Cs?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&w=500&h=281%5D
Tagged advertisement, florida, higher education, native american, native american appropriations via Blog, Native Appropriations
http://nativeappropriations.com/
BLOG post on Florida State’s MBA Program… http://nativeappropriations.com/2013/01/new-billboard-for-florida-states-mba-program.html
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Is this ok? This feels incredibly reductive and off base. It also uses stereotypical classification of terms most of us would associate with Native Americans and doesn’t add a whole lot of depth or educational value. They are literally being reduced to landmarks to be ‘stepped’ over, played on and thatjust seems inappropriate given our history.
Look at it this way,” offers Sean. ” When a white person dies the children inherit whatever their parent left them. Money. Houses. Investments and retirement money the parent didn’t get a chance to spend. Well, they didn’t earn that, did they? I mean, their parent earned that. Well, our treaty rights are like that. Our grandparents and great-grandparents worked to keep our land and our rights and we get to benefit from that. That’s just how it works. If Chief Migizi or Shabashkung or whoever had called it quits and moved to White Earth we wouldn’t even have a rez. But they stuck it out They stayed when the world was against them. And because of that we have casinos and our fishing rights and our communities and our ceremonies. It’s our inheritance. Why isn’t that fair?
Rez Life by David Treuer, page 107
“Despite how involved in America’s business Indians have been, most people will go a lifetime without ever knowing an Indian or spending any time on an Indian reservation. Indian land makes up 2.3 percent of land in the United States…It is pretty easy to avoid us and our reservations. Yet Americans are captivated by Indians. Indians are part of the story that America tells itself, from the first Thanksgiving to the Boston Tea Party up through Crazy Horse, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and Custer’s Last Stand…No one in America today is untouched by our lives.”
– David Treuer, Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life, pp. 24-26 (eBook version)
“In America there were already civilizations. It wasn’t discovered, it was invaded and raided.”
Image source:http://knowledgeequalsblackpower.tumblr.com/
Aminta
“Red Lake Reservation, with nearly 10,000 members, is a huge voting bloc in the region and has the highest voter turnout in the entire county:according to some statistics more than 90 percent of Red Lakers go to the polls.” – Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life by: David Treuer ( pg. 826/4966 kindle version.)
Aminta
Img source :http://riverazurisadai.tumblr.com/
Why Is Michelle Williams in Redface? – Jezebel
In light of what we watched in Reel Injun on Friday, this article seemed to coincidental not to post here. In it, Ruth Hopkins nicely outlines exactly what is wrong with cultural appropriation and why it is so damaging. She also expresses a sentiment about redface we’ve often heard about blackface – it doesn’t matter what the occasion, it’s always going to be wrong. Always.
– Nisa
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- “1 in 3 Native Women Will Be Raped in Their Lifetime” Download this slide and help raise awareness.
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- “39% of American Indian and Alaska Native Women Will Be Subject To Violence By An Intimate Partner In Their Lifetimes”
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- “1 in 3 Native Women Will Be Raped in Their Lifetime”
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- “3 out of 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have been assaulted in their lifetimes.”
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- “On Some Reservations, Native Women Are Murdered at More Than Ten Times the National Average” Download this slide and help raise awareness.
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- “On Some Reservations, Native Women Are Murdered At More Than Ten Times The National Average”
Download These Slides and Take Your Picture with Them To Help Raise Awareness
I recalled seeing this post on my personal tumblr, and after seeing the “Indian women in Alaska are two and a half times more likely than white women to be the victims of sexual assault” from Rez Life, I thought it belonged here too (150).
Computer Blue: vawa – a black feminist dissent
This year, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been struggling for re-authorization because Republicans have been blocking sections that create policy specific to supporting Native, immigrant, and LGBT survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Specifically, these sections help make…
“Some Indians don’t have reservations, but all reservations have Indians, and all reservations have signs. There are tribal areas in Brazil, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, among many other countries. But reservations as we know them are, with the exception of Canada, unique to America. You can see these signs in more than thirty of the states, but most of them are clustered in the last places to be permanently settled by Europeans: The Great Plains, the Southwest, the Northwest and along the border stretching from Montana to New York… There are twelve reservations in the United States bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Nine Reservations are bigger than Delaware…” David Treuer, Rez Life
picture: http://serc.carleton.edu/images/research_education/nativelands/nezperce/_1139622185.jpg
-Aisha
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
Cultural appropriation is the use of an aspect of a culture – religious/political holidays, clothing, jewelry, music, language, etc. – by a non-member of that culture who ignores its cultural, political and historical significance. The act of cultural appropriation takes power and privilege: the power to take the easy and beautiful aspects of a marginalized culture and use them, generally without being questioned, and the privilege to ignore or give back everything politically or religiously significant, meaningful or historically difficult associated with that marginalized culture.
From: cultural appropriation 101
-Aisha
Rape on Native American Reservations
Here’s a bit of a follow-up on the disturbing quote from Truer’s Rez Life posted above. “[Rape] is more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women,” says Sioux health advocate Charon Asetoyer.
“Indian women in Alaska are two and a half times more likely than white women to be the victims of sexual assault. When Indian women are raped or assaulted by another Indian on tribal land the tribal police can intervene and arrest the perpetrators. Well and good. But they cannot arrest, detain, or investigate a crime perpetrated on an Indian woman by a non-Indian. It is a widely held sentiment in Oklahoma that local law enforcement is not as invested in solving rapes of and assaults against Indian women….Allotment made our land a checkerboard, and as a result we lack complete control of the land; so, too, we lack complete control of our rights and lives.”
David Truer, Rez Life, 150-151.
image of Red Lake reservation, taken from http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/living-or-surviving-on-native-american-reservations-57073
Racial Americana 