Women warriors take on domestic violence and sexual assault

[ccharles000]

From North Dakota to Arizona, strong, talented, accomplished Native American women are taking up the challenge of protecting themselves and their sisters, their mothers and aunts, their grandmothers and granddaughters, from the devastation of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The level of violence against women and children in the U.S. is appalling, and the numbers for Native American women and children are staggering. An estimated one in three Native American women will suffer a sexual assault in her lifetime, compared with one in six for the population as a whole, according to figures from the U.S. Justice Department.

“Crimes against Indian women and children strike at the very heart of tribal sovereignty,” reads the 2007 Senate Indian Affairs Committee concept paper on law and order that identified domestic violence and sexual assault as one of the five critical areas in which law enforcement in Indian country was failing.

Following the release of the paper in November 2007, the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2008 was introduced in the Senate and the House July 23, 2008. The last action on the bill was Sept. 18, 2008, when the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held hearings. The bill didn’t pass and was reintroduced in the 111th Congress April 2. The Senate held a hearing on the proposed legislation June 25. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has scheduled another hearing for mid-September, and the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women is considering a Tribal Consultation Oct. 30 in Minneapolis.

Congress is expected to be absorbed in health care reform and climate-change legislation this fall.

But in North Dakota, Linda Thompson and her colleagues at the First Nations Women’s Alliance and its member organizations are organizing themselves to be more effective in supporting – and healing – the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault on the four North Dakota Indian reservations.

http://viigo.im/0Vd5

[ccharles000]

1. kick

[alittlelark]

2. Members of the Jemez tribe in NM are doing something similar.

It is under the radar - but is producing results.

[imdjh]

3. I look through the arrests every day.

I don't see a lot of black men in there for domestic violence. Why? My guess would be because black women of a certain demographic will beat the shit out of a man. I see white men, white women, even the occasional Asian in there for domestic battery. I don't see a lot of black men in the mugs for domestic. They are in there, for sure, at about double or better their representation in the population, they are in there for assault, burglary , violent crimes,rape, murder, theft, you name it- but not much domestic.

There must be some special dynamic to poorish black households.