Native Americans face high sex-assault rate

One in three Native American women will be raped or sexually assaulted at some point in her life, a rate more than double that for non-Indian women, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The report, “Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA,” noted a variety of reasons that rape and sexual assault are so prevalent on reservations.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Oliphant v. the Suquamish Indian Tribe that tribal governments have no criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. When a crime is committed, tribal police and their non-Indian counterparts must hash out whether the suspect is Indian or not.

Tribal governments lack the funds and staffing to patrol their lands, the report said. At the million-acre Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which straddles North and South Dakota, seven police officers are on duty.

“It is extremely frustrating,” said Jason O’Neal, chief of the Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Department in south-central Oklahoma. “It’s confusing for the victim because they don’t know who they should be calling. A victim of domestic violence may call 911, the sheriff’s office or our office.”

As a result, victims are reluctant to report attacks because of these circumstances, the report said. When they do, their cases are often mishandled. Health facilities on native lands are so underfunded that many nurses are not trained to counsel victims of sexual assault or to use a police rape kit to gather evidence.

The Bush administration is aware of law enforcement problems in Indian country, said Christopher Chaney, deputy director of the Office of Justice Services for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and has budgeted an extra $16 million to help tribal police.

But most of the money is for drug enforcement, public awareness campaigns and corrections officers, not the rape problem.

“Domestic violence is up because of methamphetamine use on Indian lands,” Chaney said. Rape, he said, “was a problem long before methamphetamine, but methamphetamine is making it worse.”

Amnesty International’s study was carried out in 2005 and 2006, drawing on victim interviews, questionnaires to law enforcement officials, and numerous reports. More than 86 percent of sexual attacks against Native American women are carried out by nonnative men, most of them white, according to the Justice Department.

The Amnesty study focused on three areas: Oklahoma, Alaska and the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. But its findings, said Virginia Davis, associate counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, are reflective of Indian country nationwide.