Robertson suggests that settler colonialism has an agenda to maintain crime by Native Americans in order to continually justify their intrusion on the jurisdiction of Tribal leaders and the further victimization of Native women. One point of reasoning brought up for the victimization of Native women is for the consistent perpetuation of the cycle of the hierarchy heteropatriarchy in the U.S. This is an old-as-time discourse for women of color in this country; their bodies are a constant battle ground for the fight over who will govern it, a tool for the White Man's burden. By allowing for the interruption of national U.S. governance onto tribal law, there will always be room for the perpetuation of a hierarchy between communities.
The only community that can ever really know just how serious the need for justice for Native American Women victims is is Native American communities. Therefore, it only makes sense for jurisdiction to be given to the leaders of these communities to protect their female members. Without this, and without further funding for a tribal law and order, justice cannot be given and crime will always be pushed into pockets of communities to bear the burden of them, rather than tackled as a real issue within the nation.
As I have mentioned, this is not a new concept for other minority groups in the U.S. we have seen a pattern of this, specifically in the black community. Now more than ever, individuals and organizations' have brought about a powerful movement (the Black Lives Matter movement) which has exposed the injustices of black men and women directly perpetuated by police officers and other 'leaders" of our country. Prior to the eruption of this movement, many Americans allowed themselves to live in ignorance regarding the criminalization of black men and women, and chalked it up to violence and criminal activity being an inevitable characteristic of the black culture. With the further pressure to recognize modern black suffrage, we have no opened the door to the fact that the U.S. government strategically uses black bodies to push crime onto one community so as to further incapacitate them. This is what is also happening in Native American communities when their own rights to govern their people in the way they know is best is not an option.
I wonder: Could there ever be an emergence of under-the-rug violence against Native American women if there is not a greater government to watch over things (I'm wondering about this in terms of the abuse of power and how Native American women might be able to promote their inclusion in governmental positions).
This is a great blog. I like the connection to the black lives matter movement. In a previous class, I connected the Trayvon Martin case to the idea of settler colonialism. Obviously, settler colonialism is the white ownership of land. By Trayvon walking through a gated community that housed majority white families, he was intruding on their land. But, in this case, the sexual violence in native communities is wanted so that the U.S can intrude. The purpose of colonialism is to gain sovereignty over land, which is what Robertson mentions on page 11. By continuously being able to intrude on their land, it allows them access to control what happens on it.
ReplyDelete