Sarah Deer reading

The point that Sarah Deer makes in Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime which I will be grappling with in this blog is that sexual violence towards native women and children perpetrated by government workers is a continuation of colonization. Deer points out that the rate at which native women are sexually assaulted is higher than in any other population. This is a result of the lack of government accountability, and the stripping of native tribe’s power to enforce their own justice system.

In order to see sexual violence as a tool of colonization we must understand the metaphoric (but also very literal) way in which native women’s bodies represent land. The federal system not adequately investigating sexual assault allegations put forth by native women and children is an example of our nation’s ongoing legacy of colonization. Sexual violence is a form of control psychologically, emotionally and physically. One of the goals of the white settlers in the beginning of the nation’s legacy of colonization was for Native Americans to disappear or become “extinct”, rape is one of the ways to make this possible. Rape is a form of control over not just Native women but Native people as a whole.

Survivors of sexual violence overwhelmingly do not have a way heal or feel a sense of justice within our nation’s criminal justice system. Native women’s assaults are taken even less seriously than a middle class white woman’s assault, just one reason being that Native Women are almost non-existent in public discourse due to the belief that Native People do not exist. (which was created by our nation’s legacy colonization in the first place) On top of that, native survivors by law (Oliphant v. Suquamish) are not able to have their tribe prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians.

In order for sexual violence against native women to be a form of colonization, we must understand that women’s bodies are seen as the land. (“Mother Earth” or “Mother Nature”, the Earth is a woman even in the general population’s understanding) I wanted to talk briefly about environmental racism and how it is a form of violence upon specifically native women reproductive health which in the long run effects entire native communities. An example of environmental racism in practice would be the dumping of toxins by large corporations into bodies of water near tribal land.These toxins then directly affect women’s health and their children’s health. This in my eyes is another way our nation’s legacy of colonization continues on into the present. The photo below is a depiction of the connections between the environmental justice movement and the reproductive Justice movement.

While reading Sarah Deer’s piece and thinking intersectionally about movements we have been talking about in our class, I’m thinking about how coalitions between immigrant rights activists and indigenous rights activists can exist. Is it possible since the very nature of what both groups of people are fighting for contradict one another? Are there any intersections between them?