Senate hears stories of sexual assault on reservations

Legislators hope to clarify jurisdiction issues

By Mary Clare Jalonick, The Associated Press | Monday, October 01, 2007

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WASHINGTON -- Members of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee told victims of sexual assault Thursday that Congress will try to help decrease violent crimes against women on Indian reservations.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the chairman of the panel, said he will introduce legislation this year to try to lessen some of the confusion about whether state, federal or tribal police can respond when a violent crime is reported.

"This country can't ignore this," Dorgan said. "What's happening is devastating, and we've got to find a way to fix it."

Indian Affairs Committee member Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., said he hoped the hearing would help build policy to ensure the safety of Native women and improve the quality of life for all Native people.

"Native American women experience higher rates of sexual assault and domestic violence than any other demographic in the United States. It is believed that many of these crimes go unreported and that these numbers are not reflective of the actual situation our Native women are facing," Johnson said.

Karen Artichoker, director of Sacred Circle National Resource Center to End Violence Against Native Women, testified about her experience working to help domestic-violence victims on tPine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Artichoker said that violence often goes hand in hand with alcohol abuse, which is another problem on Indian reservations.

"It is a rare Indian woman who has escaped some sort of violence in her life," she said.

Native American women are more than twice as likely to be raped as other women in the U.S., and the suspects often go free because of confusing law-enforcement jurisdictions and a lack of resources, according to an Amnesty International report released earlier this year.

"Native American and Alaska Native women may never get a police response, may never have access to a sexual-assault forensic examination, and, even if they do, they may never see their case prosecuted," Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International, testified.

The hearing is the most recent in a series held by the committee to investigate the lack of law enforcement on Indian reservations.

Jami Rozell, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, testified that she was brutally raped but decided not to press charges after a series of lawyers and officials told her she would be "raped again" by the justice system.

She told senators that several months after the crime, when she summoned the courage to press charges, she was told all of the evidence had been destroyed.

"I have not been able to stand up for myself until now," she said.

Indian reservations, which are often rural and poor and lack large police forces, have long struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and related crimes. Meth has made the problem worse in recent years.

Johnson said there should be a legislative response to the problem and that more money should be spent on tribal law enforcement.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the top Republican on the committee, said she views the Amnesty International report as a "wake-up call."

"We can't continue not to talk about it," she said. "We must expose this for what it is. ... We have got to figure out how we can provide a level of protection, a level of safety."