I have seen a couple of diaries on this subject here in the past couple of weeks. I know both kossacks and other blogs have been very generous. I also know that they are not near enough to their goal of $25,000 and that they are going to need more sustainable funding long after this effort is over. The donation link is at the end of this diary.
So, this diary is to let everyone know just exactly why Pretty Bird Woman House is so incredibly vital to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. It quotes facts, statistics, and heart-wrenching stories about the women of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Unless stated otherwise, quoted material is taken from the Amnesty International report entitled Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA.
We all know that sexual violence is an epidemic, even in the country as a whole. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) every two and a half minutes someone in America is sexually assaulted. But, on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, this epidemic is even worse.
Amnesty International’s interviews with survivors, activists and support workers across the USA suggest that available statistics greatly underestimate the severity of the problem. In the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, for example, many of the women who agreed to be interviewed could not think of any Native women within their community who had not been subjected to sexual violence.
There are many reasons for this. Rape is a crime of power and control, where sex is merely the weapon. Men looking for this control purposely seek out American Indian reservations because they know that even if they are caught, nothing will be done.
In instances in which the suspected perpetrator is non-Indian, federal officials have exclusive jurisdiction. Neither North nor South Dakota state police have jurisdiction over sexual violence against Native American women on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. State police do, however, have jurisdiction over crimes of sexual violence committed on tribal land in instances where the victim and the perpetrator are both non-Indian.
"[N]on-Native perpetrators often seek out a reservation place because they know they can inflict violence without much happening to them."
Andrea Smith, Assistant Professor of Native Studies, University of Michigan
There is also an extremely high incidence of poverty and unemployment on this reservation, which we know is correlated with high rates of violence.
High levels of sexual violence on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation take place in a context of high rates of poverty and crime. South Dakota has the highest poverty rate for Native American women in the USA with 45.3 per cent living in poverty. The unemployment rate on the Reservation is 71 per cent. Crime rates on the Reservation often exceed those of its surrounding areas. According to FBI figures, in 2005 South Dakota had the fourth highest rate of "forcible rapes" of women of any US state.
The women on this reservation often receive no help or services after an incident of sexual assault. The Amnesty International report says that there are no Sexual Assault Response Teams working on or near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Sexual Assault Response Teams (SARTs) consist of law enforcement officers, sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs), support workers and prosecutors. Their overall aim is to increase reporting of and convictions for sexual violence, as well as to support survivors through informed and appropriate responses.
In 2005, the non-governmental organization South Dakota Coalition against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault contributed to the founding of Pretty Bird Woman House, a domestic violence programme on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The programme, which is named after Ivy Archambault (Pretty Bird Woman), a Standing Rock woman who was raped and murdered in 2001, does not yet have a shelter facility or funding for direct services for its clients, but helps women to access services off the Reservation.
Given the rates of violence against women on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, it is imperative that the Reservation has its own shelter. For women in or near the southern part of the Reservation, there are two shelters available: the Sacred Heart Shelter on the Cheyenne River Reservation and Bridges Against Domestic Violence (BADV), which is located in Mobridge, South Dakota. Up to 85 per cent of women using these shelters are Native American and mainly come from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
That is why the sustained funding is so imperitive. This reservation is in dire need of it's own shelter and services. And it needs them because of stories like these:
Rhea, a Native American woman from the Standing Rock Sioux
Reservation (North and South Dakota) told Amnesty International about
the experience of her friend, a 21-year-old Native American woman, who
was raped and severely beaten by four men in February 2003. She said her
friend was initially brought to the Indian Health Service hospital in Fort
Yates but was transferred to a hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota, in a
critical condition, having taken an overdose of anti-diabetic medication
that she found in the house where she had been raped with the apparent
intention of committing suicide. Rhea said: "she just lay there all beat up,
with big black eyes." According to Rhea, a Standing Rock Police
Department (SRPD) officer came to the hospital and questioned her friend
while she could still talk. She died two weeks after the rape. Rhea says she
spoke to the police officer a year later; he told her the rape case was
closed. "The perpetrators are still walking around," she told Amnesty
International, "I don’t know why." The Chief of Police of SRPD told Amnesty
International that they have been unable to find any record of the case.
A Native American woman living on the Standing Rock Sioux
Reservation told Amnesty International that in September 2005 her
partner raped her and beat her so severely that she had to be
hospitalized. He was released on bond and an arrest warrant was issued
after he failed to appear in court. However, SRPD officers did not arrest
him. One morning she woke up to find him standing by her couch
looking at her.
Please do what you can to help these women and this struggling shelter. Even if it's only $5, or a recommend to the diary, or even a phone call to PBWH letting them know that there are people out there who care.
Click here to read more and/or donate.