Crimes in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

What the frick?

Who the heck didn't firmly tell this 19-year-old man that if you argue after sex, you don't stab the person?

Holy heck!

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure what to say about this case.

I mean, I've been taught by messages in culture all around me that even people who are firmly told not to stab the person who just had sex with someone they've had "committed" sex with stab those people nonetheless.

It's like...somehow this latter story is closer to culturally sanctioned than the former. And I feel kind of weird writing that...yet because I've been so acculturated, I almost can't. Somebody help me sort that out.

And last but not least, there's this story, which is what got me browsing the Strib online in the first place. The state just decided that it could lock away Native Americans who prey [sexually] on...well...anyone, I think, native or not, reservation or not...but in this case, I believe he had preyed on non-Native-Americans off of reservations.
The state says it can lock up Native American sexual offenders in the interest of "public [the off-reservation public, I presume] safety."

Now what I'm wondering is if and how this is going to impact the fight to get Native Americans the power to lock away non-Native-Americans who prey on people on the reservations (either while married/relationshipped into families & living/squatting there or simply by driving onto the land, preying on some women, and leaving).

"Oh, Katie, you're just coming up with parallel hypotheticals to get indignant about." Right?

Nope. It seriously is a problem. Like, a HUGE PROBLEM.

According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men. The Departments data on sexual violence against non-Native women, in contrast, shows that for non-Indigenous victims, sexual violence is usually committed within an individuals own race.

(The numbers: 65.1% against whites is by whites & 89.8% against blacks is by blacks. That's a lot compared to, again, 14% against Native Americans by Native Americans.)

And Native Americans haven't had the power to arrest & lock up these white predators since, oh, the late 1800's.

That's not fair. The law needs to be fixed.

Perhaps it's just a matter of Congress deciding to override Oliphant vs. Suquamish Indian Tribe with a law the way they overrode Duro v. Reina (which prevented Native Americans from arresting & locking up members of other tribes who came onto their reservations & committed crimes) with a law.

I'm open to hearing theories about the best revisions to the laws and Supreme Court rulings (especially Oliphant vs. Suquamish Indian Tribe) that have prevented Native Americans from locking up such people. I am not open to the idea that it's okay to leave those laws & rulings intact.

"To a sexual predator, the failure to prosecute sex crimes against American Indian women is an invitation to prey with impunity."
--Dr David Lisak, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, 29 September 2003

Well, duh. Nevertheless, I included that quote to show why I consider this issue so important. As Amnesty's report says, "None of this is inevitable or irreversible."