Minority groups have always been marginalized and bellowed by our current justice system in society within these groups are women, this leads to questioning the role of the justice system in perpetuating violence in for example Native American groups. In the U.S. the justice system has failed to protect these women specifically Native American women from sexual violence, and what worsens the case is that more often than not their attackers are let off easy or escape punishment altogether because of federal, state and tribal jurisdictions. In the Round House by Louise Erdrich which is set in 1988 and in The Beginning and End of Rape by Sarah Deer one can see how the U.S. rape laws fail to provide justice to Native Americans who suffer rape and actually contribute to …show more content…
This is clearly seen when exploring the case of the character Mayla, along with Geraldine’s in the Round House and also analyzing the complications of criminal jurisdiction in Indian country explained in The Beginning and End of Rape. Rape is a crime that continues to obscure the world we live in this continues to be seen in multiple instances and carried through by various different individuals in multiple forms. This is an act in which a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration is carried out against a person without that other person's consent. Rape culture is one that our society is still blinded to and we come to at times ignore the instances it occurs in. That could be because maybe one refuses to believe a loved one could be capable of such monstrosity or at times a victim prefers to stay quiet rather than face the judgment of
Rape Is All Prospective In comparing Camille Paglia’ essay Rape: A Bigger Danger than Feminists Know and Susan Jacoby ’s essay Common Decency, it is clear that both of them feel rape has many factors that involve a male and a woman and the lines of sex between them. Is it mixed signals? Is it respect?
Domestic violence and abuse can happen to anyone, yet the problem is overlooked, excused, or denied, like the case of Native American women. Until, March 2015, there is no loaw to help Native American women when their non-Native American husbands or boyfriends abuse them when the act takes place on the resveration and even when the law is passed there is still no law to stop non- Native Americans who are strangers from commiting these crimes on the reservation. What makes someone think that just because the law can't touch you when commiting such a crime against Native Americans that it's okay to hurt them on the reservation? It doesn't. These women are just as important as the rest of us, so it's time to stand up and stop abuse from happening to all of us, regardless of our gender, race, sexual orentation, or age. Abuse is abuse, let's team up and do something about it.
United States laws prohibit tribal councils from charging white people with crimes which occur on reservation land. This oversight becomes prominent in The Round House, when Geraldine, a Native American woman, is raped by a white man. Although in this case the whereabouts and jurisdiction of the rape is unknown, it is still treated differently due to their races. Joe describes this situation, “because it wasn’t clear… who had committed it--an Indian or a non-Indian. I already knew, too, that these questions would not change the facts. But they would inevitably change the way we sought justice” (Erdrich 12). At that point they were unsure of who had raped Geraldine, but Joe still knew that once this was revealed, it would determine how they went forward with the case. When it became known that Linden had raped Geraldine, they realized that the case would be much harder to go through with. This law actually benefits white perpetrators as it makes it less likely for them to be tried or receive a sentence. Geraldine’s case ends up not going to court and Linden is left without any legal reparations. This negligence can also be seen in American society. Many women have been raped on college campuses and forced to suffer even more after their rapist is let go with little charges. One instance of this is the Brock Turner
For decades, when a Native American woman has been assaulted or raped by a man who is non-Indian, she has had little or no recourse. Under long-standing law in Indian country, reservations are sovereign nations with their own police departments and courts in charge of prosecuting crimes on tribal land. But Indian police have lacked the legal authority to arrest non-Indian men who commit acts of domestic violence against native women on reservations, and tribal courts have lacked the authority to prosecute the men.
In addition to being victims of poverty, these female protagonists also suffer as victims of their gender. In her book, Feminist Readings of Native American Literature: Coming to Voice, Katherine M. Donovan wrote, “Although [Native American women] face many of the same problems as their male counterparts – alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment, poverty, suicide, loss of tradition and identity – they also face problems that are distinctly female-gendered: a loss of power and esteem in formerly matrilineal cultures; the trauma of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse from Native and non-Native men” (Donovan 18) First Nation women had very few rights in the 1900s and their issues drew very little attention. Even today, many First Nation’s women are murdered and raped without much police or media attention. In the 1940s until the 1980s, the setting of these books, their rights and attention to their issues would have been even fewer, and many men will have taken advantage of First Nation women.
Psychologists usually agree that the teenage years are among the most difficult periods in one’s life. Most teens are trying to figure out who they are, what they believe, and how they fit into the world around them. Beginning in the late 1970’s, a whole genre of fiction, referred to as coming-of-age literature, emerged and serves, at least for many teens, as believable presentations of young people learning to navigate the difficulties of their lives, often fraught with feelings of rejection, seemingly unresolvable personal turmoil, social problems, school and family issues, etc. Indeed one value of reading is to see and better understand some aspect of ourselves through studying others. The reading of SPEAK, a somewhat controversial book
According to the author of an article entitled “Shattered Hearts,” violence and human trafficking against Native American women is deeply rooted from the colonial history of oppression. The U.S. Government’s extermination policies, religious persecution, resulted in the establishment of Native American reservations and the movement of Native children to boarding schools. These actions created an ongoing wave of new traumas in the lives of both native children and their families. Native Americans continue to carry
No one wants to hear stories about domestic violence and sexual assault, but it’s a big issue that needs to be heard out, especially for Native American women. It is estimated that over thirty percent of women in the general United States population have experienced domestic abuse and an even higher percentage for just sexual assault, many of which are based on women of color, which primarily consists of natives. This problem has been around for too long and there’s still limited resources for abuse victims, which needs to change. Too many women are put through abuse which could be prevented if more people knew and were educated on what is happening and sexual assault as a whole.
“Before the rape I felt good. My life was in order. I was getting ready to get married. Afterward everything changed. I kind of lost who I was as a person…
Andrea Smith’s book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide read passionately about Native American Indians experiences relative to violence and related topics. Part of Smith’s goal is to aid understanding of Native women’s plight and spotlight how treating their sufferings separately was limiting the pain they lived through to this day. Smith pointed out that though other writers have keen interest in bringing native women’s plight mainstream, these writers fell short of taking an intersectional look at how sexual violence, race, and gender connected equally to the Native women’s history. She believed separating these issues was wrong. Smith cited theorist Kimberlee Crenshaw, (Smith 7) a woman of color, for pointing this issue out.
A Native American woman is two point five times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault(amnesty,1). If that fact wasn’t bad enough in only 2008,39% of Native American women said they were victims of domestic violence (Futures Without Violence,2). Even though the numbers are that high, if someone were to ask everyday people in the mall “what racial community has the highest rape and abuse rates?” most of them would draw a blank. The problem with society is the U.S. places importance by the color of skin, so the order the reports will come out in will leave Native American women hanging because any reports made about the sexual assault and domestic violence are only cared about by few, and often those
I am writing you today as a young woman concerning the lack of attention towards the violence against women in retrospect to the Native American population. The fear of being a victim of assault as a young women is prominent within the society in which we live today. However, there is some relief in the fact that there are resources available at my disposal if I was to experience assault. Yet, there is a large portion of women that do not have that reassurance, and the likelihood of them experiencing assault is even greater than my own. This portion of the women population is Native American women. I will admit that the severity of the issue in concerns with the native population is something that I just recently became aware of. et I have
Throughout history, women have continuously found themselves as the subjects of oppression. Although the treatment of women has drastically changed over time, women are still exposed to much of the violence that exists today. Per the National Organization for Women, “young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape” (National Organization for Women, 2016). Women-centered violence is highly prevalent and reoccurring all over the world, even in our local communities. Individuals may be hesitant to consider just how much violence against women affects their communities.
America has a proud history of being a country that has many different ethnicities and cultures living within its borders. But one of the most prevalent cultures is one that transcends race or country of origin, rape culture. The term used by modern day feminist and gender activist defines a culture which normalizes rape and sexual assaults because of the deeply rooted societal attitudes towards gender and sexuality. In a rape culture the instances of rape are accepted as everyday occurrences and even as the prerogative of men, resulting in the stigmatization and blame placing of rape victims. Although the phrase “rape culture” is relatively modern, the
Influenced by the progressing technology and the Industrial Revolution which drove people to urban life, modern art brought an emphasis on originality, innovation and looking at things with a different perspective. One of the major themes of Modernism was to abandon old ideas and produce new ways of creating art. Postmodernism movement developed between the later 1960s and the 1990s that revived earlier styles that artists could sample, adopt and recycle in order to create new, contemporary pieces and ideas. In the lecture for Modernism, the piece that made me think the most was Rene Magritte’s The Rape. This piece shows a women's portrait with her face missing and a female body shown as the face. Rene Magritte created this piece in reaction