Love Medicine Analysis

Domestic violence against women is prevalent in almost all the societies in the world. It is an issue which was not even recognised as a crime 40 years ago and is still not recognized as a crime by many societies. Women suffer from violence, including physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological violence by strangers and their partners all over the world (Kaya, 2010). Even though it is a worldwide occurrence, there are some women who face more intense and frequent violence depending on their culture, country, religion,

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

In her novel, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, Deborah A. Miranda theorizes that the underlying patronage of her father’s violent behavior arises from the original acts of violence carried out by the Spanish Catholic Church during the era of missionization in California. The structure of her novel plays an essential role in the development of her theory, and allows her to further generalize it to encompass the entire human population. “In this beautiful and devastating book, part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems.” Patching together every individual source to create the story of a culture as a whole, Miranda facilitates the task of conceptualizing how Societal Process Theory could play into the domestic violence she experiences growing up as the daughter of a California Indian.

In the article “Domestic violence against indigenous women is everybody’s problem” domestic violence is depicted as a serious social problem that involves “unspeakable acts of violence” that leaves victims experiencing fear and despair (Taylor 2014). More specifically, the social construction of domestic violence will be discussed with an emphasis on Aboriginal women and a typology of intimate partner violence. The social construction of domestic violence has serious implications for victims of domestic abuse because there is a failure to address the processes that perpetuate the violence. Instead, domestic violence is addressed through the illusion of social support. What is evident is that domestic violence is a social problem that requires comprehensive services, particularly for indigenous women, to address the complexity of the interaction between the individual’s social location and the causes that lead to the violence.

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.

Janie’s first relationship gives us a general idea of how women were treated during this time. Her journey towards independence begins with a guilt-centered marriage to a man much older than Janie, who is thought of as a provider. Logan, Janie’s husband, is thought of as a provider because he embodies the idea that women do not have the capability to provide for themselves. Moreover, it shows that society believes women need a man to take care of them. This is a strong component to the patriarchal sense that women must rely on men, thus, taking away their power.

Domestic abuse often escalates from threats, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse to physical abuse. While physical injury may be the most obvious sign, the emotional and psychological consequences of domestic abuse are also severe, because relationships wit emotional abuse can destory your self-worth, lead to anxiety and depression, and make you feel helpless and alone, Which is the case for the Native American women, when they are abused and knowing that right now the law can't touch the person who did the abuse to them, because it happend on the reservation and their police by law of the government can't touch the suspect. So, these women feel helpless and

Deborah Parker, a former member of the Tulalip tribe’s board of directors, now a speaker and activist for social justice for indigenous women, says that there is no domestic violence education in reservation schools. By not teaching what is happening in these kid’s tribes, the cycle of abuse may continue, and more and more generations of Native women will have to endure the abuse. The cycle will be broken if more people are aware of the issue. First, there was the National Domestic Violence Hotline with additional hotlines focused on certain areas of abuse, now there are hotlines specifically aimed at helping Native American women along with Alaskan Natives. These resources help in many ways, whether it’s just communication and therapy, or helping these women out of their situations if needed.

Her research allows for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of societal perception of Indigenous women in relation to rates of violence. The supportive evidence contributes to a logical analysis of one aspect of intersectional theory, and clearly demonstrates an underlying cause to the treatment of Indigenous

If government officials are truly interested in assisting Indigenous communities in dealing with the violence in their communities, they should demonstrate this commitment by developing a national strategy to curb violence against Indigenous women. Special attention should be paid to the way race, gender, and power intersects in the violence faced by Indigenous women. Furthermore, as specifically mentioned by Professor Adam Jones of UBC Okanagan, the structural violence of their continuing poverty, discrimination and dispossession from ancestral territories, as well as the echoing trauma of the residential-school genocide needs to be assessed (Jones). Significantly, to address violence against Indigenous women successfully,

Violence against women has existed for centuries and women experience violence in many setting; however, domestic violence is the most prevalent. Abela and Walker (2014) explain that the women’s right movement took place because women were maltreated and oppressed (78). They state that the victimization of women was the reason why the second wave of the feminist movement arose. They also explain that during this time, laws in the Untied States allow men to hit their wives (Abela & Walker 79). Women from different cultures and different economic status have been victims of domestic violence. In this paper, I will focus on domestic violence against women from different cultures. I will present information about the history of domestic violence

Despite representing a small portion of the population, Indigenous women are overrepresented as victims of violence, including physical, sexual and IPV (Brownridge, 2008). In a study conducted between 1999-2004 which measured the prevalence of physical violence in domestic settings among Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in Canada, Indigenous women were found to have experienced a significantly higher incidence of violence than their non-Indigenous counterparts (Brownridge, 2008). Findings from the study also suggested that during the five years prior to 2004, 10.5% of Indigenous women reported violence relative to 3.5% of non-Indigenous women (Brownridge, 2008). The study also examined risk factors that contributed to the likelihood of experiencing violence. They identified the following as risk factors: high rates of unemployment, co-habilitation/common-law partnership, rural residence, alcohol abuse and patriarchal dominance.

In the article “A Healthy Balance: Religion, Identity, and Community in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine” by Karla Sanders, argues that the Native American people are having a hard time finding themselves through the community, religion, and identity because of other traditions are becoming more prominent than theirs. Sanders relies on the article “Reading between Worlds: Narrativity in the fiction of Louise Erdrich” by Catherine Rainwater. Rainwater helps construct Sanders article by providing examples in the story. The examples Rainwater pinpoints helps clarify how Native Americans are dealing with the interference of another religion. Also, another article that Sander used to establish her article was “Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine: Loving

Butler presents another challenge to ordinary thinking about gender when she presents the Ina as a matriarchal society. The venom of female Ina is significantly more potent than male venom. In addition, male Ina become dependent on Female Ina for procreation. “Once they’re addicted, they aren’t fertile with other females, and from time to time, they need their females.” (Butler 89) The characterization of the Ina society as a matriarchy as well as the fact that Ina men are dependent on Ina women is evidence that the “monsters” in Fledgling obscure gender roles that are prevalent in traditional American society.

For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.