Sexual Violence And American Indian Genocide

Chapter 1, Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide, discusses the history of and gives us an introduction to genocide. The author talks about the treatment of bodies, in particular Native bodies, and how colonial thought and theory regards Native people as inherently “rapable” and “violable,” a colonial conviction that stretches past the physical bodies of Natives, to Native independence and lands as well. She explains that patriarchy is the foundation by which power is established over Native women's bodies because hierarchal, patriarchal authority and control systems of society are seldom found within native societies. Europeans, on the other hand, have long depended on these methods to suppress and infuse fear into their people.

From as early as the time of the early European settlers, Native Americans have suffered tremendously. Native Americans during the time of the early settlers where treated very badly. Europeans did what they wanted with the Native Americans, and when a group of Native Americans would stand up for themselves, the European would quickly put them down. The Native Americans bow and arrows where no match for the Europeans guns and cannon balls. When the Europeans guns didn’t work for the Europeans, the disease they bought killed the Native Americans even more effectively.

Native Americans were deeply effected by colonization. It was extremely unfair of the Europeans to destroy Native American way of life. If the Native Americans had the weapons, like guns and disease, that the Europeans did, then maybe they could have fought for what was theirs. Europeans came to America and changed the Native Americans lives forever. This contact between the Native Americans and Europeans was called the Columbian Exchange. While both Native Americans and Europeans received advantages and disadvantages from the Columbian Exchange, Native Americans definitely suffered more while the Europeans were benefited

Although this course is about global women’s movements, the overall argument in which I intend on taking for the purpose of this book review is that besides women, First Nations men are also victims of oppression. In addition to oppression, first nations are often stereotyped by society. Rice’s book does a good job on reflecting this idea once again, through the use of first person point of view stories. It allows the reader to really understand how these stereotypes affect the everyday lives of First Nations people. Before getting into how stereotyping affects the lives of these people, we will begin with looking into oppression and how it relates to the textbook.

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

The Native Americans suffered during the Louisiana purchase by having more of their land taken away. There were some tribes that the colonists did not interact with, thus with the expansion of territory, they began to find them as a problem. The government on a national level was trying to acquire even more land, they did so by

Native Americans have been oppressed by numerous entities including the government, businesses, and white settlers

Colonialism is an ongoing practice that is marginalizing indigenous communities because of their race, class, gender, and sexuality. Qwo-li Driskill et al quoted Rayna Green claiming “that colonial discourses represent Native women as sexually available for white men’s pleasure” (34). From their first contact the Europeans through to the present day, Aboriginal, Indigenous, and First Nations women have been categorized and seen as Other. Sarah Hunt employs in her analysis a form of postcolonial critique used by Edward Said, who argues in Orientalism (1978) that there exist constructs of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes towards racialized others, including Indigenous groups, rooted in Eurocentric prejudice, serving as an implicit

Native Americans were affected negatively in the United States Western Expansion. The Americans stripped the Natives from their culture, land, and the buffalo. From all that Native Americans onced lived all over the West were now living on reservations. The Natives suffered at the Sand Creek massacre, which killed over 200 Native Americans. Also another battle that affected the Native Americans negatively was the Battle of Little Bighorn. The battle was over the Sioux’s right to Sioux land with Sitting Bull as the Sioux war chief and spiritual leader and George A. Cluster as the commander of U.S troops. It wasn’t just land that affected the Natives it was also their culture. Natives boys had their culture stripped away. There clothes,

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.

She also talks about the Native feminist ethics, which brings understanding of the cultural perspectives of leadership under the spotlight. In this respect, I think understanding of Native women’s traditional gender functions, roles and responsibilities is crucial in perceiving Indigenous feminism. This is because I think in many tribal societies such as the Pashtun tribal societies in the northwestern FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) perceive gender roles and responsibilities as complementary. The FATA areas and the colonial government system were creation of the British colonizers. This example is very much relevant to the case of Native societies that were/are colonized in North America because the British colonial rulers applied the similar methods to control and regulate Pashtun tribes in the FATA areas. In comparison to the CFR Courts to implement the Code of Indian Offences in Canada, the colonizers introduced and enforced the FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulations) in the FATA areas on the Pakistani side of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this colonial structure, the Political Agent system implemented the FCR in which, for example, because of one tribal individual the entire tribe was punished. Unfortunately, the FCR is still very much alive and is being used the way many colonial laws are currently implemented in Canada and

Since the beginning of the colonial process, Indigenous bodies have been seen as disposable. The dehumanization of the Indigenous body and the creation of the other, has allowed for the destruction of Indigenous Femininity. A system rooted in epistemic violence created by the colonial era. Continues to affect how Indigenous women are treated in modern societies. The demotion from “Indian Queen”, an exotic and powerful presence in colonial societies, to the “Dirty Squaw”, a figure depicted as lazy, and troublesome. Indigenous women have struggled to be seen as human people, rather than sexual object in the minds of the white settlers. A systematic dehumanization though through the process of epistemic violence. Which continues to affect how Indigenous women are treated today.

Every ethnic group, in addition to possessing their own individual identity, holds the sense of who they are in relation to a larger spectrum, the world. But post colonialism strips away that traditional perspective and examines the dynamic between the aristocratic superpower and the subdued and dejected local inhabitants. This dynamic not only includes the effects of direct colonialism from the colonizers, but the post occupational ramifications on the colonized. (Dobie 208-209) The relationship between the colonizers and the colonized is mainly formed from a forced encounter of violence. The colonizer and pre colonized face off in numerous conflicts and skirmishes to decide the fate of the destiny. After which the victor (superpower) enforces strict laws and culture onto the thwarted colonized.The colonizers reign usually last for a long time, giving partial sovereignty to the colonized, who become the subaltern and accept their position by adopt the colonizer’s culture and laws to survive. This type of dynamic can be seen in Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, where the effects of post colonialism take a toll on the former colonized, causing “ideal justice” and the “best-we-can-do justice”to fall short on their principles when a Native American woman is raped by a white man.

A key contributor to the violence these women face is rooted within colonization, which essentially left the Aboriginal people in a world saturated with inequality. The colonization of Canada led to a great number of alterations to the indigenous peoples’ lifestyle, and eventually resulted in a number of social variables that contribute to violence. Some of these contributing variables include: “younger population, lower educational attainment, increased involvement in precarious work, increased alcohol/drug use, increased family size, and living in smaller, rural communities” (Anderson, n.d). Through residential schools, unfair treaties, and assimilation policies and attempts, it’s clear that throughout history Canada has played a leading role in the marginalization of the Aboriginal people. “While Aboriginal people have been affected as a whole, Aboriginal women have been doubly affected because of this racist ideology and by the

Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a pioneer of Kaupapa Maori Research. I will utilize her second edition of her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (Smith 2012) as a framework. I will compare and contrast what Smith has said in relation to other indigenous women academic’s discourse of race and gender such as Bell Hooks, Leonie Pihama, and myself. Decolonizing Methodologies is an analytical investigation of the role Western academic research contributed to the process of colonization of indigenous peoples, specifically Maori. It also explores intersections of imperialism and history;