[Thunderwolf]

• Crime victimization rates in the American Indian community are significantly higher than in the general U.S. population. As a result of these high rates of violence, American Indian women are at high risk of homicide, including domestic violence. Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for Native women. Of Native American women murdered, over 75% were killed by a family member, an acquaintance, or someone they knew.
• The frequency of battering in Indian Country is believed to be much higher than the national norm. American Indians, in general, experience per capita rates of violence that are more than twice those of the resident population.
• American Indian women experience the highest rate of violence of any group in the United States.
• American Indian women stand a high risk of losing their children in instances of physical and sexual abuse.
• Three-fourths of American Indian women have experienced some type of sexual assault in their lives.
• Abusive relationships are based on the mistaken belief that one person has the right to control another.
• When the non violent methods of control fail to work, the person in power moves on to actual physical and sexual violence. The relationship is based on the exercise of power to gain and maintain control.
• 47% of women will be raped in their lifetime.
• 50% of women will be battered by their spouse/partner.
• 40% of women in prison for felonies are there because they killed an abusive partner/spouse.
• Women of color are 64% of the female prison population and serve longer sentences for the same crime as do white women or men of color.
• In the 1970s, it is estimated that 30% of all Puerto Rican women, and 25-40% of American Indian women were sterilized without their informed consent.
• Two-thirds of college men report they would consider raping a woman if they thought they would get away with it.
• Around 50,000 women per year are illegally trafficked into the US, where they end up in sex industries, domestic work, and sweatshops.
• The life expectancy of Native women in the US is 47 years.
• The International Human Rights Association of American Minorities has documented that more than 50,000 Native children have been killed in Indian residential schools.
  

To read the rest of the article:
http://aihc1998.tripod.com/violence.html

[sirI]

These statistics saddened me, Thunderwolf.

[Thunderwolf]

Tis saddening. Yet, it is meant to enlighten that there is yet much to do.

Be strong.

[elizabells]

I am glad to see this thread, though of course not glad of its content. I can't post it here because it is copyrighted, but Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues recently came to include a heartbreaking peace on domestic violence among native women entitled "The Crooked Braid". I highly recommend that folks seek this out and sit with it for a while.

[Medicine Eagle]

Well, although the stats sadden me. I will not become a part of them. I have been the victim of abuse many times in my life, and as a grown woman I won't be again! I keep a shot gun in my home and would not hesitate to use it. I will not spend my life looking over my shoulder! I was forced to get a restraining order against the father of my daughter. I only did so as a warning to him. He knows better than to come to my home. I would not want to be forced to use my gun but I would. And I will be taking my gun with me on my assignment. I had a friend that was a police officer, he told me that they just got there in time to clean up the mess. He recomended to all women to keep a gun in the home. just my personal opinion. Stats say that if you leave an abusive S.O. or spouse that you are at more risk of being killed. I personally don't want to become a stat. I think that women have to protect themselves. Just my