[m2c] Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide by Andrea Smith (part 4)

[usman x]

Chpater 1 from "Conuest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide"
by Andrea Smith. 2005. pgs 7-34

Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide
(continued ... Part 4)

Today we see this discourse utilized in the "war on terror." To
justify the bombing of Afghanistan, Laura Bush declared, "The fight
against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of
women."79 These sentiments were shared by mainstream feminists.
Eleanor Smeal, former president of the National Organization for Women
(NOW) and founder and president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority
said, "Without 9/11, we could not get the Afghanistan tragedy in focus
enough for the world powers to stop the Taliban's atrocities or to
remove the Taliban. Tragically, it took a disaster for them to act
definitively enough."80

It seems the best way to liberate women is to bomb them. Meanwhile,
the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), whose
members were the very women who were to be liberated by this war,
denounced it as an imperial venture.

     RAWA has in the past repeatedly warned that the U.S. government
     is no friend of the people of Afghanistan, primarily because
     during the past two decades she did not spare any effort or
     expense in training and arming the most sordid, the most
     treacherous, the most misogynic and anti-democratic indigenous
     Islamic fundamentalist gangs and innumerable crazed Arab fanatics
     in Afghanistan and in unleashing them upon our people. After the
     retreat of the Russian aggressors and the collapse of Najib's
     puppet regime in Afghanistan these fundamentalist entities became
     all the more wildly unbridled. They officially and wholeheartedly
     accepted the yoke of servitude to the interests of foreign
     governments, in which capacity they have perpetrated such crimes
     and atrocities against the people of Afghanistan that no parallel
     can be found in the history of any land on earth.

     RAWA roundly condemns the U.S. air strikes against Afghanistan
     because the impoverished masses of Afghanistan — already trapped
     in the dog-fighting between the US's Taliban and Jihadi flunkeys
     — are the ones who are most hurt in the attacks, and also because
     the US, like the arrogant superpower she is, has violated the
     sovereignty of the Afghan people and the territorial integrity of
     the Afghan homeland.

     The US is against fundamentalist terrorism to the extent and
     until such time as her proper interests are jeopardised;
     otherwise she is all too happy to be a friend and sponsor of any
     fundamentalist-terrorist criminal entity. If the US does not want
     her ridiculous bigotry to show and really wants to eliminate
     fundamentalist terrorism, she should draw lessons from her own
     past myopic policies and realise that the sources of
     fundamentalist terrorism are America's support to the most
     reactionary regimes in Arab and non-Arab countries and her
     military and financial largesse to Afghan fundamentalist
     criminals. Terrorism will be uprooted only when these two sources
     are dried up. 81

So why does a group like the Fund for a Feminist Majority ignore the
voice of RAWA? Again, even within feminist circles, the colonial logic
prevails that women of color, indigenous women, and women from Global
South countries are only victims of oppression rather than organizers
in their own right.

The "assimilation" into white society, however, only increased Native
women's vulnerability to violence. For instance, when the Cherokee
nation was forcibly relocated to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears in
the nineteenth century, soldiers targeted for sexual violence Cherokee
women who spoke English and had attended mission schools instead of
those who had not taken part in these assimilation efforts. They were
routinely gang-raped, causing one missionary to the Cherokee, Daniel
Butrick, to regret that any Cherokee had ever been taught English.82
Homi Bhabha and Edward Said argue that part of the colonization
process involves partially assimilating the colonized in order to
establish colonial rule." That is, if the colonized group seems
completely different from the colonists, they implicitly challenge the
supremacy of colonial rule because they are refusing to adapt the ways
of the colonizers. Hence, the colonized must seem to partially
resemble the colonists in order to reinforce the dominant ideology,
and establish that the way colonizers live is the only good way to
live. However, the colonized group can never be completely assimilated
— otherwise, they would be equal to the colonists, and there would be
no reason to colonize them. If we use Bhabha's and Said's analysis, we
can see that while Cherokee women were promised that assimilation
would provide them with the benefits of the dominant society, in fact
assimilation efforts made them more easily subjugated by colonial
rule.

Historically, white colonizers who raped Indian women claimed that the
real rapists were Indian men.84 Today, white men who rape and murder
Indian women often make this same claim. In the late 1980s, a white
man, Jesse Coulter, raped, murdered, and mutilated several Indian
women in Minneapolis. He claimed to be Indian, adopting the name Jesse
Sittingcrow, and emblazoning an AIM tattoo on his arm.85

Roy Martin, a full-blooded Native man, was charged with sexual assault
in Bemidji, Minnesota. The survivor identified the rapist as white,
about 25 years old, with a shag haircut. Martin was 35 with hair past
his shoulders.86 In a search of major newspaper coverage of sexual
assaults in Native communities from 1998 to 2004, I found coverage
almost entirely limited to cases where Native man (or a white man who
purports to be Native) was the suspected perpetrator and the victim
was a white woman; there was virtually no coverage of Native women as
victims of sexual assault. This absence is even more startling when
one considers that Native women are more likely than other groups of
women in the U.S. to be sexual assault victims.87

Similarly, after the Civil War, Black men in the U.S. were targeted
for lynching for their supposed mass rapes of white women. The racist
belief was that white women needed to be protected from predatory
Black men, when in fact, Black women needed protection from white men.
In her investigations of lynches that occurred between 1865 and 1895,
anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells calculated that more than 10,000
Black people had been lynched. During that same period, not one white
person was lynched for raping or killing a Black person.88 In
addition, while the ostensible reason for these lynches was to protect
white women from Black rapists, Wells discovered that only a third of
those lynched had even been accused of rape. And most of the black men
accused of rape had been involved in obviously consensual sexual
relationships with white women.89

Of course, Indian men do commit acts of sexual violence. After years
of colonialism and boarding school experience, violence has been
internalized within Indian communities. However, this view of the
Indian man as the "true" rapist serves to obscure who has the real
power in this racist and patriarchal society. Thus, the colonization
of Native women (as well as other women of color) is part of the
project of strengthening white male ownership of white women.

And while the era of Indian massacres in their more explicit form has
ended in North America, the wholesale rape and mutilation of
indigenous women's bodies continues. During the 1982 massacre of Mayan
people in the Aldea Rio Negro (Guatemala), 177 women and children were
killed. The young women were raped in front of their mothers, and the
mothers were killed in front of their children. The younger children
were then tied at the ankles and dashed against the rocks until their
skulls were broken. This massacre, committed by the Guatemalan army,
was funded by the U.S. government.90

In a 1997 massacre in Chiapas, Mexico, indigenous women were targeted
by paramilitary forces for sexual mutilation, gang rape, and torture.
Amnesty International reports that torture against indigenous peoples
in Latin America is routine, including electric shocks,
semi-asphyxiation with plastic bags or by submersion under water,
death threats, mock executions, beatings using sharp objects, sticks,
or rifle butts, rape, and sexual abuse.91

One wonders why the mass rapes in Guatemala, Chiapas, or elsewhere
against indigenous people in Latin America does not spark the same
outrage as the rapes in Bosnia in the 1990s. In fact, feminist legal
scholar Catherine MacKinnon argues that in Bosnia, "The world has
/never/ seen sex used this consciously, this cynically, this
elaborately, this openly, this systematically...as a means of
destroying a whole people [emphasis mine]."92 Here, MacKinnon seems to
have forgotten that she lives on this land because millions of Native
peoples were raped, sexually mutilated, and murdered. Is mass rape
against European women genocide, while mass rape against indigenous
women is business as usual?

The historical context of rape, racism, and colonialism continues to
impact women in North America as well. This legacy is most evident in
the rate of violence in American Indian communities — American Indian
women are twice as likely to be victimized by violent crime as women
or men of any other ethnic group. In addition, 60 percent of the
perpetrators of violence against American Indian women are white.93

In times of crisis, sexual violence against Native women escalates.
When I served as a nonviolent witness for the Chippewa spearfishers
who were being harassed by white racist mobs in the 1980s, one white
harasser carried a sign that read, "Save a fish; spear a pregnant
squaw." During the 1990 Mohawk crisis in Quebec, Canada, a white mob
surrounded an ambulance carrying a Native woman who was attempting to
leave the Mohawk reservation because she was hemorrhaging after giving
birth. She was forced to "spread her legs" to prove she had delivered
a baby. The police at the scene refused to intervene. An Indian man
was arrested for "wearing a disguise" (he was wearing jeans), and was
brutally beaten at the scene, with his testicles crushed. Two women
from Chicago Women of All Red Nations (WARN) went to Oka to videotape
the crisis. They were arrested and held in custody for 11 hours
without being charged, and were told that they could not go to the
bathroom unless the male police officers could watch. The place they
were held was covered with pornographic magazines.

This colonial desire to subjugate Indian women's bodies was quite
apparent when, in 1982, Stuart Kasten marketed "Custer's Revenge," a
videogame in which players got points each time they, in the form of
Custer, raped an Indian woman. The slogan of the game is "When you
score, you score." He describes the game as "a fun sequence where the
woman is enjoying a sexual act willingly." According to the
promotional material:

     You are General Custer. Your dander's up, your pistol's wavin'.
     You've hog-tied a ravishing Indian maiden and have a chance to
     rewrite history and even up an old score. Now, the Indian
     maiden's hands may be tied, but she's not about to take it lying
     down, by George! Help is on the way. If you're to get revenge
     you'll have to rise to the challenge, dodge a tribe of flying
     arrows and protect your flanks against some downright mean and
     prickly cactus. But if you can stand pat and last past the
     strings and arrows—You can stand last. Remember? Revenge is
     sweet.94

Sexual violence as a tool of racism also continues against other women
of color. Trafficking in women from Asian and other Global South
countries continues unabated in the U.S. According to the Central
Intelligence Agency, 45,000 to 50,000 women are trafficked in the U.S.
each year.95 In addition, there are over 50,000 Filipina mail-order
brides in the U.S. alone.96 White men, desiring women they presume to
be submissive, procure mail-order brides who, because of their
precarious legal status, are vulnerable to domestic and sexual
violence. As the promotional material for mail order brides describes
them, Filipinas have "exceptionally smooth skin and tight vaginas...
[they are] low maintenance wives. [They] can always be returned and
replaced by a younger model."97

Women of color are also targeted for sexual violence crossing the U.S.
border. Blacks and Latinos comprise 43 percent of those searched
through customs even though they comprise 24 percent of the
population. The American Friends Service Committee documented over 346
reports of gender violence on the U.S.-Mexico border from 1993-1995
(and this is just the report of one agency, which does not account for
the women who either do not report or report to another agency). This
one case is emblematic of the kinds of abuse women face at the border:
A Border Patrol agent, Larry Selders, raped several women over a
period of time. Finally one of the rape victims in Nogales, Arizona
had to sue the United States government for not taking action to
investigate her rape. Selders demanded sex from the woman in return
for her release. When she refused, Selders drove her out of town to an
isolated area, raped her and threatened her not to say anything to
anyone. Her defense describes in great detail the horrible trauma that
she continued to suffer after the incident. Although the rape took
place in 1993, it was only in October 1999 that the court finally
arrived at a decision in favor of the victims. "The government guarded
information about Selders' prior acts. It took more than three years
of legal battles to uncover that at least three other victims were
known to the government," declared the victim's attorney, Jesus
Romo.98

Sexual Violence and Impunity

The ideology of Native women's bodies as rapable is evident in the
hundreds of missing indigenous women in Mexico and Canada. Since 1993,
over 500 women have been murdered in Juarez, Mexico. The majority have
been sexually mutilated, raped, and tortured, including having had
their nipples cut off. Poor and indigenous women have been
particularly targeted. Not only have the local police made no effort
to solve the cases, they appear to be complicit in the murders.
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations and
activists have noted their failure to seriously investigate the cases
— the police have made several arrests and tortured those arrested to
extract confessions, but the murders have continued unabated.
Furthermore, the general response of the police to these murders is to
blame the victims by arguing that they are sex workers or lesbians,
and hence, inherently rapable.99 For instance, one former state public
prosecutor commented in 1999, "It's hard to go out on the street when
it's raining and not get wet."100

Similarly, in Canada, over 500 First Nations women have gone missing
or have been murdered in the past 15 years, with little police
investigation. Again, it seems that their cases have been neglected
because many of the women were homeless or sex workers. Ada Elaine
Brown, the sister of Terri Brown, president of the Native Women's
Association of Canada, was found dead in her bed in 2002. She was so
badly beaten her family did not recognize her. According to Terri
Brown: "The autopsy report said it was a brain aneurysm. Yeah, because
she was beaten to a pulp."101

Within the United States, because of complex jurisdictional issues,
perpetrators of sexual violence can usually commit crimes against
Native women with impunity. A review of U.S. criminal justice policy
in Indian country helps to clarify the current situation. In /Ex Parte
Crow Dog/ (1883), the Supreme Court recognized the authority of Indian
tribes over criminal jurisdiction on Indian lands. In response, the
U.S. passed the Major Crimes Act (1885), which mandated that certain
"major crimes" committed in Indian country must be adjudicated through
the federal justice system. In 1883, the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) created the Court of Indian Offenses, which appointed tribal
officials to impose penalties based on Anglo-American standards of
law. These courts were charged with enforcing the Code of Federal
Regulations (CFR), the compilation of regulations issued by federal
administrative agencies, which generally stressed laws intended to
assimilate Native peoples, such as laws which prohibited the practice
of Indian religions.

The 1950's ushered in what is called the "termination period" in U.S.
Indian policy. The government began a policy of terminating tribal
status for many Indian tribes and funded relocation programs to
encourage Indian peoples to relocate to urban areas and assimilate
into the dominant society. During this period, the U.S. government
sharply defunded the justice systems in Indian country, leaving many
tribes, who did not have their traditional systems intact, with no law
enforcement at all.

After obliterating tribal justice systems, the U.S. government passed
Public Law 280 (PL 280) in 1953, granting states criminal and limited
civil jurisdiction over tribes covered in the Major Crimes Act,
without tribal consent. PL 280 is a major infringement on Native
sovereignty, since tribes have generally not come under state
jurisdiction. That is, while the U.S. government policy has deemed
tribes under the guardianship of the federal government, tribes are
supposed to be recognized as sovereign to some degree and not under
state government jurisdiction.

In 1968, the U.S. made provisions for tribes to retrocede from Pl 280
— however, retrocession can only be undertaken with the permission of
the state. However, later court decisions have found that PL 280
provides for concurrent state jurisdiction rather than state
jurisdiction which supersedes tribal jurisdiction altogether. That is,
while the state has the right to prosecute cases in PL 280 tribes,
those tribes can prosecute the cases at the same time through tribal
courts, if they have them.

However, with the advent of what is known as the period of
"self-determination" in U.S. Indian policy beginning in 1968, many
tribes, particularly non-PL 280 tribes, began to develop their own
tribal governance. As a result, more than 140 tribes have their own
court systems today. Of these, about 25 have retained CFR systems with
BIA-appointed judges and others have their own tribal courts. Some
tribes, operating under the radar of U.S. government surveillance,
have never lost their traditional forms of governance and continue to
practice them today.

But because rape falls under the Major Crimes Act, tribes are
generally reliant upon the federal governments to prosecute sexual
assault cases. Department of Justice representatives have informally
reported that U.S. attorneys decline to prosecute about 75 percent of
all cases involving any crime in Indian country. U.S. attorneys are
particularly reluctant to prosecute rape cases; indeed, the Department
of Justice reported in 1997 that only two U.S. attorneys regularly
prosecute rape cases in Indian country.102

Because sexual assault is covered under the Major Crimes Act, many
tribes have not developed codes to address the problem in those rape
cases the federal government declines to prosecute. Those with codes
are often hindered in their ability to investigate by a wait that may
last more than a year before federal investigators formally turn over
cases. In addition, the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) of 1968 limits
the punishment tribal justice systems can enforce on perpetrators.103
For instance, the maximum time someone may be sentenced to prison
through tribal courts is one year.104 Also, Native activist Sarah Deer
(Muscogee) notes that the U.S. can prohibit remedies that do not
follow the same penalties of the dominant system. Thus, sentencing
someone to banishment or to another traditional form of punishment can
be deemed a violation of ICRA.105 In addition, U.S. courts have
conflicting rulings on whether the Major Crimes Act even allows tribes
to maintain concurrent jurisdiction over certain crimes, including
sexual assault.106

To further complicate matters, tribes covered under PL 280, which
gives states criminal jurisdiction, must work with state and county
law enforcement officials who may have hostile relationships with the
tribe. And because tribes are often geographically isolated —
reservations are sometimes over 100 miles from the closest law
enforcement agency, with many homes having no phone — local officials
are unable to respond to an emergency situation. Racism on the part of
local police officers in surrounding border towns also contributes to
a lack of responsiveness in addressing rape cases. And since the
federal government does not compensate state governments for law
enforcement on reservations, and tribes generally do not pay local or
federal taxes, states have little vested interest in providing
"protection" for Indian tribes.

Finally, American Indian tribes do not have the right to prosecute
non-Indians for crimes that occur on reservations. In /Oliphant v.
Suquamish Indian Tribe/ (1978), the Supreme Court held that Native
American tribes do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-Native
peoples on reservation lands. This precedent is particularly
problematic for non-PL 280 tribes, because tribal police cannot arrest
non-Indians who commit offenses. Furthermore, state law enforcement
does not have jurisdiction on reservation lands. So, unless state law
enforcement is cross-deputized with tribal law enforcement, no one can
arrest non-Native perpetrators of crimes on Native land.107

In response to these deplorable conditions, many Native peoples are
calling for increased funding for criminal justice enforcement in
tribal communities. (See Chapter 7 for a critique of this strategy.)
It is undeniable that U.S. policy has codified the "rapability" of
Native women. Indeed, the U.S. and other colonizing countries are
engaged in a "permanent social war" against the bodies of women of
color and indigenous women, which threaten their legitimacy.108
Colonizers evidently recognize the wisdom of the Cheyenne saying "A
nation is not conquered until the hearts of the women are on the
ground."

-- 
"Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted 
with enslavement." Lee Maracle
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