Nellis Kennedy-Howard at the Washington D.C. Women’s March in January 2017
Like so many others, I recently took to social media to declare: #metoo - as part of a movement started by Tarana Burke in 1997. I am one of billions of people who have experienced sexual harassment or assault. And I’m privileged enough to feel safe saying so in public.
But as I scrolled through my newsfeed, I noticed something. Not everyone in my community seemed to feel that sense of safety on social media. I also saw some women struggling with the question of whether their experiences “count” as sexual harassment or assault. That’s rape culture in a nutshell - a culture that exposes women and people with marginalized identities to systemic sexual violence, and then leaves them questioning whether their experiences “count.”
There were several women whose stories of sexual violence I have heard personally, who chose not to post. Of course there are many reasons someone might choose to keep their trauma to themselves; no one is obligated to display their pain to the world in order to create change. Ending sexual violence is the responsibility of those who commit that violence. But I fear that for many Native women in my community, there’s much more to the story.
Native and Indigenous women are subject to dramatically higher rates of sexual violence than white women, worldwide. One in three Native women in the U.S. has been raped in her lifetime. Three in five has been physically assaulted. A Native woman is more likely to die by homicide than by illnesses like diabetes, heart disease or cancer. On some Tribal lands, Native women and girls are murdered at more than 10 times the national average.
I want to be clear - sexual violence is not part of traditional Native cultures. More than eighty percent of sex crimes on Tribal lands are committed by non-Native men immune from prosecution by Tribal court. This violence has been imposed on us by colonialism. Part of the picture is the harm done to Native people, harm that has left so many of us traumatized, stuck in a cycle of violence. But the vast majority of the sexual violence experienced by Native women, children and other people with marginalized identities originates outside Native communities.
In the chorus of voices speaking their truth - “me too” - I also heard the silence of Native women who don’t feel safe enough to come out as survivors of sexual violence on social media. And maybe also some simple exhaustion; Native women have been screaming into what feels like a vaccuum about experiences of sexual violence for decades, and our voices have gone unheard.
Sexual violence is not part of our traditional cultures, but Native culture and movements may offer some healing. Native women and Two-Spirit people are coming together to advocate for ourselves and build new traditions around healing from sexual violence, like this round dance song performed in memory of sisters lost to sexual violence. In Canada, Indigenous women have had limited success in advocating for government action on missing and murdered Indigenous women, but here in the U.S., elected leaders are slow to listen and even slower to act. Nearly two years after the Canadian government agreed to launch an investigation into missing and murdered Indigenous women, U.S. elected leaders are still having hearings on the most basic steps needed to address sexual violence on Native bodies.
There is a deep connection between the Sierra Club’s work to fight big polluters and the struggle against sexual violence. It is one of the many reasons why Sierra Club is home to a Gender Equity and the Environment program. The connection between the fossil fuel industry and sexual violence is undeniable and it is the reason why Native-led organizations like Honor the Earth have long raised the issue of man camps - the huge temporary settlements of mostly male workers that surround fossil fuel extraction projects like the Bakken oil fields. Man camps bring violence with them wherever they appear, and Native women are particularly vulnerable because crimes committed on Tribal lands by non-Native men cannot be addressed by Tribal courts, perpetuating systems of injustice that let rapists and sexual predators walk free.
I know that might be hard to accept or understand, so I will repeat it again: when white men come onto Tribal lands and commit violent sexual assaults on Native women and children, they cannot be held accountable for their actions in Tribal court. This is because the federal government has always chipped away at the rights of Indigenous communities and prioritized the rights of white men over the safety of Native women. As Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently put it: “You’ve got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right? So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”
One report found that the single biggest barrier to prosecuting violence against Native women is the fact that U.S. Attorneys decline to prosecute violent crimes on Native lands. Meanwhile, Tribal courts are not permitted to prosecute criminal offenses of non-tribal members. The entire system is rigged to perpetuate sexual violence against Native women.
It’s no wonder that some of my Native friends didn’t feel safe coming out as a survivor of sexual violence on social media. If you knew that no court in the land would try your sexual predator, would you even report them? Would you speak about it in public, knowing that many won’t believe you without a conviction?
Not all my friends and family can speak on this, so I will. Me too. Native women too.