It was only a movie, but the reality rang loudly. A white rancher tracked down men who had raped and murdered a woman. Before he killed them, one was incensed and demanded: "Why? She was just an Indian squaw!" To which the rancher screamed, "She Was My Wife!"
One could imagine that even the line, "She was my wife!", was not reason enough for some conservatives white men to justify a white man killing a white man over the rape and murder of a woman who was "just an Indian Squaw". The evidence is clearly visible in the vile, obscene, and immoral anger directed at Native American men and women in today's social media.
While the reality of abject prejudice and disrespect for Native American Women may not be so blatantly obvious today as portrayed in the movie, it is not invisible. And yet, invisible, seem an appropriate statement to describe the main stream media's, and by extension non-native American's, ignorance of the life and plight of Native American Women.
Native American Women carry much more than their "fair" share of the personal and governmental based domestic abuse American women suffer in the aptly named "Conservative (GOP, Republican, Christian Right) War On Women". They suffer much more of the personal and governmental domestic abuse in the War On Women than most non-native American women even dare imagine.
Two years ago when it was time for congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, some Republican congressmen, including some current GOP presidential candidates voted against the act because of the protection it afforded Native American Women.
Two years after the Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized over the obstruction and objections of its Republican obstructionists and deniers, Native American tribes are now permitted to prosecute non-native domestic abusers. Why this delay? Was it because government authorities wanted to prevent Native Americans Men from prosecuting any non-native American man for any reason or only for the reason of denying the prosecution of non-native American men accused of domestic abuse of Native American Women?
According to the most current U.S. Census, there are approximately 5.2 million Native Americans in the United States Of America. Statistics suggests that more than 75% of Native American Women in that population have experienced some form of domestic abuse, domestic violence, or rape and sexual assault. That is a vile, embarrassing, and immoral statistic for a country that prides itself as being the land of the free and home of the brave. It is an obscene pornographic statistic for a land that is committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. None of that rings true for most Native American Women.
The immoral acts of violence, obscene abuse, or rape and sexual assault of Native American Women by by various legal arms and departments of the United States government are too numerous to be included here. We will mention two of them.
1. The U.S. government admitted to forcibly sterilizing 3,406 Native American Women between 1973 and 1976. And before any apologist express outrage because that was more than "40 years ago", the real outrage is that it happened at all. And it happened long after they had been forced to "live" on "Indian Reservations". Given their numbers in the USA population, that would be equivalent to forcibly sterilizing more than 400,000 white American women. If that were to happen, the "moral" outrage would have been stupefying. But it was only "Indian Squaws," so mostly nobody knows and mostly nobody cares.
2. Reminiscent of Sandra Bland, the African American Woman who died in jail after a routine traffic stop, for which she should not have been arrested at all, violence and mishaps while in police custody are common for Native Americans Women. Sarah Lee Circle Bear, a 24 year mother and pregnant South Dakota Lakota woman supposedly died of a "Meth overdose" after being in jail for 2 days.
For very good reasons, the world knows about Sandra Bland. But very few in the world know about Sarah Lee Circle Bear. Like most Native American Women, she is and was invisible, except when it was her time to suffer the abuse too many Native American Women suffer.
