Adoptee Susan Harness with her younger brother James Allen in 2012. An anthropological search for belonging and identity ...
"We were not supposed to ‘be’ Indian, we were supposed
to become members of the dominant society, with full and complete access
to the American Dream." – Susan Harness (Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, University of Nebraska Press.)
QUEBEC,
CANADA - JULY 27: One-year-old Yonnan Flamand is lifted into the air by
his father Alland Flamand of Manawan as Pope Francis delivers remarks
at the Citadelle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham on July 27, 2022 in
Quebec, Canada. Pope Francis is traveling across Canada for a
“pilgrimage of penance,” to meet with and apologize to Indigenous
communities for the abuse at Catholic-run residential schools. (Photo by
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Canadian Indigenous peoples face a reckoning after being granted an audience with a major symbol of their oppression.
Indigenous peoples’ most progressive hope for his trip was that he would rescind the 1493 Papal Bull and related Doctrine of Discovery,
which served as the historical Church-sanctioned policy rationale for
destroying and subverting Native culture in the so-called New World. But
he has not done that — and even the most idealistic of Indigenous
advocates suspected he would not.
To do that would have
undermined a foundational principle of Christian, colonial and
capitalistic ideology, and few contemporary world systems seem prepared
for the possible ramifications — financial, social and otherwise.
The
Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493,
played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The
document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the
lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a
demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde
Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial
possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were
forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special
license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly
on the lands in the New World.
The Bull stated that any
land not inhabited by Christians was available to be "discovered,"
claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that "the
Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere
increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that
barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself." This
"Doctrine of Discovery" became the basis of all European claims in the
Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western
expansion. In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh,
Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held
"that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right
to New World lands." In essence, American Indians had only a right of
occupancy, which could be abolished.
Questions abound: Will the papal bull ever be rescinded? If so, what
will that mean? Will the Pope make a similar visit to the U.S. and to
Latin America, which both experienced similar atrocities to the
Indigenous peoples of Canada? Will anything really change as a result of
this sorry snapshot?
**
Papal Visit
The historic visit by Pope Francis to Canada this week drew thousands of
Indigenous people from across Turtle Island to hear the apology they
had been expecting for the Catholic Church’s role in the ugly
residential school history.
ICT’s special correspondent Miles Morrisseau, Métis Nation, based in Manitoba, Canada, was among them. He witnessed the apology
in Maskwacis, Alberta, on the grounds of the former Ermineskin Indian
Residential School. He was there for the applause, for the tears and the
emotional protest song.
And he was there to gather reaction
to the long-awaited penance, from tribal leaders who gathered and the
First Nations, Métis and Inuit people who made a pilgrimage to see the
Pope.
He followed the Pope to Lac Ste. Anne where the Pontiff sat silently
looking toward the lake before blessing the crowd with its sacred
waters. And he was there to talk to the Cree woman whose tearful song on Monday brought an outpouring around the world.
ICT National Correspondent Mary Annette Pember also joined the coverage, gathering perspectives
from Indigenous people in the United States who hope the Pope will make
a similar “penitence pilgrimage” to apologize for the U.S. boarding
school system. She explored Indigenous demands that the Catholic Church return the tens of thousands of sacred artifacts stored in Vatican museums.
ICT gave readers the Indigenous perspective of a story that is very personal for many of us..
Here’s a round-up of ICT’s coverage of the papal visit:
By Miles Morrisseau and Mary Annette Pember
A six-day swing through the heart of Indigenous Canada is meant to be a ‘penitential voyage’ ... continue reading
By ICT
Pope Francis arrived Sunday in Canada to high expectations that he will
apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in operating Indigenous
residential schools ... continue reading
Despite ICWA’s far-reaching positive impact, it will soon be challenged in front of SCOTUS by those looking to harmfully remove Native kids from their families and communities. Help us spread the word by sharing this post in solidarity. #ProtectICWApic.twitter.com/gYO5iEDduA
The challenge to #ICWA is part of a well-financed, coordinated attack on tribal sovereignty. Through SCOTUS, ICWA opponents could set legal precedent that has serious consequences for other issues such as tribal land rights. Learn more: https://t.co/jFKl05poxQ#ProtectICWAhttps://t.co/BUgjbxC7k7
You are loved by the stars above, the soil underfoot, and countless ancestors who prayed you into existence. 🙏🏼 https://t.co/RvhJpWJKcl— Ruth H. Robertson (Red Road Woman) (@Ruth_HHopkins) July 25, 2022
By Miles Morrisseau
MASKWACIS, Alberta, Canada – Saying it is time to find a pathway forward
for healing, Pope Francis issued a long-awaited apology to the
Indigenous people of Canada for the Catholic Church’s role in the brutal
residential school system that separated children from their families,
culture and language. ... continue reading
...But it also brought tears – tears for the children who never came home, whose remains were dumped in unmarked graves.
Do those children who died hear your apology? Who will pay for their murders? We don't want an apology, do we? How about arrests?... TLH, blog editor
'Their spirits are still here': Tribe, state to search for remains at North Dakota boarding school
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa
and the State Historical Society of North Dakota recently agreed to
partner in a search for the remains of children around the former Fort
Totten Indian Industrial School, which lies on the Spirit Lake
Reservation in the northeastern part of the state.
Denise
Lajimodiere, author of a leading book on Native American boarding
schools, uses old photos possibly depicting the graves of soldiers to
orient herself in a forested area near the Fort Totten State Historic
Site, which formerly served as a boarding school for Native American
youth. Lajimodiere believes the bodies of former students may be buried
near the former school on the Spirit Lake Reservation in northeast North
Dakota.
Editor's note: This is the fifth story in an occasional
series on Native American boarding schools and their impact on the
region's tribes.
FORT TOTTEN, N.D. — On a cloudy October
morning, Denise Lajimodiere walked through brambles and tall grass with
her eyes to the ground.
Consulting a photo from the 1980s, the
scholar scanned the prairie terrain near the Fort Totten State Historic
Site for small, tan boulders that could mark graves long hidden from
view.
After stumbling across one, she grabbed a plastic baggie of
tobacco from her coat pocket, held a pinch tight in her left fist and
said a prayer for the bodies that may have been buried under her feet
more than a century ago.
Historic site employees believe the
boulders could be the vestiges of a cemetery for U.S. soldiers buried in
the mid-1800s. Lajimodiere thinks the gravesite may also contain the
remains of Native American children who died while attending a boarding
school at the former military post.
“We know their spirits are still here,” Lajimodiere said
solemnly while walking the site on the Spirit Lake Reservation in
northeast North Dakota.
Lajimodiere, an enrolled Turtle Mountain citizen whose father and
grandfather attended Fort Totten, found evidence that at least 13 Native
American boarding schools existed in North Dakota.
The reservation’s federal Indian agent, William Forbes, recruited the
Grey Nuns, an order of Catholic sisters from Montreal, to run a “manual
labor school,” historian James Carroll writes in the book “Fort Totten
Military Post and Indian School.”
Despite successfully turning in the
necessary paperwork this spring to have the former boarding school
students' remains exhumed, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Spirit Lake
tribes will likely have to wait another year before they can bring the
boys home.
She has to race because so many of the boarding school survivors from the worst of the era up to mid 70s are passing away. Their stories must be told and recorded so the world knows what happened to them. https://t.co/aDMFSukzzV
— Dr. Denise Lajimodiere (@DLajimodiere) July 20, 2022
We stand with @SecDebHaaland in what has been an historic year for truth, justice, and healing from boarding schools. In this moment, we honor the generations of relatives who have fought and persisted in advocating for accountability. Please Watch/Share: https://t.co/2wbye4gAi0pic.twitter.com/caci5YjO3D
Today: @Interior The Road to Healing Tour (Oklahoma) with @SecDebHaaland & Assistant Secretary Newland. This year-long tour across the country to provide survivors of the Federal Indian boarding school system and their descendants an opportunity to share experiences. pic.twitter.com/XltcXTgaXN
Reporter @ChezneyMartin has won a 2022 award from @najournalists for her story on the value of hunting and traditional foods, published as part of the CBC Six Nations content.
A photo of actor Leonardo DiCaprio as he surveys the rubble of a home
that was blown up in a murder plot to kill an Osage family in the 1920s
won first place for News Photo from the Native American Journalism
Association. The scene is part of the upcoming Martin Scorsese film,
"Killers of the Flower Moon" and was filmed on Aug. 5, 2021. SHANNON
SHAW DUTY/Osage News
Osage News wins 14 Native American Journalists Association awards for 2021 coverage. The annual competition recognizes excellence in reporting by Indigenous and non-Indigenous journalists from across the U.S./ Canada. This year, NAJA received 750+ entries. https://t.co/461yYbFqpx— Osage News (@OsageNews) July 19, 2022
The
city of Palmdale, California is moving forward on a housing project
that keeps siblings in foster care housed together. Photo by Annie
Spratt via unsplash.com.
If children must enter foster care while their
parents sort out mental health crises, violent relationships or
addiction, the trauma of abuse and neglect, and the pain of separation
can be long-lasting. But there’s one clear way to minimize the impact:
keeping siblings together.
Public officials in a high-desert bedroom community north of downtown
Los Angeles have committed to building housing that facilitates those
critical family ties. Within a year, according to local and county
officials, the city of Palmdale will be the first site in California to
begin construction of a development built specifically for sibling
groups in foster care.
The aim of these temporary homes and the staff who will oversee them,
said Mike Miller, director of neighborhood services for the city of
Palmdale, is to get the children safely back to their families once
problems at home have been sorted out.
“They’re helping the children, but they’re also working with the
parents because ultimately I think our wish for all foster kids and
parents is that this family stays together,” he said. “These aren’t kids
just getting thrown into a home somewhere,” he added. “This is also
about valuing the family, and keeping the kids together. That’s
transformational.”
The $19 million project will include a dozen three-bedroom townhomes. Up to six siblings will live in each home, together with a specially
trained professional caregiver. The housing project will also include
two units for young adults transitioning out of foster care, and offices
for case managers and support staff.
Last week, in accordance with its goal of creating “quality
affordable housing” for “low, very low and extremely low-income”
residents, the Palmdale City Council and Housing Authority authorized a
$1.2 million “acquisition and pre-development” loan for the project. The
Los Angeles County Development Authority has also committed to a
$500,000 loan, with the remaining costs covered by private financing,
according to a city staff report.
The project, which will be constructed on the north side of McAdam
Park on 30th St. East in Palmdale, is being developed by SOS Children’s
Villages. The more than 70-year-old agency describes its aim as building
families for orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children in 135
countries, including the United States.
SOS Children’s Villages is now a global organization, but it began
humbly, its first “village” built in 1949 in Imst, Austria to house
children left behind during World War II. The group now operates more
than 550 “villages” serving approximately 13 million children, youth and
families.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger
Palmdale will be the first location of its type to open in
California, but the developer of the site runs three similar housing
projects in Illinois, and one in Florida.
“I’m a proud supporter and funder of the SOS Children’s Villages
project in Palmdale,” L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said in an
email to The Imprint, adding that she met with the project’s leadership
at length. “I’m impressed by their long-standing commitment to family
reunification efforts, and to providing compassionate care to foster
youth and those at risk of entering the system.”
Keeping siblings together
The hazards of failing to keep siblings in foster care are widely
acknowledged, and “placing siblings in the same home should always be
the priority,” states a 2019 federal Children’s Bureau bulletin.
Although the relationships can be expansive in definition —
biological siblings, step siblings, foster siblings, or other close
relatives or nonrelatives with whom they have lived, even siblings
they’ve never met — maintaining an attachment is essential to the
children’s well-being.
“For some siblings in care,” the bulletin says, “their separation or
infrequent visiting can cause those relationships to wither, sometimes
to the point of permanent estrangement.”
When foster children stay close to their siblings, they are more
likely to remain in stable homes, and more likely to “achieve
permanency” through family reunification, adoption or legal
guardianship. The pairing of siblings helps them adapt to new living
situations, whatever they may be, in part because they are less worried
about where their other family members are and how they are doing.
Researchers have also found
that contact with brothers and sisters soothes the trauma of childhood
abuse and neglect, as well as the traumatic experience of being
separated from parents and the only home a child has ever known.
Children who have positive relationships with siblings are less likely
to suffer behavioral problems, such as anxiety and depression.
For siblings who can’t be housed together, child welfare experts
encourage close placement, frequent visits and ongoing contact through
letters, email, social media, cards and phone calls.
Numerous federal laws aim to promote sibling connections.
The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of
2008 was the first federal law stressing the importance of sibling
relationships in the foster care system. It requires that any child
welfare agency relying on federal funding to seek placements that keep
siblings in the same home or, if that’s not possible, provide ongoing
contact and visits.
In 2014, the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families
Act required that the parents of siblings be included as people to be
notified when a child needs placement, as a means to keep children
within extended kin networks.
Four years later, the Family First Prevention Services Act
passed, allowing states to waive the number of children who can be
placed in a single foster home, as a way to better accommodate sibling
groups.
Changing the profile of Antelope Valley
The region known as the Antelope Valley — which includes the cities
of Palmdale and Lancaster — has some of the highest poverty and child
maltreatment rates in Los Angeles County. Three horrific and highly
publicized child deaths
in the area over a six-year period put the child welfare agency’s
delayed response to household warning signs under a harsh spotlight. The
area has also experienced a relatively high level of turnover among
social workers and CPS line staff.
Referring to the torture and killing of 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez in 2013 — crimes committed by his mother and her boyfriend — Miller said the tragedy also spurred action.
“It really heightened our community to tell us that we need to do
more,” he said. “And the community’s really stuck to that promise of
trying to do more for the kids. So this SOS project is just right on
that path of commitment that came as a result of that tragedy.”
Miller said the sibling housing project will take some time to
complete, given the complexity of the project’s funders, agencies
involved and unique requirements. But he expects construction will begin
within a year.
“These projects really do take time but this one just strikes to the
heart and it has such momentum and support,” Miller said. “What we’re
hoping is that this is a model that other government entities here in
California will use to do the exact same thing up and down the state.”
Tim McCormick, CEO of the SOS Children’s Villages Illinois, got
esoteric in describing the project. He said it’s meaningful that the
site will be located in the high desert, and the architecture will be
environmentally friendly and reflect the region’s natural colors and
hues.
“There’s really an intrinsic beauty of life out there,” McCormick said. “It’s kind of a hidden gem.”
McCormick also noted that the sibling groups who will live at the
site more than likely will have come from impoverished households. But
once built, their temporary home will serve as a resource center for
these low-income children and families. It will also nourish cultural
life, with an outdoor theater for the arts, music and spoken word —
“almost like a Greek auditorium,” McCormick described. “So that’s what
we hope to do there, is to bring in resources that are outside Palmdale
and inside Palmdale, to blend them together and create and strengthen a
narrative of a child’s life and a family’s history.”
Opened in 1871 by Quaker missionaries, Riverside is the nation’s
oldest boarding school operated by the federal government. It is one of
the 408 across the U.S. identified in Haaland’s recently launched Federal Boarding School Initiative
— described by the Department of the Interior as the government’s first
comprehensive attempt “to shed light on the troubled history of Federal
Indian boarding school policies and their legacy for Indigenous
Peoples.”
Haaland has pledged to document the schools’ troubled pasts, address
their intergenerational impact and fully account for the trauma they
inflicted throughout Indian Country.
Indigenous communities are among the most vulnerable to climate change, yet they still struggle to be heard by governments around the world. Their spiritual teachings might help civilization to change course and prevent disaster.
Pallbearers
carry the casket of one of the children returned from the cemetery at
the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania up the stairs to the Church
of the Holy Apostles in Hobart, Wisconsin. Photo by Andrew Kennard
By Andrew Kennard |
“I feel like
traveling home,” the Oneida singers sang, their voices filling the
Church of the Holy Apostles in Hobart, Wisconsin. “My heavenly home is
right ahead, I feel like traveling home.”
After a memorial service on June 27, the families of Paul
Wheelock and Frank Green buried the remains of the two Oneida children
in the church’s cemetery. Over 120 years ago, Wheelock and Green were
buried at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
“Well, he always wanted to come home,” said Mary Jane Doxtator, Green’s niece. “He ran away [from the boarding school] about four or five times, maybe more.”
Pallbearers
approach the grave sites of Frank Green and Paul Wheelock. Drummers and
singers watch from close to the treeline. | Photo by Andrew Kennard
After
a memorial service, the congregation gathered by two open graves.
Drumming and singing rang out from a group of mourners standing deeper
in the cemetery. After the caskets were lowered into the ground,
mourners came forward with offerings of tobacco or earth for the
graves.
“…I just wondered why I wasn’t told about him,” Doxtator said.
An Interior department report released
in May estimates that the “approximate number of Indian children who
died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens
of thousands,” and that many were buried in unmarked or poorly
maintained graves far away from their communities and families. A bill introduced in Congress later that month aims to create a Truth and Healing Commission that would investigate the impacts and ongoing effects of the boarding school system.
“And when I think about these children, we all know the
stories of the boarding schools,” Oneida councilman Kirby Metoxen said
to the mourners assembled in Hobart, speaking on behalf of one of the
families. “And I just can’t imagine being taken so far away from home
and getting sick and knowing that you’re getting ready to go to that
other side alone.”
‘I see our last names’
Frank
Green and Paul Wheelock were laid to rest in the church’s cemetery,
near the graves of Ophelia Powless, David Doxtater and Jeffrey Parker.Wheelock and Green were buried next to Ophelia Powless, whose remains were reclaimed from Carlisle in 2019 along with the remains of two other teenage Oneida students.
“We still have two up there,” Metoxen said. “Jemima John and Melissa Metoxen are still out there, and those families still have to decide what they want to do with the remains of those children.”
In a statement on Thursday, the Office of Army Cemeteries
said that it has finalized its fifth disinterment project in returning
seven Native American or Alaska Native children to their families, and
that many have already been buried on their native lands. When an eighth
grave was disinterred, the Army found remains that did not match the
child that records said had been buried there.
“The combined Army team was privileged to support families
and return seven more children this summer, totaling 28 over the past
six years,” Renea Yates, director of the Office of Army Cemeteries, said
in the statement. “We are committed to caring for the graves of
children who remain buried at the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery and
will continue to support the disinterment of those requested to be
returned.”
Over ten thousand children from about 50 tribes across the
nation attended Carlisle, according to the Army; about 190 children
were buried at the school, according to Dickinson College, which houses
the Carlisle Indian School Digital Research Center.
Metoxen said that when he visited Carlisle, he was expecting to see the graves of children from tribes other than his own.
“And as I’m walking through that cemetery, I see our last
names,” Metoxen said. “Coulon. Powless. Green. Wheelock. John. And about
the fourth or fifth headstone I came upon was a Melissa Metoxen. And I
have a niece, Melissa Metoxen. It stopped me in my tracks. My thought
immediately was, how come nobody came to get these kids?”
What happened to Frank Green and Paul Wheelock?
Paul Wheelock was ten months old when he died of a “severe cold,” according to a
Carlisle school newspaper. During a brief sermon at the memorial
service, the Rev. Rodger Patience said that Paul was the son of Dennison
Wheelock, a band leader at Carlisle. Dennison, a former Carlisle
student, had graduated from the school about ten years before his infant
son’s death in 1900, the Carlisle Digital Research Center found.
Frank Green was a teenager when he died on June 25, 1898.
He was killed by a train while running away from the school a week
before he was set to go home, according to documents from the time gathered by the Carlisle Digital Research Center.
“The letters back from the hired hands at Carlisle only
describe him as a juvenile delinquent,” Patience told the mourners.
“They don’t describe him as a child who was traumatized. They don’t
describe him as a child who was taken from his home by force and made to
submit to an institution that he didn’t want to be part of.”
‘Welcoming that spirit back to this place called home’
Mourners watched the caskets sink into the ground. | Photo by Andrew KennardThe
Oneida Nation said in 2019 that 109 community members had been
identified as descendants of tribal members who passed away while
attending Carlisle over 100 years ago. During the memorial service,
Metoxen said that his grandparents could speak the Oneida language, but
his parents could not.
“So I heard my grandparents speaking the language, but
none of my parents,” Metoxen told the mourners. “In that generation, I
didn’t hear the language too much. Because of the boarding school era.”
The
Oneida Nation Pow Wow landed on the same weekend as the memorial
service, and the community recognized the two children with an honor
song. | Photo by Andrew Kennard“One day, [a relative] was
in the dining room and everyone was visiting,” Doxtator said. “And he
started speaking Oneida and they made him stand on a chair all during
the meal.”
Later, “when they started the Oneida language program to teach Oneida to the Oneidas, he was one of the teachers,” she added.
The day before the memorial service, community members
marched around the Oneida Nation’s powwow grounds for an honor song that
recognized Green and Wheelock.
“But today is really a day of celebration,” the powwow’s
announcer said before the dance began. “And when we start out this song,
this is a song of welcoming that spirit back to this place called home.
Our elders always had a story that wherever we travel, we’ll always
come home.”
The June 24 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court
overturning the constitutional right to an abortion will adversely impact
Native American and Alaska Native victim-survivors of sexual violence in
several ways. The ruling paves the way for national criminalization of
abortion. A number of states, including Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, already
have existing trigger laws that allow those states to ban abortion now that Roe
v. Wade has been overturned.
“Native women and girls suffer the highest rates of
stalking, rape and femicide in the nation,” said Lori Jump (Sault Ste. Marie
Tribe of Chippewa Indians), chief executive officer, StrongHearts Native
Helpline. “Abortion is not offered at the Indian Health Service (IHS) and
having planned parenthood clinics is essential to the health and well-being of
sexual assault victims. It’s a breach of trust responsibility and body
sovereignty that goes back to colonization.”
In fact, the IHS (which provides health care on
reservations) is prohibited under the1976 Hyde
Amendment from using federal monies for abortion services,
except when the mother’s life is endangered and in instances of incest and
rape.
Making it
difficult for any woman to obtain an abortion or by criminalizing it in some,
or even all, states won’t make abortions disappear. It makes them unsafe and
potentially fatal. Those at most risk will be poor women and women of color,
especially Native women who reside on tribal lands or in remote areas where
abortion services are difficult to access.
Making abortion services inaccessible to Native women
whether they live in an urban or rural area further exacerbates the enormous
socio-economic and health disparities. For example, the poverty rate among
Native women is thehighest among
racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. at 28.1 percent. Overall, one in threeNative Americans live in poverty with
an annual median income of $23,000.Complications during
pregnancy or childbirth (or both) are three to four times more likely for
Native women.
There are alsobarriers
to acquiring emergency contraception outside of
reservation communities and travel to obtain abortion services can require
exorbitant travel and other expenses that Native women simply cannot afford. Financial abuse — a form of relationship abuse
where one partner controls their partner’s financial situation —
also can figure into the picture. An intimate
partner who takes control of their partner’s finances ultimately has control
over making financial decisions that undermine their partner’s well-being and,
in cases such as these, make it difficult or even impossible for that partner
to seek abortion services.
Native women in the United States suffer from the highest
rates of sexual violence.
In
Indigenous communities, more than half of American Indian and Alaska Native
women(56.1%) have experienced sexual violence in their lives and the vast majority(96%) are victimized by a non-Native perpetrator.Sexual
violence is based on power and control and an abuser may see the
unpredictability of pregnancy as an opportunity to increase power and control.
Sexual violence robs Native women of the right to body sovereignty and the
choice of reproductive autonomy.
Sexual violence is a tool and result of
colonization, which has been responsible for the enslavement and genocide of
Native peoples and the theft, occupation, resource extraction and exploitation
of Native lands that began at contact. The same government infrastructure and
its federal laws, policies and institutions has targeted and permitted sexual
violence, abuse and harassment ofNative women for centuries.
The legacy of colonialism continues to exist in 2022 through this most recent
action by the U.S. Supreme Court to deny Native — and all — women the right to
body sovereignty.
About StrongHearts Native
Helpline
StrongHearts Native Helpline is a 24/7/365 culturally-appropriate
domestic, dating and sexual violence helpline for Native Americans, available
by calling or texting 1-844-762-8483 or clicking on the chat icon at strongheartshelpline.org.
