Native Americans work to end violence

While Native Americans are a minority on Penn's campus, yesterday at Houston Hall they had a big voice.

Six Directions, Penn's Native American interest organization, and Amnesty International co-presented a talk highlighting a movement to end violence against Native American women. The dialogue specifically focused on The Amnesty Report: Maze of Injustice, which documents and studies the failure of the United States to protect indigenous women from sexual violence.

The discussion featured speaker Andrea Smith, a longtime Native American activist and scholar. Among Smith's merits, she coordinated Amnesty International's research project Maze of Injustice, as well as serving as the founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, which empowers women through dialogue and activism.

Smith began the talk by highlighting the problems of patriarchal dominance in Native American communities. Specifically, Smith discussed how indigenous women historically were portrayed as impure and regarded as less than human, instilling the current spirit of violence. She added that this violence against Native American women is codified into federal law and practice.

Smith continued her talk by discussing solutions to violence against women. She focused on an approach which moved away from longer sentence terms for perpetrators and greater enforcement with a model that focuses on community responsibility.

Her approach to the problem confronts violence with grassroots organizations along with creating communities of accountability. "We need to focus on small organized projects involved with the community," she said. "Domestic violence grows in isolation," she added.

Smith was followed by Catherine Struve, a Penn professor of Federal Indian Law who discussed the enforcement problems on reservations. Struve highlighted the interesting jurisdiction given to tribal governments in which they lacked the power to prosecute non-Native Americans even if a crime was committed on tribal land. "It would be absurd to think that if I was in Canada and I committed a crime there, nothing would happen," Struve said.

The talk concluded with an informal question-and-answer session with participants.

College junior and co-president of Six Directions Mia King organized the event to highlight and "draw attention to those issues not widely talked about," she said.

College sophomore Brianne Blakey found the talk informative about jurisdictions of the tribal government and federal government. She said she enjoyed the discussion's "uniqueness."

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