Complicating matters even more was the passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) in 1968. “Yet another imperial effort to assimilate tribal governments, by imposing the United States Bill of Rights onto tribal governments,”⁶² the ICRA required tribal governments to protect U.S. Constitutional rights. Yet, and again as I have argued above, this legislation also served to further “other” Native peoples. When the ICRA was first passed it legislated that tribal courts could only impose jail sentences of six months or less and fines up to five hundred dollars. In 1968, as part of a federal onslaught on drug trafficking, these limitations were expanded to one year of jail time and a five thousand dollar fine for criminal defendants. However, the message sent to tribes remains exceedingly clear - tribes have little, if any, jurisdiction over criminal offenses on Indian lands. So while tribal jurisdiction is not technically prohibited by the ICRA, it is drastically inhibited. For example, despite the fact that tribal governments did not traditionally utilize incarceration to eradicate violence, in the current context of continued colonization where tribes are not free to govern traditionally, they also find themselves limited in their utilization of Anglo approaches to felony-level crimes.

Perhaps the most significant intrusion on tribal justice systems was enacted in 1978. In the supreme court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe it was ruled that Native nations do not have the authority to prosecute crimes (civil or criminal) that are committed by non-Indians living on or passing through their respective reservations. Thus, concurrent tribal and federal/state jurisdiction only applies to cases in which the defendant is Native; crimes committed by non-Indians can essentially run rampant on Native lands, as there are very little legal consequences. Deer posits, "This decision has created a crisis situation in some tribal communities, because non-Indian sexual predators, drug manufacturers, pimps, and other violent persons have become attracted to Indian country as a location where crimes can be committed without recourse.”⁶³ The significance of this occurrence is monumental because it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the majority of the violence perpetrated against Native women is committed by non-Indians.⁶⁴ Thus, not only does the U.S. nation-state inadequately respond to the extremely high rates of violence that are directed at Native women, but, as Deer conceptualizes and these legislative measures demonstrate, federal laws actually create a space in which sexualized and gendered violence can flourish.

Furthermore, and as I suggested in the previous section, the reservation “home,” naturalized as the authentic and proper place of Indianness, has also come to be legislated as the most dangerous place for Native women to be. Perhaps this isn't entirely surprising to antiviolence activists who have long recognized that the “home” isn't the safe haven that heteropatriarchy would have us believe it is; as I mentioned earlier, “home is, in fact, the place of greatest danger for women.”⁶⁵ However, as Andy Smith argues “the strategies the domestic violence movement employs to address violence are actually premised on the danger coming from `out there' rather than at home.”⁶⁶ That is, efforts such as the push for increased criminalization of perpetrators assumes that there are only a handful of violent men whom we can lock up as the solution to violence against women. Such measures deny that, in all actuality, we live in a culture where an overwhelming number of men perpetrate violence upon their partners in the so-called safety of their private homes and the pervasiveness of state violence is such that it targets women of color at nearly every turn and perhaps most severely in the most intimate domains of their lives.

Perhaps not surprisingly, however, Title IX of the 2005 VAWA reauthorization did not address the NCAI's jurisdictional concerns. Instead, Title IX directs the National Institute of Justice and the Office on Violence Against Women to establish a task force to conduct a national study examining violence against Native women, amends federal code to permit tribal law enforcement to access federal criminal information databases, provides Native nations with the opportunity to develop and maintain a tribal sex offender and protection order registry, allocates increased funds to address violence against Native women, establishes a Deputy Director for Tribal Affairs in the Office on Violence Against Women, and amends federal criminal code to impose greater penalties on repeat offenders. It is virtually inarguable that these provisions have and will continue to have some impact on the violence perpetrated against Native women. Again, a number of these provisions even result from indigenous grassroots anti-violence mobilization and are strongly supported in indigenous communities. For example, in an NCAI

Task Force magazine titled “Restoration of Native Sovereignty,” Native anti-violence activists and NCAI task force members Karen Artichoker and Juana Majel credit the development of Title IX to the work accomplished by the task force, the elected leadership of American Indian tribes, and grassroots advocates.⁶⁷ And in the forward to Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence, which I must again emphasis is a result of VAWA funding, Tillie Black Bear asserts that it is through the grassroots work of Native women that anti-violence advocacy developed a voice in tribal communities and beyond: “[Female] Tribal advocates throughout Turtle Island brought these plights to tribal leadership and have worked with our male counterparts in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, in particular to advocate for an increase in resources for tribal governments.”⁶⁸

Keeping such indigenous activism in mind, then, perhaps we should read the participation of Native anti-violence advocates in the development and passing of Title IX (without essential jurisdictional changes) like I suggested we read the indigenous mobilization efforts in the SDCADVSA, as one strategy for eradicating violence against Native women rather than as the solution to the problem. In other words, perhaps we should liken the indigenous influence in the development of Title IX to the Crow development of the specifically reservationized political structuring that I described earlier, for example. The Crow developed such a politics to mitigate the constraints of colonial spatialization rather than completely resist the nation-state. Arguably, this strategy greatly benefited the Crow and even aided them in avoiding the further assimilating effects of the Indian Reorganization Act. It also allowed the Crow people to claim and embrace a colony-acknowledged “space” from which their culture, lifeways, and political formations could persevere and flourish. Likewise, the development of Title IX works with and within the Federal legal system to mitigate the constraints and violence of settler colonialism. It secures much-needed funding and attention for addressing violence against Native women, but it does so on the terms of the nation-state. It is critical that we ask at what cost and at whose expense do the compromises of dealing with the devil of colonialism come? Or, in the words of David Kazanjian, to what degree can legislation such as Title IX be understood as “the colonizing trick?” That is, how might we acknowledge and mitigate the possibility that the universal equality and protection of women's rights espoused by the VAWA and Title IX also enable “the systematic production and maintenance of hierarchally codified, racial and national forms?”⁶⁹

I am not the first to suggest that a critical interrogation of Title IX is warranted. For example, long-time Native activist Brenda Hill posits that the enactment of the VAWA “is indeed historic, or `herstoric,' if you will.”⁷⁰ But she also argues that “There is a sense of futility and exasperation among Native women because we continue to suffer the highest rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and murder in America, even given the resources of VAWA.”⁷¹ Furthermore, she calls for “social change, not social services!”⁷² in a discussion of the difference between the two models of advocacy for Native women. She argues that while the social change model “requires a proactive stance that brings change to system structures and cultural beliefs” and is accountable to victim/survivors of violence, the social service model maintains the status quo and “is an institutional reaction by people in power and requires accountability to funding institutions.”⁷³

I too argue that despite its imperfections and compromises, the VAWA in general and Title IX in particular has brought some relief to some Native women. It has aided in establishing shelters, protection orders, resource centers, etc. in the service of addressing violence against some Native women. Yet, I would also like to suggest that the resources extended to some Native women have been done at the expense, and exclusion, of “other” Native women. To be specific, I posit that the VAWA perpetuates the colonial spatialization that naturalizes violence against Native women in the first place and defines only those Native women living on the reservation and recognized by the settler state as legitimately entitled to the fruits of VAWA and Title IX. Not only does this exclude a significant amount of Native women from benefiting from the VAWA, but it also enacts violence against Native women who exist “off the rez” or beyond the spaces of recognized indigeneity. This is the sort of logic that underpins the conversations I have had with indigenous anti-violence activists that I spoke of in the introductory chapter of this dissertation. Although I don't believe that any of those advocates, women I consider to be my aunties and mentors, would ever purposefully argue that Native women such as myself, living off the rez, are less-deserving of protection from violence than those women living on the rez, their reliance on, unwavering dedication to, and influence in federal legislative efforts such as the VAWA and Title IX, which ultimately are part of the settler colonial apparatus, certainly implies this argument.

The Reservationization (and De-Urbanization) of Violence Against Native Women

As outlined above, the VAWA has largely been characterized as federal legislation that attempts to address violence against women through the allocation of federal resources and enhanced law enforcement measures. The amount of federal dollars directed toward such efforts was 1.6 billion in 1994, 3.33 billion in 2000, and 3.935 billion in 2005. The $1.6 billion that were authorized in 1994 and the $3.33 billion that were authorized in 2000 were made available to states, tribal governments, and local governments; for example, Section 200 - Purpose of the Grants to Combat Violence Against Women - of the 1994 legislation states that “the purpose of this part is to assist States, Indian tribal governments, and units of local government to develop and strengthen effective law enforcement and prosecution strategies to combat violent crimes against women, and to develop and strengthen victim services in cases involving violent crimes against women.”⁷⁴ The definition of an Indian tribe is given in Section 2003: “the term `Indian tribe' means a tribe, band, pueblo, nation, or other organized group or community of Indians, including any Alaska Native village or regional or village corporation (as defined in, or established pursuant to, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)), that is recognized as eligible for the special programs and services provided by the United States to Indians because of their status as Indians.”⁷⁵ Thus, recognized as “sovereign” governments, the 1994 and 2000 VAWA designated federally recognized indigenous populations as eligible

entities to apply for the federal funds.

Title IX of the 2005 VAWA continued the history of providing a tribal government setaside and also authorized new grant programs in response to the severity of violence against Native women: “VAWA 1994 contained a 4% set-aside and VAWA 2000 increased the amount to 5%. VAWA '05 further increased the set-aside to not less than 10% in most grant programs and 15% of certain grant programs of the Housing Title. The increase recognizes the level of danger facing American Indian and Alaska Native women.”⁷⁶ With Title IX, funds from seven of the grant programs reauthorized by the 2005 VAWA are combined into the largest program available to tribal governments - the Grants to Indian Tribal Governments Program. The purpose of the newly created program was to streamline access to federal funds, allow tribal governments to design tribally based responses to domestic violence, and lift the programmatic restrictions not applicable to Indian tribes.⁷⁷ Again, however, only “Indian tribal governments” as defined by the settler state are eligible for these monies. Non-recognized Native peoples are excluded from this opportunity. Thus, in an almost indiscernible move, federal dollars that were seemingly intended to broaden the efforts to deter violence against Native women actually become utilized to limit the number of women who are even considered Native and eligible for the resources.

I argue that this situation is intimately intertwined with colonial spatialization and the naturalization of the reservation for as John Moore argues, there is a direct link between the existence of a reservation and the recognition of Native peoples. Where reservations exist, Native peoples are seen to exist. Accordingly, where reservations do not exist or where they have been taken away, Native peoples are not seen to exist either.⁷⁸ Indians off the rez are not really Indians in the eyes of the settler state. The benefits of such ideological smoke and mirrors for the settler state are immense. Such understandings of Indianness both limit the recognized number of Indians the settler state must contend with and also designate the spaces in which Indianness is allowed to exist so that it can better regulate and eliminate these populations.

This is vividly illustrated through the allocation of funding from the VAWA. Although the nation-state seems to demonstrate concern for Native women, it does so only on its own terms and to its own benefit. It severely limits those who are considered Native enough to receive settler state attention and, perhaps even worse, it does so through mapping and relegating Native women to the colonially constructed places of Indianness. In other words, it only defines those Native women enrolled in a federally recognized tribe as authentic Indian women and it demands those women stay in or return to the reservations or Indian lands that have been reserved for their respective Native nations. This situation is not to be taken lightly, for as I argued above, colonial spatialization has created the reservation, like the home, as one of the most dangerous places for Native women to be. Likewise, daring to exist “off the rez” and resist settler colonialism also has considerably high stakes for Native women for it is “off the rez” that violence against these women, as Native women, is not even seen to exist and certainly will not be addressed. This leaves Native women between a rock and a hard place where they are forced to chose between living on the reservation where they face increased levels of state scrutiny, control, and violence or living off of the reservation where their identities as Native women are completely invalidated and the violence perpetrated against them as Native women is altogether made invisible.

Sarah Deer comments on the role the VAWA plays in this process from her experience working in the Department of Justice: “It's a structural barrier. The funding that's earmarked for tribes cannot go to non-tribes. And so an urban setting is not an eligible entity for those dollars that are earmarked for tribes. So it absolutely is a structural, legal barrier. It's not just politics. I mean you cannot apply for the funding if you're not a tribe….VAWA was written for tribes - federally recognized tribes.”⁷⁹

In all fairness, the VAWA of 2005 did create a small number of new grant programs available to Indian tribes, tribal organizations, and tribal non-profits. In theory, the funding in these programs could go to organizations and coalitions that serve Native women but are not formally connected to a federally recognized tribe. In reality, however, this rarely happens. Deer states, “The addition in Title IX of the tribal coalition grant dollars has made a dent [in serving off reservation communities] but I still think VAWA is primarily focused on reservation tribal government programs. There are a few programs that I would classify as urban who have been able to get some of that funding but its very unusual and they're usually getting funding that's not earmarked for tribes or they're contracting with tribes to provide services so it's definitely still a barrier.”⁸⁰ Deer further explains, “When I worked for the federal government there was a list [of federally recognized tribes] and anybody who was not on the list was not a tribe for our purposes….What I found in the justice department was, `Well, we only work with federally recognized tribes so anybody else is not a part of what we do. They're a nonentity.' These aren't things I heard word for word but this was the message.”⁸¹

Let us not forget, however, that it is the very same federal government that formally ended the reservation era it had created and attempted to unrecognize Natives to the greatest extent possible through policies such as allotment, relocation, and termination. By the end of the nineteenth century, and only a few decades after the modern reservation period emerged, “almost everyone recognized that the reservation system was a failure”⁸² and had been ineffective in assimilating Native peoples. Thus, the federal government decided to pursue an alternate path of assimilation/termination and began the process known as allotment. Passed by Congress in 1887, the General Allotment Act “aimed to undermine tribal authority, eradicate tribal culture, and destroy the reservation system as a whole by breaking up the Indian tribal estate and redistributing the land in small-farm allotments to individual Indian families.”⁸³ By 1934, Indian land “dwindled to half of its 1887 level of some 138 million acres”⁸⁴ through the parceling out of reservation lands to individual Indian families and the selling off of so called “surplus” lands. When even this measure didn't quite solve the Indian problem as settlers had hoped it would, relocation from reservation to urban areas surged forward as the next effort to eradicate Indianness.

Although presented as a benevolent opportunity, the relocation programs of the 1950s “provided a way for the federal government to withdraw `legally' from its federal trust responsibility and impose a policy of assimilation on indigenous peoples.”⁸⁵ In 1940, only 7.2% of indigenous peoples resided in urban areas.⁸⁶ By 1952, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was offering job training, moving expenses, housing assistance and a thirty-day subsistence allowance (which often failed to surface or be enough assistance to successfully transition Native peoples to their new homes) to Indians willing to leave the reservation and relocate to cities such as Denver, Phoenix, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque. By 1960, over 30,000 Native peoples had been relocated and by the time the 1990 Census was taken, nearly 60% of all Indian peoples indicated that they lived in urban areas.⁸⁷ Myla Vicenti Carpio argues that “the federal government's formula was to get Indians off the reservation and the federal dole--if no one lived on the reservations then there would not be a need for public funds to support social, educational, and land management expenditures on those lands.”⁸⁸

The process of termination, originally and aptly named “liquidation,” worked hand in hand with relocation. Proposed during the 1940s but not put into widespread practice until House Concurrent Resolution 108 was passed in 1953, termination aimed to abolish tribal governments, tribal lands, and federal relationships with tribes. Again, often couched in benevolent rhetoric that spoke of granting Native peoples equality through assimilation, this policy affected “over one hundred tribes, bands, and California Rancherias--totaling a little more than eleven thousand Indians--who were `terminated' and lost their status as `recognized' and sovereign Indian communities.”⁸⁹ Although Congress officially repealed termination in 1988, the Repeal of Termination Act was largely a symbolic gesture as few tribes have been restored since.

Clearly, many of the consequences of allotment, relocation, and termination were felt immediately as Native peoples lost their homes, their lands, and their recognition as Indians when these policies were enacted. However, the legacies of these policies also continue to haunt us today, especially in terms of the way in which they shape the settler state's understandings of indigeneity, violence against Native women, and the spaces in which these flourish. In other words, the creation of the reservation as the site of indigeneity has worked hand in hand with the discursive production of the urban as a site of non-indigeneity. This issue will be further explored in the following chapter yet it is critical to also mention here, in my discussion of the naturalization of the reservation, for the dichotomous construction of these spaces work together to enact and obscure violence against Native women. Just as the naturalization of the reservation securely fastened Native identity to particular locations in which it could be more easily regulated, policies to divorce Native peoples from the reservation have worked to suggest that Indians outside the boundaries of the reservation are not really Indians at all which is yet another way to control and define the population. Carpio argues, “The reservation is believed to generate `authentic Indians,' ones who know their culture, practice their religion, and speak their language while always challenging the colonial policies of the federal government. Conversely, the dichotomy posits urban identity as being separate from the reservation; creating a home in the city represents a changed identity, removed from the reservation, giving rise to either the assimilated or the generic pan-Indian.”⁹⁰ The existence of this line of reasoning is not accidental. As a matter of fact, it has been carefully crafted so as to both control and oppress reservation Indians while simultaneously disappearing Indians who dare to live anywhere else. Goeman summarizes the irony of this situation: “Native identity, social relations, and politics are often conceived, represented, and determined as geographically and historically situated and bound to a particular community and era, even while the historical onslaught of legislation continues to rip that grounding out from under Native people.”⁹¹

As Deer's reflections on the VAWA suggest, the consequence of the division between reservation and urban has material effects. Regardless of specific legislative provisions such as those in Title IX that might expand the scope of who may reap the benefits of federal efforts such as increased funding to address violence against Native women, the power of colonial spatialization is so pervasive that there still exists a belief that only certain Indians, located in certain places are recognized as authentically Native. All other Natives - those who live off the reservation, whose tribes have been terminated, who are state-recognized rather than federally recognized, etc. - are considered non-entities in the eyes of the settler state. And the number of these “non-entities” is startling for over 60% of Native peoples currently reside in urban areas, there are over fifty state-recognized but not federally recognized tribes, and since 1978, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has received over 250 letters of intent and petitions for federal recognition.⁹² Thus, it could be argued that there are more Native peoples who are not recognized by the US nation-state than there are Natives who are recognized. The VAWA, then, in its applicability only to recognized indigenous women is not only limited in terms of the impact it can actually have in the lives of Native women but also perpetuates the very violence it purports to address for it actually makes invisible the violence that is perpetrated against urban and other non-recognized Native women.

Furthermore, the VAWA limits our understanding of the spatiality of violence. That is, it fixes violence to certain spaces and geographies thus minimizing our ability to recognize violence in other spaces. In only addressing the violence committed against “authentic” Indian women living in recognized spaces of indigeneity, the VAWA suggests that it is on the reservation, and within the boundaries of Indianness, where violence against Native women occurs. It obscures the violence that is perpetrated against Native women in seemingly nonIndian spaces and, accordingly, disappears the violence perpetrated by the settler state and settler colonists. It fashions violence against Native women as yet another “Indian problem” that the settler state can attempt to mitigate through legislation and benevolence but which it is not itself responsible for.

Edward Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

ohn Moore, “The Enduring Reservations of Oklahoma” in State and Reservation: New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy, eds. George Pierre Castile and Robert Bee (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1992), 94.

David Wilkins, American Indian Politics and the American Political System (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 35.

Ibid., 36.

David Treuer, Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012), 41.

Luana Ross, Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 21.

Moore, 96.

John Findlay, “An Elusive Institution: The Birth of Indian Reservations in Gold Rush California” in State and Reservation: New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy, eds. George Pierre Castile and Robert Bee (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1992), 16.

Findlay, 18.

Ibid., 19.

Ibid.

Ross, 3.

Ibid., 38.

Paula Gunn Allen, Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting, Border-Crossing, Loose Canons (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 6.

Ibid.

Frederick Hoxie, “Crow Leadership Amidst Reservation Oppression” in State and

Reservation: New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy, eds. George Pierre Castile and Robert Bee (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1992), 47.

Ibid., 28.

Ibid., 32.

For a sampling of this literature see texts such as Richard Phillips, Mapping Men and Empire:

A Geography of Adventure (New York: Routledge, 1997); Jan Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (New York: Routledge, 1996); Michael Keith and Steve Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1993); Michael Keith and Steve Pile, eds., Geographies of Resistance (New York: Routledge, 1997)Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (New York: Verso, 1989).

Gillian Rose, Feminism & Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 5.

Ibid., 17.

Ibid., 5.

Ibid.

Sherene Razack, ed., Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), 10.

Ibid., 12.

For a compelling argument regarding the feminization and rape of indigenous lands see

Andrea Smith, “Rape of the Land” in Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Cambridge: South End Press, 2005). Conversely, for critical examinations of the role women have played in colonization projects see texts such as Sara Mills, Gender and Colonial Space (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

Mona Domosh and Joni Seager, Putting Women In Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001), 3.

Ibid., 117.

Ibid., 34.

This process, as it is outlined and theorized by Mark Rifkin, will be taken up more fully in the concluding chapter of this dissertation.

Glen Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the `Politics of Recognition' in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007): 438.

Ibid.

Ibid., 439.

Ibid., 443.

Irene Watson, “Settled and Unsettled Spaces: Are We Free to Roam?” in Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2007), 16.

Mishuana Goeman, “From Place to Territories and Back Again: Centering Storied Land in the Discussion of Indigenous Nation-Building,” International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 23.

Ibid., 24.

Hoxie, 54-55.

American Bar Association, “Violence Against Women Act,” American Bar Association, http://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/governmental_legislative_work/priorities_policy/ access_to_legal_services/vawa_home.html (accessed October 12, 2011).

Katherine Seelye, “Accord Reached on Sweeping Bill to Battle Crime,” The New York Times, July 29, 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/29/us/accord-reached-on-sweeping-bill-tobattle-crime.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed October 12, 2011).

National Institute of Justice, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: U.S. Department of Justice Fact Sheet (Washington, DC: 1994).

Kristen Roe, “The Violence Against Women Act and Its Impact on Sexual Violence Public

Policy: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women, September 2004, http://www.vawnet.org/sexualviolence/summary.php?doc_id=251&find_type=web_desc_GC (accessed October, 12, 2011).

Ibid.

American Bar Association, “Violence Against Women Act,” American Bar Association, http://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/governmental_legislative_work/priorities_policy/ access_to_legal_services/vawa_home.html (accessed October 12, 2011).

National Network to End Domestic Violence, “The Violence Against Women Act of 2005: Summary of Provisions,” National Network to End Domestic Violence, http://nnedv.org/ policy/issues/vawa.html (accessed October 12, 2011).

Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1260.

Ibid., 1261.

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology (Cambridge: South End Press, 2006), 1.

Ibid.

Critical Resistance is a grassroots abolitionist organization engaged in waging efforts to dismantle the prison industrial complex.

Incite! is a national activist organization of women of color engaged in the grassroots effort to end violence against women of color and their communities.

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, 223-224.

Ibid., 3.

Established in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians is the oldest and largest national organization of American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments.

National Congress of American Indians, “Resolution # PHX 03-034: Support for the 2005 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act Including Enhancements for American Indian and Alaska Native Women,” June 18, 2003.

Ibid.

Sarah Deer, “Sovereignty of the Soul: Exploring the Intersection of Rape Law Reform and Federal Indian Law,” Suffolk University Law Review 38 (2005): 460.

A sampling of the 16 crimes that currently fall under this legislation are manslaughter, kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon, and incest.

Deer, 460.

National Injustice of Justice, Public Law 280 and Law Enforcement in Indian Country-- Research Priorities (Washington, DC: 2005).

Ibid.

Deer, 461.

Sarah Deer, “Federal Indian Law and Violent Crime: Native Women and Children at the Mercy of the State,” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order 31, no.4 (2004): 22.

For example, Amnesty International's report Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect

Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA (New York: Amnesty International USA, 2007) estimates that at least 86% of the violence perpetrated against Native women is done by non-Indians.

Andrea Smith, “Unmasking the State: Racial/Gender Terror and Hate Crimes,” The Australian Feminist Law Journal 26 (2007): 49.

Ibid.

Sacred Circle: National Resource Center to End Violence Against Native Women, National Congress of American Indians, and National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, Restoration of Native Sovereignty V (Rapid City: Sacred Circle, 2006).

Sarah Deer, Bonnie Clairmont, Carrie Martell, and Maureen White Eagle, eds., Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008), xii.

David Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick: National Culture and Imperial Citizenship in Early America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 5.

Ibid., 193.

Ibid.

Ibid., 198.

Ibid.

The Violence Against Women Act of 1994, H.R. 3355 (1994).

Ibid.

Sacred Circle, 14.

Sacred Circle, 16.

Moore, 94.

Sarah Deer, interview by author, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July, 27, 2010.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Treuer, 41.

James Olson, ed., Encyclopedia of American Indian Civil Rights (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997), 98.

Ibid., 99.

Myla Vicenti Carpio, “Countering Colonization: Albuquerque Laguna Colony,” Wicazo Sa Review 19, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 61.

Sarah Deer, “Relocation Revisited: Sex Trafficking of Native Women in the United States,” William Mitchell Law Review 36 (2010): 669.

Ibid.

Carpio, 61.

Wilkins, 25.

Carpio, 62.

Mishuana Goeman, “(Re)Mapping Indigenous Presence on the Land in Native Women's Literature,” American Quarterly 60, no.1 (2008): 295.

Wilkins, 24-38.

Chapter three. Unidentified Bodies: The Tribal Law And Order Act

On a late Wednesday night in January of 2011, my seven-year-old daughter and I were driving home from an evening of sewing and beading regalia with elders and friends at one of the urban Indian centers in Los Angeles. My usually rambunctious and chatty child was sitting quietly in the passenger seat of our car. I glanced over at her a couple of times, noticed her pensive stare but waited to see if she'd tell me what was bothering her on her own. After several minutes of silence, I finally asked, “Estella, is something wrong? What are you thinking about?” She sighed heavily and dramatically, which is her nature, before answering, “Mama, sometimes I don't feel like an Indian.” I waited for her to elaborate as she's not one to be stingy with her words or opinions. After a moment she added, “I mean, I feel like an Indian when we're at the center, but I don't always feel like one, like at school and with my friends and stuff.”

Like many mixed-blood urban Indian children, Estella has come home from school or from playing with her non-Indian friends on a number of occasions to complain that her skin is too light or her hair not dark enough to be a “real Indian.” I can usually soothe these concerns by showing her photos or otherwise reminding her of lighter-skinned relatives and friends whose Native identities she's never questioned. But this quiet, dark winter night, as I maneuvered us from downtown Los Angeles to our apartment in northeast Los Angeles, I really considered the poignancy of her feelings and words. They were expressed with such sorrow, such longing, and such distress that I couldn't simply brush them aside as the benign utterances of an urban Indian child.

Rather, Estella's concerns caused me to pause and take more seriously the relationship between urban Indian identity and forms of violence against Native women. In particular, her comments prompted me to ask myself how the construction of urban Indian identity might both contribute to the acts of violence directed at Native women and also work as an act of violence in itself. How is it that my daughter who does “Indian things” (i.e. powwow dancing, beading, and attending ceremonies) and spends a good deal of her time in the company of Indian relatives feels non-Indian? Is it simply because she considers her “non-Native” features to mark her as less Indian than the Indians her friends dress up as at Halloween? Or might there be something more to it? Few of the Natives I know, after all, even come close to resembling the USA stamped-with-approval Indian of the colonial imagination so why is it that so many of us struggle with issues of identity? Have we internalized an archaic system of classification that equates skin tone and hair color with ethnic/racial affiliation? Yes, I argued in the previous chapter that our bodies, regardless of physical characteristics, located in urban settings seemingly beyond the borders of colonially constructed spaces of indigeneity have been eliminated from understandings of Nativeness, but how does the construction of identity also contribute to the violence of colonialism? And to what degree can we understand the denial of indigenous identity as an act of violence?

In this chapter, I will explore such questions through a critical analysis of the recently signed Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA) which has been hailed by many as an unprecedented effort to combat violence in the lives of Native women. I posit that a careful interrogation of the legislation's provisions and the legacy of settler colonialism it carries not only allows us to more fully comprehend the scope and implications of the Act but also illuminates the ways in which the TLOA might further solidify the white-supremacist, heteropatriarchal ideologies and constructions of Nativeness that cause violence against Native women in the first place. I suggest that rather than redress violence against Native women, the TLOA actually perpetuates violence in the way it shapes perceptions of Indian peoples, regulates the boundaries of Indian identity, and limits our understanding of violence. I argue that the “law and order” of the Act is not an anti-colonial attempt to reverse past wrongs and rescue Native women from the depths of colonialism but instead is a continuation of the “law and order” that has sanctioned violence against Native women over the last 500 years.

The Tribal Law and Order Act Comes Into Being

At a White House Tribal Nations Conference on November 5, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed violence against Native women by declaring it “an assault on our national conscience that we can no longer ignore."¹ He further responded to the issue on July 29, 2010 by signing into law the Tribal Law and Order Act. Described by many as a landmark piece of legislation that both acknowledges and attempts to reduce the severity of crime in Indian Country,² the bill's provisions are particularly applauded for their potential to address violence against Native women: “The Act includes a strong emphasis on decreasing violence against women in Native communities, and is one of the many steps this Administration strongly supports to address the challenges faced by Native women.”³

The major goals of the TLOA, a multifaceted piece of legislation that seeks to address numerous issues related to what has been described as an epidemic of crime in Indian Country, include: strengthening tribal law enforcement by providing tools and resources designated for this purpose; improving coordination between federal, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies; and increasing federal accountability for the deterrence of crime in Indian Country. Title XI of the Act deals specifically with domestic violence and sexual assault prevention and enforcement. Among other things, this portion of the bill requires tribal law enforcement officials in Indian Country to receive specialized training in interviewing victims of domestic and sexual violence, collecting and preserving evidence, and presenting evidence to tribal and federal prosecutors. It calls for the implementation of standardized sexual assault protocol for tribal law officials as well as Indian Health Service facilities. It also requires that federal employees answer subpoenas or requests to testify in cases of sexual or domestic violence. Likewise, many provisions in other sections of the bill, such as those that bolster the prosecution and sentencing of perpetrators, are aimed at reducing the incidence of violence in the lives of Native women, for, Obama declares, “all of our people - whether they live in our biggest cities or our most remote reservations - have the right to feel safe in their own communities, and to raise their children in peace, and enjoy the fullest protection of our laws.”⁴

The TLOA was not conceived by President Obama or by the legislators who introduced the bill alone. The construction and implementation of the TLOA actually result from the decades of Native feminist/activist/anti-violence work that I have documented in the earlier chapters of this dissertation and should be credited to the dedication and perseverance of Native women across the country. In particular, the TLOA follows on the heels of and is indebted to

Amnesty International's 2007 Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Violence report. Serving on the advisory committee to this project were prominent anti-violence activists such as Sarah Deer, Charon Asetoyer, Vicki Ybanez, and Denise Morris. Countless other survivors of assault, their families, advocates, support workers, and service providers were consulted and interviewed for the report. The intent of Maze was to document both the incidence of violence against Native American and Alaska Native women as well as the factors creating, perpetuating, and/or seeking to redress this violence. To execute this project, Amnesty

International investigated issues of jurisdiction, policing, forensic examinations, barriers to prosecution, and victim support services in three different locations: the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota, the state of Oklahoma, and the state of Alaska.⁵ In addition to Native women, Amnesty International interviewed governmental and judicial officials at the tribal, state, and federal level. They also reviewed pre-existing governmental and nongovernmental data such as studies conducted by the US Department of Justice, media reports, law review articles, and court cases and legislation.⁶ After confirming “what Native American and Alaska Native advocates have long known: that sexual violence against women from Indian nations is at epidemic proportions and that survivors are frequently denied justice,”⁷ Amnesty fervently characterized the violence as a violation of human rights and admonished the United States for failing in its obligations under international law to curtail the violence. In their recommendations, Amnesty called attention to the trust responsibility the US government has to ensure the rights and wellbeing of Native peoples⁸ and demanded the US honor this responsibility through measures such as developing comprehensive plans of action to stop violence against Native women, ensuring accountability, increasing federal funding, and implementing effective policing and access to sexual assault forensic examinations.⁹

Again, as I have demonstrated through my earlier chapters, the horrific realities that

Amnesty International's report documented, analyzed, and sought to redress were not new to Native women or the federal government. For decades preceding the report, Native women's advocates did substantial work at a variety of community, state, national, and international levels in regards to this issue. Despite little to no resources, they documented and analyzed the incidence of violence against Native women as well as initiated advocacy programs, tribal codes, protection order processes, and the establishment of Native shelters and coalitions. It was precisely this labor coupled with Congress's findings regarding the prevalence of violence against Native women that led to the passing of Title IX of the VAWA and eventually led to the creation of the TLOA.

Shortly after the passing of the TLOA, founder and executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network Jessica Yee interviewed Sarah Deer regarding the origins and development of the legislation. In the interview, Deer outlines the connection between Maze and the TLOA: “People have been working to get a bill in Congress on violence against Native women for years and years but it didn't have a fire to catch. So many people in Congress are blind to Indian issues - they don't even cross their radar. But as I was on my way home from the report launch in DC in 2007, the Amnesty Media Relations folks got calls from staffers on Indian Affairs who were excited and wanted legislation. They thought that the report might be just the thing to make people pay attention, since it's a real embarrassment to the U.S. about the realities of Native women's lives. So they asked us to turn around and come back. I was very sick and going through chemotherapy at the time, but I went back. First thing they planned was a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing, the first in front of any congressional body solely focused on any Native women's issues. It's been advocating and activism ever since.”¹⁰ She adds, “It took 60 or 70 years for my favorite feminist from history, Susan B. Anthony, and all these women I looked up to as a little girl, to get the vote - and this took three years. It's really been 500 years, but three years of putting it on paper.”¹¹

Including the one Deer mentions, approximately 15 separate hearings were held before the Committee on Indian Affairs, the Committee on Natural Resources, and the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security in the 110^th and 111^th Congresses. The content of these hearings regarded issues related to law enforcement, crime, and criminal justice in Indian

Country. Then Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Senator Byron Dorgan reported that “the hearings confirmed that a longstanding and life threatening public safety crisis exists in many Indian communities.”¹² Based on the testimonies given early on, Senator Dorgan and 12 co-sponsors initially introduced the TLOA of 2008 on the 23^rd of July. Additional hearings were held, but the bill was not reported out during the 110^th Congress, thus, in April of 2009, the bill was reintroduced in the House and the Senate as the TLOA of 2009. Eventually, the Act was voted on, passed, appended to the Indian Arts and Crafts Amendments Act of 2010, and signed into law by President Obama on July 29, 2010.

Again, Native women were instrumental in this process from the earliest hearings held before the Committee on Indian Affairs to the actual signing of the Act at the White House. For example, in June of 2007 shelter and program directors Georgia Little Shield and Karen Artichoker joined others in testifying at the “Needs and Challenges of Tribal Law Enforcement on Indian Reservations” hearing based on their extensive experiences advocating for Native women. In September of 2007, directors, advocates, and survivors such as Jami Rozell, Tammy Young, and Karen Artichoker again provided testimonies at the “Examining the Prevalence of and Solutions to Stopping Violence Against Indian Women” hearing. Their testimonies recounted incidents and contexts of violence as well as the “discriminatory and jurisdictional barriers to effective law enforcement response."¹³ They also spoke to the discrepancies between what had been enacted under the VAWA and what had actually been implemented and they offered recommendations for future action.

When President Obama signed the Act at the White House, Native activists such as Sarah

Deer, Terri Henry, Suzanne Koepplinger, and Jacque Agtuca were invited to attend the event. Survivor Lisa Marie Iyotte introduced the President before his signing and addressed the nation as she courageously and tearfully shared her story of sexual violence and the failure of federal authorities to prosecute her rapist. In addition, she commented, “If the Tribal Law and Order Act had existed 16 years ago, my story would be very different.”¹⁴

It is critical that we recognize and honor the commitment, dedication, and intentions of the Native women whose fingerprints can be found all over the TLOA even as I proceed to interrogate the possible negative implications of it. To characterize the Act as merely another nation-statist attempt to solve “the Indian problem” without taking seriously how the workings of the nation-state demand that Indians have problems in the first place would perpetuate the marginalization and devaluing of Native women's anti-violence mobilization. This is not my intent. I propose, however, that in a fashion similar to my reading of Title IX of the VAWA, we resist the urge to read the TLOA as a completely positive or a completely negative piece of legislation penned in entirety either by the settler state or by Native women and rather we interrogate the complicated and varied outcomes of such legislation. That is, I believe it is wholly possible, and essential, to both acknowledge the provisions in the Act that do have potential for addressing violence against Native women and also to examine the ways in which such provisions might be co-opted and utilized in the interests of colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy.