The federal government has recently announced plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to improve medical clinics, buy more rape kits and bolster the police response to what authorities say is an epidemic of rapes on Indian land.
The February stimulus bill injected $500 million into Indian Health Services, the agency that handles most medical needs for Native Americans, while the appropriations bill that passed in March is also adding funds. The March bill increases the budget for the Bureau of Indian Affairs by $85 million to provide additional law enforcement on reservations.
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Advocates say it would be a sea change for tribes, which are largely dependent on the federal government when it comes to law enforcement on their lands.
Two years ago, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which straddles North and South Dakota, had five Bureau of Indian Affairs officers to patrol an area the size of Connecticut. Officials there, and on many reservations nationwide, described a rampant problem of rape where hundreds of cases were going unreported, uninvestigated and unprosecuted.
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In many ways, those offenders may be right. Few cases of sexual assault in Indian country make it to the courthouse. In the 1978 case Oliphant vs. Suquamish, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only federal prosecutors can prosecute crimes on Indian land. But those federal prosecutors are also responsible for terrorism cases, white-collar crime and drug racketeering. Rape cases are often shuffled aside. Many officials told NPR that cases involving the rape of a single woman on a reservation just don't hold the kind of prominence those other cases do.
If this bill passes, this the BEST news yet for the safety of all Native American women.
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