The Fort Randall Casino and Hotel, near the town of Lake Andes, South Dakota, stands like a mirage amid nothing but miles and miles of fields. Only the occasional antiabortion sign or wild turkey crossing the road breaks the monotony of the vast landscape. As I settle into my hotel room, I hear a woman panting loudly next door. A man's voice comes through the paper-thin wall: "Bitch," he says. Then the TV goes on.
Owned and operated by the Yankton Sioux tribe, the casino is open 24 hours a day and is the main employer for the 6,000 Native Americans who live on the Yankton Sioux reservation, partially located in Charles Mix County. Still, poverty is rampant: Unemployment among South Dakota tribes averages 70 percent. In the streets, I see no children playing, no elders rocking on their porches, no bookstore or flower shop, and just one tiny grocery store. You can always find a drink, though--sadly, alcohol abuse is a widespread scourge.
But I've come here to report on another tragedy that gets far too little attention: According to U.S. Justice Department figures, more than one in three Native women will be raped in her lifetime, and they are two and a half times more likely to be sexually assaulted or raped than non-Native women. And these estimates are widely assumed to be low because so many rapes go unreported. "We found anecdotally that the rates could be much, much higher," says Trine Christensen, a senior researcher with Amnesty International, which published a groundbreaking report on Native women and sexual violence last year. As Charon Asetoyer, an activist on the Yankton Sioux reservation, puts it, "The bottom line is that it's open season on Native women. Nearly every woman on the reservation has been affected."
Because of underfunded health services, inadequate law enforcement response and jurisdictional confusion between tribal and U.S. courts, few of these rapes are even investigated, much less prosecuted. No data exists on how many cases go to trial, but Amnesty International and other activists agree: Perpetrators are walking free. "This place is heaven for serial rapists," Charon says. "Our daughters' lives are being taken from us."
Charon, 57, has dedicated her life to fighting brutality against Native women. A Comanche, she founded the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center on the Yankton Sioux Nation's land--the first of its kind on any reservation when she started it in 1985. Charon's center is the first place women contact after being attacked, if they seek help at all. "When a victim calls, we'll either meet her at the emergency room, or take her there ourselves," Charon says. Her center connects victims with attorneys, acts as an advocate with doctors and law enforcement agencies, and may provide victims with shelter, counseling and child care.
These days, Charon is also traveling the country as an advocate for Native women, speaking to conferences and government officials, including the United Nations. Charon has a soft face and a soothing voice, but she's also got the iron will needed to break the silence about abuse and injustice: "Our human rights are violated every day," she says, "and there is very little being done to protect us."
Born to a Comanche mother and a Caucasian father, Charon grew up in Santa Clara, California. Herself the victim of an unreported rape as a teen, Charon only recently began disclosing her assault to family and friends. Talking to Charon about her past helps me realize how loud silence can be. Being raped and not talking about it leaves a double wound, one so many victims carry with them. Sharing that history of unspoken abuse helps Charon understand what many other sexual assault survivors go through.
After the end of a difficult marriage, Charon moved to South Dakota in 1979 to go to college, eventually becoming the first Native to hold a master's degree in international administration. Then she met her second husband, Clarence Rockboy, a Yankton Sioux tribe elder who was her partner and best ally before he passed away two years ago. "He was a traditional man and a feminist," she says. From her Native mother, Charon has retained two relationship lessons: Learn to shoot a gun, and never marry a man you love. "You want to marry a man you respect; then love is guaranteed. It took me two marriages to understand that," Charon tells me, laughing.
Charon began her activism work alongside Clarence in the early 1980s, when the couple started a fetal alcohol syndrome program in their basement in Lake Andes. Although the program wasn't designed to assist assault victims, Native women fleeing abuse flocked there. "Women would run to our house as a safe haven," Charon remembers. "They just kept coming."
Also around that time, in 1982, Charon suffered an unthinkable personal tragedy: Her best friend, Ethel, was murdered by her husband, who came home drunk from a party one night and beat her to death.Charon and Ethel had taken each other as "hunka sisters," Sioux for two friends who become family in a special ceremony. Ethel's death changed Charon's life; combined with her own abuse history, that loss helped her to realize her true calling as an advocate for forgotten abuse victims. "Those things determined my destination, my path in life," she says.
When Charon began telling other women that they had a right to justice, they didn't believe her--the notion seemed so foreign. It's hard for me to grasp that such a mind-set could exist in America. But you don't acquire that sense of futility in one generation; it's a hangover from the inequities Native people have endured ever since white men settled this country.
How is it possible that so many rapists go unpunished here? As Charon helped me understand while eating dinner at her home, the breakdown in justice starts from the moment a Native woman is attacked. Because abuse is such a fact of life here, most Native sexual assault victims don't even go to the police, assuming nothing will come of it. Some victims may seek help at health clinics, such as those operated by the federally funded Indian Health Service (IHS)--and here, the system breaks down yet again.
Unlike most American hospitals, IHS clinics lack standardized policies to handle sexual assault cases; almost half don't even have personnel trained to examine victims and collect DNA evidence with a rape kit, according to one study. "Without a rape kit," Charon says, "there are no convictions." Thanks to Charon and other activists, though, Congress is starting to pay attention: In February the U.S. Senate passed amendments mandating, among other things, that IHS develop a standardized sexual assault policy.
When rape victims choose to report crimes, because of complex laws and boundaries between tribal and U.S. lands, just figuring out which agency should investigate the claim can be chaotic. When an assault takes place in a U.S. city or county, those police departments have jurisdiction. On Native lands, which are federal territory, both the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation could claim the case--unless the alleged perpetrator was non-Native, in which case tribal officials have no authority. "It can take months before it's determined who will investigate an assault claim," says Amnesty's Christensen.
In many cases, no one does. Charon recalls an incident several years ago in which a young Native woman was allegedly raped in tribal territory. Although the woman immediately reported the crime to BIA police, it was federal authorities who had jurisdiction because the suspect was white. "The FBI didn't bother to investigate," Charon says. "The woman dropped out of school. It affected every aspect of her life."
When police do show up, they're often way too late, jeopardizing rape investigations. Because of poor federal funding, Charon says, "just two BIA officers cover our 62-square-mile area." And many victims experience prejudice from police. Charon describes an incident in which a young woman told an officer she'd been raped by a man she recognized--but he never wrote down the suspect's name or filed a report. "That's the kind of racism we deal with," Charon says. Perhaps most appalling, those rapists who are tried in tribal courts end up back on the streets frustratingly quickly: U.S. law limits their sentences to only one year--a fraction of what they could get for the same crime committed off Native land.
It's no wonder then, given the barriers that stand in the way of punishing these rapists, that Charon can think of only one perpetrator in her area who was brought to justice: a 2004 case involving a serial rapist and several teenage victims. "It took forever to get him behind bars," Charon says. "You get really frustrated."
That night at my hotel, there's another round of drama from the couple next door. "Don't hit me! I was joking," the woman pleads. The man mumbles, then they have sex, but it sounds more like a beating.
When I visit the 18-bed shelter at Charon's center, it feels comfortable. There's a couch, a television, a toy box packed with stuffed animals, a big kitchen table and a garden. I meet a woman there who describes being brutally attacked by a man she had dated, and it strikes me that I usually hear this type of story in war zones--where rape is used as a weapon, like in the Congo.
After hearing one heartbreaking story after another, I meet Sasheen Thin Elk, an 18-year-old volunteer at the center's radio program whose poise and maturity feel like oxygen. Not that the kid has been spared. She, too, is a survivor; although she didn't initially report the crime, she recently confronted her attacker. Speaking up was painful because it made Sasheen relive her ordeal, but it was only when she broke her silence that she was able to dream about the future.
Now Sasheen wants to encourage other Native women to speak out too. Her advice for those confronting the trauma she knows so well: "Just stop the cycle. Say something," which reminds me of a famous saying by feminist icon Gloria Steinem, "The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off."
The night before my departure, I have dinner at the casino restaurant with most of the women I have met here. The guest of honor is Sasheen. I have decided to help her find a sponsor to make a radio documentary on her people--a brilliant student, Sasheen wants to study journalism in college, and maybe science, too.
As for Charon, after years of fighting, she seems cautiously hopeful that if enough survivors tell their stories--on the radio, to the police, to the world--Native women will get the justice they deserve. "This is allowed to go on because people don't hear about it," she says. "Women would be appalled if they knew about this outrage." She's right--hearing the truth is bound to piss us off, but working together for justice will also set us free.
Mariane Pearl's collection of her Global Diary columns, In Search of Hope, can be purchased on glamour.com/globaldiary. Glamour's proceeds go to the charities of the women profiled.
