From Dodie -
Sexual violence against indigenous women discussed at
United Nations
Posted: May 18, 2007
by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415046


NEW YORK - In Mexico, Ines Fernandez Ortega, a
27-year-old woman, was preparing food in her kitchen
when a group of soldiers entered her house and raped
her. A local police investigation ground to a halt
when military authorities claimed jurisdiction over
the case.

In Canada, Helen Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree
student from northern Manitoba, was abducted by four
white men, sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. A
provincial inquiry later - much later - criticized the
sloppy and racially biased police investigation that
took 15 years to bring one of the men to justice.

In Guatemala, Maria Isabel, a 15-year-old girl, was
kidnapped and later found murdered. She had been
raped, feet and hands bound with barbed wire, stabbed,
strangled and stuffed into a bag. She was one of 1,188
women killed between 2001 and 2004, according to an
Amnesty International report.

In America, an American Indian woman was raped, beaten
and thrown from a bridge by two white men.
Miraculously, the woman survived and pressed charges
against her attackers but, when the case first went to
trial, jurors couldn't agree on a verdict. When asked
why, one juror said, ''She was just another drunk
Indian.''

These examples, documented in studies by AI, are the
tip of the iceberg of a worldwide scourge of sexual
violence against indigenous women. A group of
indigenous women discussed the issues at a panel
called ''Violence Against Indigenous Women'' at the
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
May 14, the opening day of the forum's sixth session.

''This most common human right abuse affects between
20 and 50 percent of all women of most countries for
all culture and classes and, even though we've
achieved much in the last two decades, this pernicious
problem continues amongst us and even shows evidence
of increasing in some societies,'' said Marijke
Velzeboer-Salcedo, the regional director for the
Americas of United Nations Development Fund for Women
and moderator of the panel.

A major report called ''Indigenous Women Stand Against
Violence'' was recently published. It was a companion
report to the U.N.'s secretary general's study on
violence against women prepared by the International
Indigenous Women's Forum, which is known by its
Spanish acronym FIMI (Foro Internacional de Mujeres
Indigenas). The full report and its recommendations,
and strategies for eradicating violence against
indigenous women, are available at
www.indigenouswomensforum.org/resources.html.

Michael Bochenek, AI's director of international
policy, said AI has gained prominence since its 2004
violence against women campaign which calls for
dismantling barriers to access justice, providing
adequate health services to women and exposing the
failure of states to act with due diligence in cases
of violence against women.

Mililani Trask from the Indigenous World Association
cited a recent report by the U.N.'s special rapporteur
on human rights that talks about a trend by the
dominant culture to justify certain acts of violence
against women as cultural traditions and practices
that are to be protected.

''We have seen this more and more developing over the
last several years; deliberate effort on the part of
the Bush administration and certain other states that
are standing with the Bush administration as allies to
achieve what the special rapporteur is calling 'the
orientalizing of violence against women,''' Trask
said.

This is where sexual violence and racism interact,
Trask continued.

''By focusing the issue on cultural traditions, the
developed Western countries can both demonize certain
countries and free themselves from addressing the
expanding violence against women,'' Trask added.

Beverly Jacobs, a Mohawk woman from Six Nations Grand
River territory and the president of the Native
Women's Association of Canada, said the well-being of
communities depends on the well-being of women.

''Where I come from is a matriarchal, matrilineal
society where the women in our communities are the
backbone of our communities and when we have healthy
women we have healthy nations and healthy communities.
I think it's a very critical situation that we're in
right now. Women in our societies are saying, 'That's
enough, that's enough, that's it and what are we going
to do about it?''' Jacobs said.

The groups began lobbying four years ago to address
the issues of racialized sexual violence after a
number of indigenous women were brutally murdered and
mutilated.

''All of the stereotypes exist out there, saying that
this is part of our culture and our tradition. I can
tell you it's not part of my culture and my tradition.
Where I come from there is no word for sexual
violence, there is no word for sexual assault, so it
has to be a created word to understand what it is.
It's something we need to think about and know this is
occurring across the world,'' Jacobs added.

Organizations sponsor panels at United Nations forum

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous
Issues, an advisory body to the U.N.'s Economic and
Social Council, is mandated to discuss indigenous
issues related to economic and social development,
culture, the environment, education, health and human
rights. Dozens of nongovernmental organizations hosted
''side events'' at the forum's sixth session, held at
the United Nations in New York May 14 - 25. The
following groups sponsored panels on violence against
indigenous women and climate change. The following
information and resources are found at each group's
Web site:

* Seventh Generation Fund, www.7genfund.org, based in
Arcata, Calif., is an indigenous nonprofit
organization dedicated to promoting and maintaining
the uniqueness of Native peoples throughout the
Americas. The organization offers an integrated
program of advocacy, small grants, training and
technical assistance, media experience and fiscal
management, lending support and extensive expertise to
indigenous grass-roots communities. The Seventh
Generation Fund derives its name from a precept of the
Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations
Iroquois Confederacy) that mandates that chiefs
consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh
generation yet to come. The organization has set up a
special media center on its Web site to provide
coverage of the permanent forum's sixth session in
live interviews, videos, audios and photos of people
and events taking place each day. The content will
remain on the Web site for several months.

* The American Indian Law Alliance, www.ailanyc.org,
founded in 1989 by Tonya Gonnella Frichner, Onondaga
Nation, is an indigenous, nonprofit organization that
works with indigenous nations, communities and
organizations in their struggle for sovereignty, human
rights and social justice, both in the United States
and internationally. Frichner was recently appointed
the North American representative to the UNPFII. AILA
has consultative status with the U.N.'s Economic and
Social Council. From AILA's Web site: ''We support our
elders and leaders and are accountable to the
communities we serve. We welcome our allies, while
remaining committed to our original instructions
handed down through generations of ancestors in order
to preserve Indigenous traditions for our
descendants.''

* Indigenous Networks on Economies and Trade,
www.indigenousnet.org, based in Vancouver, British
Columbia, is a network open to indigenous peoples and
organizations from around the globe who want to defend
and develop their inherent rights to their territories
and indigenous economies.

* International Indigenous Women's Forum (known by its
Spanish acronym, FIMI), www.indigenouswomensforum.org,
is a network of indigenous women leaders from Asia,
Africa and the Americas. FIMI's mission is to bring
together indigenous women activists, leaders and human
rights promoters from different parts of the world to
coordinate agendas, build unity, develop leadership
and advocacy skills, increase indigenous women's roles
in international decision-making processes and advance
women's human rights. FIMI's recent report on violence
against indigenous women - ''Mairin Iwanka Raya:
Indigenous Women Stand Against Violence'' - is
available in English and Spanish on its Web site.

* MADRE, www.madre.org, based in New York, is an
international women's human rights organization,
founded in 1983, that works in partnership with
community-based women's organizations worldwide to
address health and reproductive rights, economic
development, education and other human rights issues.
MADRE provides resources, training and support to
enable its sister organizations to meet concrete needs
in their communities while working to shift the
balance of power to promote long-term development and
social justice. Since its founding, MADRE has
delivered more than $22 million in support to
community-based women's organizations in Latin
America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, Asia,
the Balkans and the United States. MADRE is a
direct-action human rights organization that not only
documents and condemns abuses, but also works directly
with women who are affected by violations to help them
win justice and change the conditions that give rise
to human rights abuses. MADRE also challenges U.S.
policies that undermine human rights.

- Compiled by staff reporter Gale Courey Toensing

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