So far, going through this class I have learned more about things that I have heard about before, but just didn’t know all of the details. One thing that I hadn’t really thought about before was sexual and domestic violence among the reservations. The articles we read this week were very eye opening to these issues. The article Most Rapes of Native American Women Go Unpunished; Communities and Police Debate Solutions by Clare Church was very informative about the sexual violence going on in these reservations. The statistics of 1 in 3 women in reservations being raped was hard to hear. The worst part of this article, by far, was that there are such things as “rape tourism”. When I read that, I was truly disgusted. I don’t understand how people can be so messed up.
Although all of this was extremely disheartening, there was some upside. I thought it was good that cross-deputization was a thing. It was comforting to know that the world outside of the reservations is taking some action to help. I did find it very surprising though that some reservations found it insulting and offensive. I thought they would all be grateful, but I can see why they would feel this way. With the help of other police, it makes it look like the cops in the reservations can’t handle the issues at hand. Unfortunately, it’s not up to them sometimes, considering the law loopholes that are present in this country. I hope that with some cross-deputization and maybe some other programs, the reservations can bring the cases of sexual assault down to 0.