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IN THE COURTS OF THE COLONIZERS

The courts of the colonizers are never a good place for our Indigenous women, Two Spirit and Trans relatives. Our family members face the highest rates of violence across the so-called United States. This is true even in our own tribal communities.

Nevertheless, Crushing Colonialism is proud to stand with our friends at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center in celebrating a new decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling confirms that tribal nations can continue to protect the most vulnerable from violence through their own laws and justice systems.

“We are pleased today that the Supreme Court affirmed the inherent right of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to implement their sovereign laws to prosecute an offender who attacked a Native woman on the Tribe’s own lands,” Lucy Simpson (Dine), Executive Director of the Indigenous women led organization, said on June 13.

But even as the decision in Denezpi v. United States recognizes the inherent sovereignty of tribal nations, it is equally important to note what is missing from the opinion written by one of the conservative justices of the highest court in the land. Despite the NIWRC co-authoring a brief explaining the crisis of violence against Indigenous women, the ruling fails to cite the very real dangers our sisters of all walks of life face.

This is particularly true in the American Southwest, where the issues in the Denezpi case arose. As noted in the brief:

according to a 2018 Urban Indian Health Institute (“UIHI”) report, New Mexico had the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the country, with Utah and Oklahoma coming in at eighth and tenth, respectively. In response, New Mexico and Utah established task forces specifically to combat the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people within their borders, and Oklahoma passed legislation seeking funding to establish such a task force. New Mexico’s task force subsequently found that in Farmington, New Mexico, one of the closer urban centers to the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, nearly half of the missing persons cases from 2014-2019 were Natives, 66% of whom were women.

And to spell out the crisis more clearly, the brief reads:

The high rates of violence against Native women and children constitute nothing short of an emergency that threatens the health, safety, welfare—and ultimately the sovereignty—of Tribal Nations. Widespread, commonplace sexual and domestic violence have taken a toll on Native communities. Victimization and the unresolved trauma that follows are directly linked to the significant mental and physical health disparities Native people experience in the United States.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett is the newest member of the Supreme Court. She was put there by a Republican former president who was openly hostile to tribal nations, including repeatedly authorizing pipelines that put our Indigenous women, Two Spirit and Trans relatives in even more danger from violence.

So Barrett’s refusal to put our struggles into words lets us know just how tough it is secure justice from these colonial systems, whether it’s finding our missing and murdered relatives, or keeping our children in our communities.

Still, we welcome the reaction from Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee), an attorney who co-authored the NIWRC brief.  She states:

“This is the first decision in federal Indian law we have seen authored by Justice Barrett, one of the most recent Justices to join the Supreme Court. Justice Barrett’s majority decision acknowledges that the sovereignty of our Tribal Nations pre-dates the United States, and furthermore, that the right of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to outlaw sexual assault constitutes an inherent right the Tribe enjoys as a sovereign government.”

Going forward, Crushing Colonialism is closely watching the Supreme Court in anticipation of another decision that will affect the reproductive rights of pregnant people — especially Native women, who already suffer from chronically underfunded health care systems. We’ve been on the ground in Washington, D.C., in recent weeks to cover the protests in support of a woman’s right to choose.

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About the Author

Jen Deerinwater, Founding Executive Director of Crushing Colonialism, is a bisexual, Two-Spirit, multiply-disabled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and an award-winning journalist and organizer who covers the myriad of issues Jen’s communities face with an intersectional lens.