Violence Plagues Native Americans
Native Americans are victims of violent crime at a rate more than double that of the rest of the population, according to the first nationwide survey the federal government has done on the subject.
The severity of the problem, reaching Native Americans of all ages, backgrounds and income levels, surprised even the Justice Department researchers who released the study Sunday. Native Americans said that the numbers should prompt a redoubling of efforts to identify the root causes.
“It’s a double-edged sword. People don’t want to be stereotyped as violent--that’s not part of who we are--but statistics like this might also encourage people to take steps toward intervention,” said Anna Pasqua, a Native American who coordinates a domestic violence program with the Inter-Tribal Council of California in Sacramento.
Alcohol abuse, tensions with non-Native Americans, poor law enforcement services and other factors may all play a part in fueling the high rates of violent crime identified in the study, Native American leaders said.
A wave of worsening crime and social ills on reservations in recent years has drawn stepped-up attention from federal policymakers. But the study documents the range and extent of the problem, researchers said, and it details several particularly troubling twists, such as the frequency of assaults by non-Native Americans and the extent of alcohol abuse by Native American offenders.
“We now know that American Indians experience a much greater exposure to violence than other race groups,” Lawrence A. Greenfeld of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, co-author of the report, said in an interview.
“I was very surprised,” he said. “The common wisdom was that blacks experience the highest exposure to violence. And when we released the [crime] survey results year after year, that was the result. This adds a new dimension to our understanding of the problem.”
Native Americans number about 2.3 million in the United States, or less than 1% of the population, with about a quarter living on reservations and trust lands, according to census figures. There are more than 100 tribes and 236,000 Native Americans in California, the second-highest for any state.
Justice Department statisticians said they had never broken out crime rates among Native Americans because the statistical sample was too small. But in response to numerous queries about the extent of the problem, the department decided to review five years worth of data, looking at 150,000 incidents of violence a year and other crimes among Native Americans who live on and off reservations.
“The findings reveal a disturbing picture of American Indian involvement in crime as both victims and offenders,” said Jan M. Chaiken, director of the bureau.
Native Americans 12 and older were reported to be victims of violent crime at a rate 2 1/2 times greater than the rest of the population, with one violent crime for every eight people. Among all races, there was one incident for every 20 people.
Assault and, to a lesser extent, rape posed particular problems. The rate for murder, however, was largely consistent with other races.
The high rates of victimization held true for Native Americans of different income levels, ages, gender and backgrounds. Native Americans in rural areas, for instance, were 2 1/2 times more likely than rural blacks or whites to be the victims of crime.
Researchers were surprised to find that, in 7 of 10 violent episodes against Native Americans, the offender was reported to be a non-Native American.
“One of the lessons here,” Greenfeld said, “is that we’re going to have to do a much better job in learning about the circumstances of this interracial violence.”
Abuse and neglect of children was found to be a particular problem, bucking national trends. Native Americans reported an 18% increase in reports of abuse and neglect from 1992 to 1995, while the national average dropped 8%.
And alcohol abuse by offenders has continued to prove troublesome.
Seven of 10 Native Americans in local jails for violent crimes had been drinking when they committed the offense, nearly double the rate for the general population. Moreover, Native Americans were imprisoned at a rate 38% higher than the national average.
Tom LeClaire, a Mohawk who is director of the Justice Department’s Office of Tribal Justice, said the study “confirms what we long had suspected and had been observing empirically.”
In an interview, he pointed to a number of possible explanations, including the recent proliferation of gangs on reservations, “woefully inadequate” detention facilities, and the “hostility and mistrust” between reservations and their neighbors.
But, he emphasized, there are no certain explanations for the troubling phenomenon. “If I could answer that, I’d have a corner on the market. There are no easy answers.”
Carole Goldberg, a UCLA law professor who heads a joint-degree program in law and American Indian studies, agreed. The new data “is a start. It doesn’t tell us anything about why these things are happening, but it’s a whole lot better than not knowing anything at all.”
