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ANTIVIOLENCE ADVOCATES OFTEN FIND THEMSELVES WORKING WITH THE CONTRAdictions of struggling for a vision of justice within the constraints of the United States criminal legal system. Perhaps the greatest contradictions are those felt by many Native advocates who understand the United States to be a settler colonial state. Sociologist Luana Ross' seminal book on Native women and prison, Inventing the Savage (1998), critiques uncritical approaches toward legal reform, noting that me genocide of Native peoples has never been against the law. Similarly, as Native Studies scholar Sandy Grande states:
The United States is a nation defined by its original sin: the genocide of American Indians.... American Indian tribes are viewed as an inherent threat to the nation, poised to expose the great lies of U.S. democracy: that we are a nation of laws and not random power; that we are guided by reason and not faith; that we are governed by representation and not executive order; and finally, that we stand as a self-determined citizenry and not a kingdom of blood or aristocracy.... From the perspective of American Indians, "democracy" has been wielded with impunity as the first and most virulent weapon of mass destruction (Grande, 2004: 3 1-32).
At the same time, the incidence of violence against Native women has reached epidemic rates. The 1999 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, American Indians and Crime, found diat sexual assault among Native Americans is 3.5 times higher than for all other races living in the United States. Unlike other racial groupings in the United States, most sexual assaults committed against Native American women are interracial (Greenfield and Smith, 1999). In particular, people who perpetrate sexual assault against Native women are generally white. Because of the complex jurisdictional issues involving tribal lands, most sexual assaults against Native women are committed witìi impunity. Depending on me tribe, non-Native perpetrators of sexual assault on Indian reservations may fall outside state, federal, and tribal jurisdictions; often, tribes themselves have not developed effective means for addressing violence in their communities.
The intersections of gender violence and colonialism in Native women's lives force numerous contradictions upon Native antiviolence advocates. First, the federal justice system is premised on the ongoing colonization of Native nations. Second, tribal governments often engage in gender-oppressive practices ....