ranting

what could very well have been the worst semester of my entire academic career is now officially over.

i've finished my ethics presentation, my trial, my ethics paper, my fed indian law exam, my writing requirement/article, and work. and i get to go home tomorrow.

life couldn't get much better this second.

so the way this writing requirement/article thing works out is that i originally wrote this paper for comparative law final last spring. because i want to go into indian law, the topic i chose was violence against women. amnesty had just done this huge project on sexual violence against women that really inspired me to do my own research from a more legal perspective, and so my paper was born. once that paper was done, i decided to continue to pursue it as my upper division writing requirement, meaning it would have to be longer and better than the original. at the same time, a law journal at school decided to publish it in their upcoming april/may volume. so i spent nearly every minute over the weekend revising it and adding sections, taking sections out, cite checking, all for my writing requirement. and over the course of the next several months, i'll be working with editors at the journal to bring it up to publication standards.

i should probably be more excited, because i'm finally getting published. but i'm more stressed actually. it's really scary when your thoughts and theories are going to be out there for people to read and quite possibly attack. i'll guess we'll see what happens.

to give a brief summary, native american women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped and/or sexually assaulted than any other woman in the united states. 86% of the time, the perpetrators are non-Native men. unfortunately, tribes have no jurisdiction over non-Indians. that jurisdiction, in most cases, lies with the federal government. the federal government, however, rarely prosecutes perpetrators (we see this in rape/sexual assault cases against non-Native women as well), mainly because of a lack of resources, the distance and time it takes to get to a lot of these remote areas in Indian country (think: reservations for Sioux nation, Alaska Native villages, etc.), and the fact that even the federal government is confused about it's authority to prosecute these perpetrators. compounded with this is the fact that the severity of the crime also matters. one U.S. attorney from michigan can be quoted as saying that in order for this sort of case in Indian country to see any sort of action, "there needs to be stitches, practically a dead body."

so tribes don't prosecute because they can't. the federal government doesn't prosecute because of a lack of resources, a lack of effort, and general overall confusion.

and then you have the states. so in some states, the federal government has decided to chuck it's jurisdictional responsibility off of itself and on to state governments. so in those states, when a Native woman is raped by a non-Native man, the state is the one with exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute. BUT, when the federal government decided to give states this responsibility, they neglected to also give them extra funding, and tribes, as we all know, don't pay state taxes since they live on the res and are quasi-sovereign entities. states now have a much larger jurisdictional area, much more responsibility for a much larger population, and they have to police this increased area with the same small budget. added to that, there's already hostility between tribes and states when it comes to jurisdictional issues, so states rarely choose to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against tribal members.

where does this leave Native women? without remedy for crimes against them. and this is not to say that tribes wouldn't prosecute if they had the authority to do so; many tribes have tribal codes which cover these sorts of crimes. but tribes are also limited in the sentences they can impose under the Indian Civil Rights Act. so, for example, if a Native man rapes a Native woman, the tribe can prosecute, but they can only give the perpetrator either one year in jail, a $5000 fine, or both. and a lot of tribes feel that this isn't enough, so they'd prefer to leave even this sort of prosecution up to the federal government (especially because the government can vacate the sentences if they feel it doesn't measure up to federal standards).

and again, Native women get no remedy.

there's a lot more to it, obviously, since i write 50 pages on it, but this is just a really rough and tumble sort of summary.

it's okay if you don't understand it. i had to literally draw myself graphs and pictures until i really got it. like i said, fed. indian law is ridiculously complicated.


OFF TOPIC:
so not to be 13, but i'm one of those who think the twilight movie people should keep the dude who plays jacob instead of recasting him. i'm not saying he's the best actor, or that he can necessarily handle a leading man role, but come on, you let rp have a leading man role... it's kinda shady (not that that isn't the movie biz as a whole...).

AND, maybe you should have thought of all this before casting him in the first place, no? even if there was only the possibility of a sequel. it's called planning ahead, hollywood studio. little jake fans (of which i, for the record, am not) all over the place are attached to him now. first you change directors, now this? ever thought of changing the screenwriter instead?!

oh, and the dude from oth circa-season 2 as jacob is a no-go, imho.

haters.



reminders to myself for future blogs:

• new camera!
• home!
• decision to take the bar
• writing
• book reviews
• new layout?