Unraveling the source of domestic violence in Indian Country

By Tim Giago
Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.

A recent news series by Jodi Rave, an American Indian writer for the Lee Enterprises newspaper group, has focused on violence against Indian women, and rightfully so. The series includes a number of interviews with women that have been abused or comments from those women involved in programs intended to address this most serious issue.

But what the series does not address are the possible reasons behind this abuse and it also lacks comments from Indian men working to address the same issues, nor does it include interviews with men who stand accused as abusers.

As a Lakota man now in his seventh decade, one that has been an observer of Indian people and issues as a journalist for more than 40 years, I would like to expand upon the series of articles by Ms. Rave, but from an Indian male perspective. As one might not gather from the series, most of us are not women abusers or wife beaters.

For the past 40 years I have employed Indian people, both men and women. I employed them in a coffee and donut shop I owned when I was young and I have employed them for the many jobs it takes to publish a weekly newspaper over the past 26 years.

I didn’t keep statistics, but I did make certain observations simply because of the number of women I had in my employ. Yes, I did have women employees that lived in an abusive atmosphere. When they came to work wearing dark glasses to cover the bruises around their eyes I often sat them down and talked to them.

Now mind you, in nearly every case, these female employees of mine were the breadwinners. They were the ones who held the jobs and brought home the paycheck. Their husbands or significant others were the stay-at-homes who did nothing to help support their family.

Much of the abuse usually happened right after a payday. The workingwomen go out with their husbands or boyfriends to a local watering hole to unwind, which of course means getting drunk. At some point in the evening the woman realizes her kids are home alone and she has to get home to carry out her duties as a mother. If her spouse or boyfriend has not confiscated her paycheck by then, her attempt at leaving the party seems to be reason enough for him to make a grab at getting the money from her purse so that he can continue to party.

When the women come to work the next day broke and bruised, I always talked to them. “Why are you letting this bum live off of you? You are a good and decent woman and yet you have this terrible guy living in your house with your children taking your paycheck every week and blowing it on booze while you and your children go without? Why are you letting this happen?”

The stock answer usually is, “But I love him.” And the fact that she loves him allows this man to continue to beat her up, take her weekly paycheck, abuse her children and leave her on the fringes of extreme poverty.

Historically, when Indians were forced to settle on small reservations, the Indian male was stripped of his weapons which kept him from doing the jobs that made him a man: Feeding and supporting his family. While many Indian women found jobs with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian hospital, the schools or with the tribal government, most Indian males found themselves without jobs. Unemployment on many Indian reservations to this day exceeds 50 percent.

When an Indian male discovered that he could no longer assume his role as leader and provider for his family he felt totally emasculated. This loss of self-esteem and self-confidence caused many men to turn toward substances like alcohol and drugs to help them forget and to help them cope. Too often this culminated in the man striking out at the one object he loved, his spouse or girl friend. The hurt he felt within himself often manifested itself in violence against others, especially against someone near to him.

Stripped of his ability to provide for his family through the hunt, an activity that was as much spiritual as economical, and denied the opportunity to find gainful employment, many Lakota men retreated within themselves boiling with an anger even they did not understand.

And then came the horrific time when Indian men and women were forcefully taken from their homes and placed into boarding schools where they were physically, emotionally, and oftentimes sexually abused by their well-intentioned keepers.

How much of the abuse we see today in Indian families is a harbinger of those horrible days spent at Indian missions and Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools has never been researched in-depth. But from my personal perspective, I think many of today’s problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, and spousal abuse involving both men and women; can be traced back to those days.

I encourage Jodi Rave to continue her articles on this very touchy subject, but I would also advise her to use the deep pockets of her news organization to further research this topic by including the harm caused by the boarding school experience. Too often all of the blame falls upon the shoulders of the Indian male and if this is the case, the reasons this happens should also be a part of the topic. After all, it is impossible to find a cure if one does not know the source of the problem.


(McClatchy News Service in Washington, DC distributes Tim Giago’s weekly column. He can be reached at P.O. Box 9244, Rapid City, SD 57709 or at najournalists@rushmore.com. Giago was also the founder and former editor and publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers and the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association. Clear Light Books of Santa Fe, NM (harmon@clearlightbooks.com) published his latest book, “Children Left Behind”)