Part 4 of 4

Native American women experience the highest rate of domestic violence of any ethnicity in the United States. Although there are many challenges to providing appropriate and effective care to victims of Intimate Partner Violence, a sustained and committed movement to decreasing the prevalence of IPV against Native women can be successful. This article outlines some strategies for decreasing the prevalence, helping victims appropriately, and allowing Native women access to care and justice.

Counseling for the victim and batterer must be culturally appropriate in order to be successful. Mainstream domestic violence services may unwittingly reinforce some of the cultural and historical traumas that contribute to the violence according to 2008’s “Family Violence and Men of Color: Healing the Wounded Male Spirit,” second edition.

Interventions also need to recognize the oppression of Native Americans by outsiders and be sure to not perpetuate the cultural oppression that has been so prevalent in the past, according to an article in the 2000 edition of American Journal of Community Psychology. However, health officials should not assume that a victim wants traditional services just because she is Native, according to an article in 2004’s American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research: The Journal of the National Center of American Indian and Alaska Native Program. Academics have proposed bi-cultural models of care, called the Hybrid or Community-clinic model, to provide services that are sensitive to the history of the Native American community and increase the efficacy of counseling services.

In this model, the first step is to conduct an assessment, both Western and traditional, to understand the cosmology of the client. Based on this assessment, the counselor can use traditional ceremonies and rituals as appropriate to aid in the healing process, always with the aim to allow the client to gain a better understanding of cultural knowledge and reconnect with traditional methods, according to “Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects” from 1998.

Western interventions can be effective if bi-cultural allowances, such as allowing a traditional healer to work with the client, are accepted. The healing rituals of traditional healers allow the client and the batterers, in the case where the batterer is also Native American, to express their culture and come to terms with the historical basis for violence. There is a caveat for the providers of these counseling services, however: The therapist, if he or she is Native American, must come to terms with his or her own historical trauma in order to be able to help the victim or perpetrator. In the same vein, in order to provide appropriate care an Anglo therapist must come to terms with their historical guilt and understand how history provides their privileged place in society, according to “Family Violence and Men of Color.”

The Navajo have continued a traditional system of conflict mediation called the Peacemakers. In Peacemaker Court, a Native couple with domestic violence issues meets with a mediator and attempt to reconcile their differences using prayer and traditional teachings. This approach is based on Navajo Common Law, which governs the Navajo Nation, and revives the traditional mechanisms for dealing with violence and disagreement, according to 1996’s “Native Americans, Crime and Justice.” The Eight Northern Indians Pueblo Council Peacekeeping Program provides similar services for the Pueblo nations of New Mexico.

Although providing appropriate counseling can help individuals break the cycle of violence for their own family, there are other steps that need to be taken to prevent violence on a community- and state-wide basis. Most of all, law enforcement and the government need to take steps to gain the trust of the Native community to ensure that Native American victims of IPV are given a greater opportunity for justice.

The murky issue of jurisdiction on tribal land allows many perpetrators, not only of domestic violence but also of other violent and sexual crimes, to walk free. The message sent by this situation is that a Native American is an easy target with little risk for reprisal. Federal, state and tribal authorities need to cooperate to find a way to make the justice process more transparent and responsive. To prevent violent crime and gain Native trust in the American justice system, it is necessary to begin a coordinated effort to arrest and convict non-Native perpetrators on tribal land without the jurisdictional ambiguity that currently exists.

Another important step in gaining that trust is to place mechanisms in the law enforcement and judicial systems to prevent instances of discrimination and allow these institutions to be more responsive to the needs of American Indians. Training officers in the complexities of domestic violence and Native American culture, providing legal advocates to help Native Americans navigate the court process, and mandating cultural sensitivity and domestic violence training for all judges may lower some barriers to justice.

If a woman feels she can express her culture in the therapy process, success is more likely. Funding culturally appropriate services and trainings throughout the state of New Mexico may help women break the cycle of violence. By providing and advertising these services, New Mexico can help many Indian victims of IPV in their search for healing.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in order for any of those interventions to be effective a shift in attitudes and an increase in awareness is necessary. The attitudes of police officers, the judicial system, politicians, some Native Americans and many of those in mainstream society need to change in order to begin to address IPV against Native American women.

The history of discrimination, genocide and exploitation needs to be confronted and recognized so the mindset that dehumanizes and victimizes Native Americans can be overcome. This is not something that can be legislated or mandated – but a concentrated educational effort to expose the violence as well as its historical roots can go a long way in healing the wounds of the past and present. Only when all of us – Native American, Anglo, Hispanic, African American, Asian – can face this issue and mobilize our resources can Native American women finally experience the justice they deserve.


Kathryn Tucker is a junior at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., studying international health with a pre-medical concentration. During the summer of 2009, she received the Lisa J. Raines/AAP Undergraduate Research Grant to study causes of and response to domestic violence against Native Americans in New Mexico. This series of four articles on domestic violence is based on research that will be published in Mentis Vitae, a Georgetown undergraduate research journal. Kathryn also created a documentary entitled “Women are Sacred: The Struggle to Stop Domestic Violence Against Native Americans in New Mexico” as part of this project. Kathryn lives in Tijeras, N.M.

Research funded by the Lisa J. Raines/AAP Undergraduate Research Grant.
Research approved by the Georgetown University IRB.