Navajo reservations and domestic abuse
Internally the viscosity of Navajo culture largely influences the behavioral patterns involving domestic violence.
Geographic influence is another contributing factor; including the lack of accessibility to the police and the large distances between the reservation and possible outside aid.
[3] Another prominent coordinated effort to help Navajo youth assimilate was the Indian Placement Program, operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1947 to 1996.
[5] The federal government of the United States has, in the past and to varying degrees, passed many bills and adjudicated many cases that involve the sovereignty of Native American tribes.
The cases adjudicated generally involved sovereignty of Native American criminal prosecutions, the levying of taxes on reservations, and questions of property rights.
[6] The relationship between paternalism and increasing rates of domestic abuse, poverty, alcoholism, and many other additional variables has been studied for decades, with mixed results.
Additionally, the act of leaving a reservation, whether to seek help for abuse, find employment, or other reasons, can carry a stigma in some Native American cultures.
Distance between communities factors into the rates at which abused children are relocated and access to the criminal justice system and other aid provided on the reservation.
[3][6] Modern-day efforts towards effective assimilation are more focused on easing the transition between cultures in such areas as education styles, parenting methods, and job requirements.
[12] Navajos who suffer domestic violence early on in life are at risk for adult behavioral problems, PTSD, and other psychiatric disease.
[10] Sociological tendencies have shifted from cultural toward individual, less attachment to society as a whole has led Navajos on the reservation to act selfishly instead of as a community.
Substance abuse is heavily correlated to domestic violence on the Navajo reservation because the reformation of the home crumbled matriarchal social networks.
Soldiers were blessed when they went off to war and children were sent off to boarding schools, returning to the reservation detached from their born cultural identity.
[7] The Navajo veterans had been subject to a life where men were the leading figure, a prominent influence on their lack of internalization for their culture.
[2] Girls were renamed and spoken to in English, and they were not allowed to claim Navajo as their religion, but were expected to choose Mormonism, Catholic, or Christian Reformed.
With little to no experience with traditional Navajo culture, adults coming back to the reservation from school experienced a lack of ethnic identity.
[2] These appropriations by male perpetrators are most common; inciting that whoever is receiving the sexual forward deserves it according to Navajo cultural traditions.
On the reservation males and females younger than 15 who experienced sexual abuse as children are more likely to be juvenile delinquents that breach regulations, are expelled, leave home, lie, steal, abuse property, attend juvenile court, be arrested and consent to sex as young adults; girls having extra risk factors including excessive drinking and ditching school.
[10] The violent cycle repeats as parents without strong self esteem, cultural or social identities raise children with the same problems.
Social activism for the case against domestic violence on the Navajo Reservation is published as news articles and academic research.
People who are affected by and care about this topic include the Navajo Nation's 2019 First and Second Ladies, Phefelia Herbert-Nez and Dottie Lizer; researchers in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah; news outlets such as the Navajo-Hopi Observer and Navajo News Online; and national organizations such as the American Psychological Association.
Research today focuses on demographics where domestic violence is prevalent, in attempt to understand how to reverse societal infrastructures imposed on the Navajos to aid victims of abuse and works to educate the world on current states of affairs.
Prosecution of domestic violence cases on the Navajo Nation are difficult due to the complicated system of laws that decide jurisdiction.
[20] The Federal Bureau of Investigation at the end of 2017 reported a total of 633 missing persons cases involving Native American women that remained open.
[22] The Navajo Nation Supreme Court put these proceedings in place specifically to maximize protection and reparations of victims of abuse.
[22] The Peacemakers have little input from battered women's advocates, and have no screening process, safety assessment, planning or advocacy that could be beneficial in repairing holes in the system.
