Native American women and girls are two and a half times more likely to experience sexual violence compared to other races. The truth is, however, that it’s been open season on Native women and girls’ sexuality for the last 500 years.
For me, this is personal. My mother, and women of her generation, survived poverty, brutal men, sexual violence, and Indian boarding schools. While many of the Ojibwe women of my youth were bitter, quick-tempered creatures, their prickly exteriors camouflaged a capacity for deep love of family and culture and tenderness as soft as a mouse’s belly.
That deep love is now driving revitalization of women-centered ceremonies, such as the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s Flower Dance. While genocide and federal policies designed to eradicate Native people and cultures have had a particular impact on Native women, these celebrations represent a means of healing from the effects of this historical trauma.
[For more on this story by Mary Annette Pember, go to https://www.yesmagazine.org/is...rough-dance-20180927]
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