Reasons why I donate:

I feel such depression and despair every day, because I think about how minimal my contributions are while Indigenous people continue to experience sexual violence due to the institutional genocidal Supreme Court decision of Oliphant vs Suquamish of 1978. I am extremely upset with the US government for allowing such an asinine decision, to put it mildly. The violence and deaths that one Supreme Court decision can bring to so many innocent lives born after that court decision is just so horrific to think about. If that Supreme Court decision isn’t recognized as genocide, then there is no justice in this world. Because it fundamentally means that historic victims of 600 years worth of genocide and colonization will never be given equal rights in their own homeland and the US public doesn’t care.

A link to their “About Us” Page: https://mshoop.org/about-us/ 

And information about their reward fund program to help solve missing and murdered indigenous people’s cases in Minnesota: https://mshoop.org/mmiwg2s-reward-fund/ 

I’ve donated before, I did so again today, and I will probably do so in the future once I save-up enough discretionary income again.

For More Resources and Contemporary Information:

Webinar on violence against Indigenous women in the US and Canada by NIWRC.

The most accurate report by The Guardian on the conditions and reasons why rape epidemics against Native American people continue to occur:

In the report, Amnesty International urged Congress to take broader steps to address the sexual assault epidemic, including overriding the supreme court’s 1978 Oliphant v Suquamish decision, which established that Native courts do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-tribal citizens. Amnesty also pushed for amending the Indian Civil Rights Act to give Native nations broader sentencing power.

The authors also detailed how the high number of sexual assaults has been exacerbated by the US government under-resourcing tribal police, healthcare and other support services.

While the national average is one law enforcement officer for every 286 people, on Native lands the average is one officer for 524 people, according to the report. At the same time, “of the 650 census-designated Native American lands analyzed in 2014, only 30.7% of the land was within an hour’s drive of a facility offering sexual assault examination services,” the authors wrote.