According to the US Department of Justice, Native American and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than women in the USA in general. Sexual violence against Indigenous women today is conditioned by a legacy of widespread human rights abuses. It is compounded by the federal government’s steady erosion of tribal government authority and its under-resourcing of law enforcement agencies and service providers. A key contributory factor identified in AI’s research for the continuing high levels of violence is that all too often those responsible are able to get away with it.
