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Two years ago, the House Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States held a hearing on the murder and disappearance of Native women. Native women are murdered on reservations at a rate ten times the national average; there were more than five thousand reported cases of missing Native women in 2016 alone, and many more cases go unreported. Among the witnesses at the hearing was Mary Kathryn Nagle, the legal counsel for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Nagle, in her testimony, noted that tribal nations do not have legal jurisdiction over non-Natives who commit crimes on reservations. This is one of the reasons, she said, that those who assault or murder Native women are so rarely caught and prosecuted. The Supreme Court revoked that jurisdiction in 1978; it was restored, in 2013, by a new provision in the Violence Against Women Act, which was reauthorized that year. But
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The Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender, and Society are co-sponsoring the virtual law journal symposium that will discuss the violence Indigenous women and people face and countermeasures to said violence. The symposium will be held on Zoom Webinar. Attendee Zoom information will be emailed to registered attendees at a later date;
The settler-colonial origins of the United States of America began with the genocide of Indigenous peoples. These beginnings, unfortunately, have persisted today in many forms. Indigenous peoples of all walks of life are affected by increased rates of violence compared to others. A 2016 federal report concluded over 80% of Native women will experience some form of violent crime in their lives, and over 56% will experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetimes. A 2010 survey concluded nearly 1 in 3 LGBT Natives reported experiencing hate violence.