You've heard of the when did you stop beating your wife fallacy.
Did you ever think you'd live to see the day it came true?
Yes that's right, "Chief" Frank Alec literally beat his wife. Almost to death. And because he's a privileged Red Indian, he only got 9 months in jail.
So this is a good time to remind you of why "murdered and missing indigenous women" (MMIW) is a thing: their menfolk are violent savages. Okay, the women are too: but jackpine savage man versus jackpine savage woman is still a pretty quick fight. The squaw doesn't stand a chance.
In the social justice crowd however, the general received wisdom is that this is yet another "legacy of Residential Schools". [the only thing that doesn't appear to be a legacy of Residential Schools is educated Indians... -ed] But is that backed up by the facts? Are missing and murdered squaws only to be found in Canada? Wouldn't this same sociological phenomenon in a political jurisdiction with a completely different history negate this claim?
If so, then what do you take of the fact that in Alaksa, there were no Residential Schools...but a lot of missing and murdered Eskimo† women.
153 cases of missing or murdered indigenous women were missing from law enforcement records, according to a study done by the Urban Indian Health Institute."Anecdotally we know it's higher"...this oral history nonsense is sure pervasive, isn't it? Regardless, in Alaska Eskimo women go missing or get murdered pretty often compared to the white Alaskans, almost as if there's some sort of inherent racial attribute causing it.
Nine of those cases were in Anchorage.
“The 153 cases were not in law enforcement records, but what’s really disturbing about all of that, is why aren’t they?” Asked Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center Executive Director Tami Truett Jerue at an Anchorage Assembly public safety committee meeting Wednesday.
The committee was meeting in part to discuss the high rates of these crimes.
“Unfortunately, Alaska does rank fourth in the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls cases, as we can document it, at this point,” Truett said. “Anecdotally, we know it’s higher.”
Meanwhile remember when they said it's the fourth highest? Do they mean in the world? Is this just a pale imitation of the Canadian effect?
Nope. In fact, Donald Trump last month announced a task force to "addressing the multiple outstanding cases of missing, murdered and assaulted Native Americans‡."
Native American women face a staggering rate of violence of any type. According to the Indian Law Resource Center, more than 4 out of 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 women have experienced sexual assault or harassment.What the hell will somebody "from an indigenous American community" contribute to this task force? They don't have any special knowledge, or skills, or power. They would just be there to check boxes and get in the way.
The Indian Law Resource Center also cites the epidemic of missing Native American women, and says they cannot get a precise estimate due to an inadequate reporting system. The Urban Indian Health Institute published a report titled “Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls” and found that of 5,712 cases of missing or murdered American Indian or Alaskan Native heritage were reported in 2016, only 116 were entered into the Department of Justice’s database.
Operation Lady Justice aims to erode this trend by implementing a seemingly stronger bureaucratic framework. This includes establishing “a multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional team, which will include tribal law enforcement, to review cold cases,” consulting with tribal governments, and developing presumably updated “model protocols and procedures for addressing both new and unsolved cases of missing and murdered persons in tribal communities,” along with other communication and awareness campaigns.
Advocates in the Native American community have doubts about the task force’s power. They point to the lack of representation on the task force itself, which is composed of officials from federal agencies, but no one from an indigenous American community.
However both the Trump Task Force and violent Frank Alec provide the same data point: that the cause of "missing and murdered indigenous women" has nothing to do with Canada's efforts to educate the Red Indian as mandated by the treaties Canada is routinely and falsely accused of violating. Instead, the cause can be attributed to bad lifestyle choices made by the squaws themselves, as conservatives have long since insisted. They become dirty street hookers (who tend to get murdered). They marry within their own race and wind up with husbands like Frank Alec. They (unavoidably) have Red Indian fathers and brothers and male cousins who similarly rape and/or murder them. The other data point that Red Indian activists find unacceptable, the high incarceration rate in both Canada¶ and the United States, seems to speak to a moral or behavioural failing within the race itself. No Residential Schools are required.
† If you're about to fly off the handle about how the "correct" term is "Inuit" then you're an ignorant fool: there are no Inuit tribe in Alaska. It would be like referring to people from Denmark as "German" because you were told that "European" was an ethnic slur.
‡ If you're not flying off the handle about how this is an incorrect term, what's wrong with you? To be a "native American" involves literally being born in America. That's exactly what, for geopolitical purposes, a "native" is.
¶ The Canadian rate, it should note, should be higher: thanks to the disastrous R v. Gladue (1999) ruling, men like Frank Alec who commit horrible crimes against their own people get reduced or even suspended sentences instead of the full equal-to-whites sentence they deserve.
Bonus "problems with the people who wandered onto this land first and did little else" discovery: I'm in the middle of a re-read of Anna Karenina (I try to read it every decade or so). About halfway through the book, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, trying to cement his political power as his domestic power wanes, gets involved in the Tsarist equivalent of a Royal Commission into the self-preserving political machinations of something called the "Native Tribes Organization Committee". No such historical body seems to have existed, but it's interesting to note that lousy conditions on "Indian Reserves" isn't a uniquely Canadian problem:
He demanded the appointment of another special commission to inquire into the question of the Native Tribes Organization Committee. The question of the Native Tribes had been brought up incidentally in the Commission of the 2nd of June, and had been pressed forward actively by Alexey Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on account of the deplorable condition of the native tribes. In the commission this question had been a ground of contention between several departments. The department hostile to Alexey Alexandrovitch proved that the condition of the native tribes was exceedingly flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be the ruin of their prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it arose mainly from the failure on the part of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department to carry out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First, that a new commission should be formed which should be empowered to investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot; secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native tribes actually was such as it appeared to be from the official documents in the hands of the committee, that another new scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the deplorable condition of the native tribes from the—(1) political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical, (5) material, and (6) religious points of view; thirdly, that evidence should be required from the rival department of the measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that that department explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence before the committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T... Act 18, and the note to Act 36.
