Source: NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS: HATE CRIMES AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
NRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
0193801
Grant No.
2003-35401-12938
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
2002-01834
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Dec 15, 2002
Project End Date
Mar 14, 2005
Grant Year
2003
Program Code
[62.0]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
FLAGSTAFF,AZ 86011
Performing Department
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Non Technical Summary
The project will gather qualitative data on the dynamics of racially motivated violence against Native Americans across the United States, as well as data on how such hate crime is connected to other forms of non-violent discrimination. It expands upon a pilot study undertaken in the summer of 1999, in which 72 Native Americans in the Southwest were interviewed. For this component of the project, approximately 40 Native Americans from Native American reservations Minnesota/Wisconsin and Florida will be interviewed. The interviews will be supplemented by focus groups conducted at each of the sites. The selected sites are American Indian reservations which have a history of anti-American Indian activity. The research addresses quality of life issues for Native Americans living in remote rural areas. Many of the conflicts that underlie the violence emerge in the context of land and resource disputes, and thus interfere with Native Americans' abilities to pursue traditional forms of subsistence living, including agriculture. Retaliatory violence often erupts when Native Americans seek to engage in economic or social development in ways that benefit their collective communities.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
8036010308080%
8056050308020%
Knowledge Area
805 - Community Institutions, Health, and Social Services; 803 - Sociological and Technological Change Affecting Individuals, Families, and Communities;

Subject Of Investigation
6010 - Individuals; 6050 - Communities, areas, and regions;

Field Of Science
3080 - Sociology;
Goals / Objectives
The primary aim of the study is to extend a 1999 pilot study undertaken in the Four Corners region, which explored the dynamics of hate crime against American Indians. Accurate data on this subject are vital for scholars, service providers, policy makers and Native American communities. Consequently, the research findings will provide some initial insights with which scholars and policy makers alike can begin to understand the specificity of the experience of hate crime for American Indians, and to develop the links between racially motivated hate crime and other forms of oppression. It will open the door for the emergence of literature on this unexplored dimension of racially motivated violence. Given the exploratory nature of this research, I refrain from stating hypotheses. Instead, I am guided by a series of research questions, attaining answers to which is the central objective of the project: 1) Is participants' victimization isolated, periodic or ongoing? 2) What is the nature of participants' victimization? 3) What are the dynamics of ethnoviolence against American Indians? That is, who are the actors? Where does it occur? What is the context of the acts? 4) What is the impact of victimization on individual victims and their communities? 5) What is the relationship between ethnoviolence and other forms of oppression (marginalization, exploitation, disempowerment, cultural imperialism)? 6) What are participants' perceptions of the community climate, and the motivations that facilitate hate crime? 7) What role does Native American activism appear to play in motivating anti-Indian activity? 8) What discourages participants from reporting their victimization from police or other authorities? 9) What do participants define as necessary to minimize the impact, and the incidence of hate crime? The current study will develop the research protocol more fully so that I can later apply it to additional research sites. Consequently, the key objectives noted above are supplemented by the goals of developing a viable research protocol, and developing a solid background knowledge of the cultures in question.
Project Methods
Interviews will follow & extend protocol developed in a pilot study conducted in Navajo reservation border towns in summer 1999. For those interviews a Navajo Research Assistant assisted in development & conduct of a culturally sensitive interview tapping the local dynamics of racially motivated violence. She helped to ensure that key concepts could be translated into Navajo. Her presence helped bridge cultural distance between Native American participants & a non-Native researcher. The RA conducted the majority of 72 interviews, three of which were in Navajo. For each site, I will hire a local Native American RA to assist with interviews. She/he will be identified with assistance of local contacts at research sites & will be familiar with culture & communication practices of local Native American communities. The Prin. Invest. & RA will conduct intensive, semi-structured interviews canvassing Native American experiences of ethnoviolence. Given the oral tradition of Native American cultures, semi-structured interviews are more appropriate & culturally sensitive than fully structured interviews/surveys, since they allow narrative responses (Grenier,1998; Guyette,1983). This technique is valuable in exploratory research where it is difficult to anticipate outcomes in light of limited information about a field of study (Hagan,1993). The interview will address dynamics of violent & non-violent victimization & reflect the following concepts: hate crime (e.g., verbal insults, harassment, physical violence, dynamics, location; effects on victims); discrimination (e.g., chronic unemployment); reporting of ethnoviolence; & recommendations for responding to hate crime. I am interested in the extent to which violence is perceived to be motivated by recent/current activism on part of local Native American communities. Research questions which guide the project were stated previously in "Objectives." 2-3 hour focus groups will be added to interviews. With assistance of local contacts I will gather 6-8 people from the local community to create a forum for dialogic exploration of shared experiences of hate crime and its sociopolitical/sociocultural contexts. Geographic Location/Site Selection: One element of interest in this research is dynamics of violence in context of rights assertions or activism in general, & this was used as selection criterion. Research sites were selected for recent and/or ongoing history of Native/non-Native conflict. I will conduct interviews at the following reservations & American Indian nations: Wisconsin: Lac du Flambeau Band; Lac Court Oreille Band; St. Croix Band. Minnesota: Fond du Lac Band; Leech Lake Band; Mille Lacs; White Earth. Florida: Big Cypress Seminole Reservation. Sample: I am interested in interviewing those who have experienced racially motivated violence & harassment; a purposive sample will be drawn with assistance of local contacts. The target is 20 participants at each site (Minn & Wis=one site), for a total of 20 interviews. This is a sufficient number to ensure both depth & breadth of the sample. It is a sufficiently large sample from which to draw identifiable & consistent themes across settings.

Progress 12/15/02 to 03/14/05

Outputs
During visits to American Indian reservations and nearby border towns in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Montana, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews canvassing Native American experiences of racially motivated violence, i.e., hate crime. The interviews addressed both violent and non-violent victimization, and reflected the following concepts: hate crime (e.g., verbal insults, harassment, physical violence, dynamics); oppression/discrimination (e.g., exploitation, marginalization); reporting of ethnoviolence; the extent to which violence is perceived to be motivated by activism of Native Americans; and recommendations for responding to hate crime. Respondents were drawn from six American Indian tribes: Ojibwe, Salish and Kootenai, Crow, Blackfeet, and Northern Cheyenne, representing ten reservations. In total, we interviewed approximately 110 Native Americans in these communities, far more than the initial target of 60-75. Multiple and intersecting forms of oppression were apparent in the communities I visited. For example, myriad forms of employment discrimination are evident (e.g., exploitation of Native American craftspeople), as are practices that constitute cultural imperialism: Indian logos, racial slurs, the absence of American Indians in school curricula. However, I was especially struck by the empirical validity of the conceptual observation that Native Americans live with the daily knowledge that they are liable to violation, solely on account of their group identity(Young, 1995: 83). Generally, the interviews uncovered a number of recurring themes: 1. Racial harassment and violence are deemed a normative part of everyday life for many of the Native Americans interviewed. 2. Hate crime often emerges in response to the visibility and activism of Native American individuals and communities, especially where rights claims are invoked. 3. Police and other state officials often contribute to an environment that is hostile to Native Americans, thereby enabling hate crime to flourish. In particular, police are thought to simultaneously over- and under-police Native American communities. 4. Violence is not solely white on Indian. Multiple lines of hostility are evident, including Indian on white, and Indian on Indian across tribal lines and across bloodlines. 5. The ongoing patterns of hate crime have severe consequences for individuals and communities, including 'wearing down' its victims; fear of interacting with white communities; perpetuating segregation; and cultivation of anti-white sentiment and activity. 6. In contrast, the persistence of racial violence may also elicit stronger and more constructive connections with one's Native American identity. 7. Participants identified a range of practices by which hate crime might be minimized. These included educating both Natives and non-Natives on the formers' culture, identity, etc.; more frequent interaction between communities; state acknowledgement of treaty rights; individual and collective forms of resistance, including standing up to slurs, violence, and mistreatment generally; and community economic and political development.

Impacts
A review of the literature on Native Americans and criminal justice, and of hate crime literature reveals little if any attention to hate crime against Native Americans. Consequently, the findings and outcomes of the project represent a significant contribution to our academic understanding of this hidden problem. The larger project of which this is a part is the first systematic attempt to document the dynamics of racial violence as experienced by Native Americans. Interviews conducted in the upper midwest, and the northern plains reveal disturbing and consistent patterns of hate crime victimization, and their effects on Native American individuals and communities.

Publications

  • Perry, Barbara. 2005. Policing Native American Communities (book prospectus under review with New York University Press, Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, Nebraska University Press, Lexington Press)
  • Perry,Barbara and Robyn,Linda. 2005. Putting Anti-Indian Violence in Context: The Case of the Great Lakes Chippewa, American Indian Quarterly, 29.
  • Perry, Barbara. 2005. Normative Violence: Everyday Racism in the Lives of Native Americans,in A. Aguirre and D. Baker (eds), Structured Inequality in the United States: Discussions on the Continuing Significance of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender, 2nd ed. (Prentice-Hall) (in press).
  • Perry, Barbara. 2005. Who Ya' Gonna' Call? Under- and Over-policing of Native American Communities, (under review with Critical Criminology).
  • Perry, Barbara. 2005. The Forgotten Victims: Hate Crimes Against Native Americans (book prospectus under review with New York University Press, Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, Nebraska University Press, Lexington Press)


Progress 10/01/02 to 09/30/03

Outputs
In the first year of the project, I conducted 89 interviews in 3 states (MN, WI, MT) with participants from 5 nations (Ojibwe, Northern Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Crow, Salish/Kootenai) and 10-12 reservations. This number is significantly more than anticipated (40-50). Protocol: Given the number of interviews and richness of the data, it is fair to say that I have developed a successful approach to accessing participants. I hired a Native American RA from each community. The RA facilitated initial contacts based on personal knowledge of the communities. From these, we identified additional particpants via snowball sampling. We spent two weeks at each site. Prior to site visits, I spent considerable time reading historical and contemporary analyses of the culture and dynamics of each community. This gave me a solid grounding on which to base my conversations with participants. Outcomes: The fieldnotes and transcribed interviews have enabled me to begin to develop novel theoretical insights into the dynamics of Native American victimization. The emergent themes are manifold; I have begun to articulate some of these (MN/WI as the Deep North and the normativity of violence) in several guest lectures, conference presentations, and paper drafts. I have submitted one article to Violence and Victims. For the remainder of the grant, I will complete the interview transcription, and continue to develop conference and publishable papers

Impacts
The work will make substantial contributions to the dramatically underdeveloped literature on hate crime against Native Americans. In addition, I have begun to return my findings to the communities in hopes that the knowledge gained will enhance recognition of the problem, along with the ability to confront it locally.

Publications

  • Normative Violence: Everyday Racism in the Lives of Native Americans, submitted to Violence and Victims (November, 2003). Several guest lectures based on this paper have also been presented.
  • Ethnoviolence in the Deep North: Hate Crime Victimization Against Native Americans in Minnesota and Wisconsin, presented at the Annual Meetings of the Western Social Science Association, April 2003, Las Vegas NV.