Sarah Deer

Sarah Deer (born November 9, 1972) is a Native American lawyer, professor of law at William Mitchell College, and 2014 MacArthur fellow. A citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Deer advocates for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence in Native American communities. She has been credited for her "instrumental role" in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, as well as for testimony which is credited with the 2010 passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act. Deer coauthored, with Bonnie Claremont, Amnesty International's 2007 report Maze of Injustice, documenting sexual assault against Native American women. 

This Matriarch Monday we honor the work of Sarah Deer by featuring an excerpt from the introduction of her award winning book, The Beginning and End of Rape wherein Deer continues to advocate for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse. The essays featured in her book point to the possibility of actual and positive change in a world where Native women are systematically undervalued, left unprotected, and hurt.

"The vast knowledge and shrewd assessment skills she brings to this book give the issue the acknowledgment it desperately deserves. Though averse to calling the rape of American Indian women an “epidemic,” a moniker she feels depoliticizes it, the author views the harrowing matter as a direct result of colonialism. Though only one issue of many daunting tribal governments today, she writes, the sexual assault of native women is an atrocity historically plaguing Indian tribes, and it should rightly be deemed a “crime against humanity.” As a member of the Muscogee nation, Deer imparts passion and resolve into chapters condemning rampant criminal impunity via federal laws that disregard the framework of tribal sovereignty, discussing the conundrum of sex trafficking, and how and why contemporary feminist theory fails to wholly address the situation at large. She then looks beyond the statistical data delivered in early chapters to propose diverse reform efforts that address victims’ needs and legal rights. A particularly humbling section focusing on the journey of an imprisoned rape survivor puts a human face on the crisis and personalizes it beyond hard facts and disquieting details. While Deer maintains that these dire acts of violence form complex legal and humanitarian complications with no elementary resolutions, she offers a variety of viable, proactive, and creative solutions and reformative proposals in an effort to rectify what she believes has become a “seemingly hopeless reality.”"
-KIRKUS REVIEW

The Beginning And End Of Rape
Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America
By Sara Deer

Excerpt from Introduction: Sovereignty of the Soul

Let’s talk about epidemics. Accounts from the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and other sources have used the adjective “epidemic” to describe the extremely high rates of violence perpetrated against Native women.1 To make sense of the statistical data that consistently show that Native women experience the highest per capita rate of rape in the nation, journalists and activists have adopted a word we are accustomed to seeing within the context of disease outbreaks such as HIV or Ebola. I think we’ve been using the wrong word. It’s understandable : the word epidemic is used to attract attention to a particular problem that affects a growing number of people the longer it remains ignored or untreated. But this word doesn’t quite fit. Merriam-­Webster defines “epidemic” as a “sudden quickly spreading occurrence of something harmful or unwanted.” It is an attention-­ grabbing word (and one I admit I have used in some contexts), but on reflection it can be misleading. The connotations of the word allow society to absolve itself of blame. The word suggests that the problem is biological, that the problem originated independent of long-­ standing oppression, that it has infected our society, twisting human relations. A biological epidemic is not a crisis of human origin ; it is the result of the unchecked spread of microscopic viruses and bacteria. The word epidemic also suggests a short-term, isolated problem. We reflect on last year’s flu epidemic, for example, and Introduction x work toward ending the Ebola epidemic. Using the word epidemic deflects responsibility because it fails to acknowledge the agency of perpetrators and those who allow the problem to continue. The word also utterly fails to account for the crisis’s roots in history and law. Using the word epidemic to talk about violence in Indian country is to depoliticize rape. It is a fundamental misstatement of the problem. If this book does nothing else, I hope to demonstrate why rape in the lives of Native women is not an epidemic of recent, mysterious origin. Instead, rape is a fundamental result of colonialism , a history of violence reaching back centuries. An epidemic is a contagious disease; rape is a crime against humanity. Over the past twenty years, I have spoken to hundreds of Native women who have survived rape or domestic violence (usually both) throughout Indian country, from remote Alaska villages to Indian communities in dense urban areas. Most of my scholarship and activism has been directed toward the needs and rights of those survivors . I first began working with Native survivors of rape when I was an undergraduate at the University of Kansas in the early 1990s. I started volunteering at the local rape crisis center, called at that time the Douglas County Rape Victim Survivor Service (RVSS). I was twenty and eventually became a part-­ time employee. As a volunteer , I was trained to provide direct advocacy for victims who called us for assistance. Advocacy in this sense refers to a wide range of supportive services, which are offered at the request of a survivor, including accompanying survivors to the hospital, police station, or courthouse. We also offered private, confidential counseling over the telephone, and facilitated support groups for women who had experienced rape. In all things, we sought to provide compassionate emotional support. The women I met with and talked to during my first six years as an advocate served as the foundation for my life’s passion. I answered desperate calls in the middle of the night from women besieged by nightmares and insomnia. I met women in the local emergency room and stood nearby as they made the agonizing decision of whether to report their husband/ boyfriend/girlfriend/cousin/friend to the police for sexual assault. I sat in the waiting room reserved for witnesses at the local courthouse for hours, sometimes days. I walked in Take Back the Night marches and rallies and facilitated support groups for women. I Introduction xi talked to mothers, sisters, friends, lovers who had to watch amazing , beautiful women in their lives fall into very dark places as a result of the unspeakable trauma they were burdened with. If these women were fortunate, sometimes they called me months or years later to tell me, “Today I laughed for the first time since it happened .” In all these memories, I remember most clearly the resilience of the women I met. Their stories and voices...