While American Indian reservations are sovereign nations, tribes have not had the legal authority to arrest non-Indian women who assault or rape Indian women on reservations, The Washington Post reports. But the Violence Against Women Act, signed in March, will for the first time give Indian tribes jurisdiction over some crimes of domestic violence committed by "non-Indians in Indian Country," The Post further reports (The law won't cover assaults committed by non-Indians against native women and it doesn't cover native women in Alaska).
The level of violence against American Indian women is startling: "An estimated one in three Native American women are assaulted or raped in their lifetimes, and three out of five experience domestic violence," The Post also reports.
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