The U.S. Department of Justice Reports:

* American Indians and Alaska Natives are more than 2.5 times as likely to be victims of violent crimes as other races.

* Depending on which stats one looks at, between 67 percent and 90 percent of rapes against American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) are committed by non-natives. Sixty-three percent of AIAN women victims of assault identify the perpetrators as non-natives.

* One-third of AIAN women report being raped over the course of their lives.  Seventy-one percent of AIAN women victims of rape or sexual assault know their rapists; 38 percent are the women's intimate partners.

* Three out of five AIAN women have been assaulted in their lifetimes.

* In some counties, the murder rate for AIAN women is over 10 times the national average. Murder, in fact, is the third cause of death for American Indian women, according to testimony offered by Karen Artichoker, director of the Sacred Circle National Resource Center to End Violence Against Native Women, during the 2007 Senate Committee on Indian Affairs oversight hearing on violence against Native women.

My bold, but it deserves to be emboldened.

It's changing, but until recently, a non-native male could go on to the reservation, rape/molest/abuse/murder a native woman/child/adolescent then run off the reservation like the chicken shit he is and he couldn't be touched for any crime.VAWA is helping, but there sure is a long way to go.

My son's significant other, let's call her Mree, was on a UN panel last year addressing this issue for not only American Indians, but for the Indigenous world wide.