FBI hate crime report shows Indians remain most often assaulted

Written by S.E. Ruckman

http://nativetimes.com

TULSA, Okla. – Crimes of hate against American Indians totaled 75 incidents in the nation during 2007, said a Federal Bureau of Investigation report.

While the overall number of crimes against Indians mirrored 2006’s 75 incidents, the overall number of hate crimes dipped, according to the report. The federal law enforcement agency culled data from over 13,000 agencies across the nation.





Race remained a strong motivation of hate crimes outranking religious and sexual discrimation.

Whites were reported as the largest group of offenders, 3,800, across all racial groups. Over 9,000 total incidents occurred last year that included mainly intimidation in 22 of the 76 incidents involving Indians, the agency said.

In the 75 Indians-as-victim race incidents, only 7 of them were committed by other Indians, the report shows.

Oklahoma Indian activist Brenda Golden said the reason Indians figure so highly among race groups for incidents on hate crimes is that natives are historically viewed as scapegoats in the American conscience.

“People are gonna prey on the weak,” she said.”And we are weak because of 500 years of oppression.”

Golden said that resentment from general society characterizes Indians as receiving ill-deserved social benefits like food, health care and casino dividends. With these misperceptions, others view Indians as prime targets that arise from frustration and other factors.

“People think we get all these benefits when don’t,” she said. “And they also associate us with the past...that we killed white people indiscriminately when we were fighting for our land.”

Other Oklahoma activists said the data proves that Indians are most assaulted statistically. Louis Gray, president of the Tulsa Indian Coalition Against Racism, said that the general public would be alarmed if the statistics calculated for Indians matched their group percentage-wise.

“We know that one in three Indian women are likely to be physically assaulted in their lifetimes,” he said. “They’d be building walls if that applied to other women.”

The TICAR president said while education births awareness, it does not deal with the legacy of racism that is often a part of Indian and Black histories. People are often prejudice against Indians whom society would not categorize as such on the surface, Gray said.

“It’s ingrained in patterns of thinking...it’s cyclical,” he said. “When we becomes elements of objectification, then we are more vulnerable than other groups.”

The report ranked states in numbers of total reported hate crimes. In Oklahoma, there were 293 total agencies reporting 30 hate crimes of the overall 75 total. Other states with dense Indian populations, like Washington state and Arizona reported 195 and 161 total race crimes, respectively. The report did not break down state reports on victims or offenders by race, FBI officials said.

California had the largest total number of hate crimes with New Jersey and Michigan ranking second and third, respectively, data shows. Those figures do not depict the number of crimes against Indians, according to the report.