WASHINGTON (AP) — Diane Millich’s ex-husband was never arrested for any of the more than 100 times he slapped, kicked or punched her before showing up at her Colorado workplace and firing a 9 mm pistol, wounding the co-worker who pushed her out of the way.
When he was finally arrested in New Mexico weeks after the shooting, he was treated as a first-time offender.
Why? Because while Millich is Native American, her ex-husband is not and all the domestic violence took place on the Southern Ute reservation.
Under a 1978 Supreme Court decision, non-Indians cannot be prosecuted by tribal courts for crimes committed on tribal land. Last July, the Justice Department recommended that Congress give tribes local authority to prosecute non-Indians in misdemeanor domestic and dating violence cases. The pending renewal of the Violence Against Women Act seemed a good chance to do that.
But the act has become entangled in election-year politics, with each party adding language on other issues that infuriates the other. Although the version the Senate passed 68-31 would follow the Justice Department recommendations and give tribes the power to prosecute non-Indians in tribal courts, the House so far has not. The House could change its mind and add the provisions as soon as this week when it is expected to consider the bill.
Millich said a change in the law certainly would have helped her deal with the abuse in her marriage, which began with slapping and pushing when she was a 24-year-old newlywed. After a year, Millich filed for divorce and sought a protective order, which her ex-husband mocked because he knew it would not be enforced.
“American Indian women do not have the same protections as non-Indian women. Federal law … has a large gaping hole in it for abusers who are non-Indian,” Millich, 49, said in a briefing for Capitol Hill staffers last week.
She said tribal and county authorities routinely refused to arrest her ex-husband, whom she did not identify by name. Once, she said, he called the county sheriff himself “to show me that no one could stop him,” and indeed, two deputies came to their home and confirmed that they did not have jurisdiction to arrest him.
“I felt like I was walking on eggshells and knew inside that something terrible was going to happen … After I fled he broke into the house, breaking windows, furniture and dishes. He cut the knuckles of his hands during the violence and smeared his blood over the walls, floor and my bedroom sheets,” Millich said.
The day after destroying her home, Millich’s ex-husband showed up at her Bureau of Land Management workplace with a gun. Although officials responded, he escaped and was at large for two weeks while she hid in a women’s shelter, fearful he might find her, she said. Her ex-husband ultimately was offered, and took, a plea deal on an aggravated traffic offense.
“In the end, he was right in that he was above the law,” she said.
Statistics on domestic and dating violence involving Native Americans and non-Indians are vague both because of varying ways tribes collect the information and because much of the violence is unreported. There is hope to improve collection of data.
A recent Census report found about 77 percent of people living on Native American and Alaska Native areas are non-Indian. About half of Native American women are married to non-Indians, according to the Justice Department.
Lisa Boothe, a spokeswoman for Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Fla., herself a victim of domestic violence who wrote the House version of the Violence Against Women Act that excludes the tribal provisions, said laws already exist to deal with non-Indian domestic violence against native peoples that takes place on tribal land.
Although the federal government has authority to prosecute domestic violence involving non-Indians, the cases often are not priorities, said John Harte, who has been lobbying in support of the provisions on behalf of Native American tribes. He said that in 2007, the Salt River Pima, Ariz., tribal police responded to more than 400 acts of domestic violence, many involving nontribe members. That same year U.S. attorneys prosecuted only 21 misdemeanor crimes on Indian lands across the country, Harte said.
Another law gave some states all federal prosecution powers held by the federal government over non-Indians. The law originated in the 1950s as the country was enacting “termination policies” to assimilate tribes into the broader society and do away with reservations and tribes themselves, according to the Justice Department.
Though some local officials have good working relationships with tribes, the isolation of tribal lands and the lack of resources — states don’t collect taxes within Indian Country — usually mean misdemeanor domestic and dating violence take a back seat. Often domestic and dating violence steadily worsens if the abuser is goes unpunished until the victim is seriously wounded or killed.
“Is it working on the ground? The answer is no,” said Terri Henry, a tribal council representative for Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in Charlotte, N.C.
The legislation also grants defendants the right to counsel if they can’t afford an attorney, an impartial jury that includes non-Indians and a right to appeal. Non-Indian defendants would have the same rights in tribal courts as they have in state courts, according to the Justice Department.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Sikh advocacy group launched a free mobile application Monday that allows travelers to complain immediately to the government if they feel they’ve been treated unfairly by airport screeners.
Launched at midnight by The Sikh Coalition, the FlyRights app had fielded two complaints by 10 a.m. EDT Monday.
The first complaint came from a woman who said she felt mistreated after she disclosed to a screener that she was carrying breast milk. A man who is Sikh filed the second complaint, saying he was subjected to extra security even though he had not set off any alarms. The woman’s complaint was based on gender and the man’s, religion, said coalition program director Amardeep Singh.
Singh said the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration were notified of the app before its launch. The agencies agreed to allow the app to use the agencies’ system for submitting the complaints.
TSA said in a statement that it does not profile passengers on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion and is continually working with communities, including The Sikh Coalition, “to help us understand unique passenger concerns.” The agency said it supports “efforts to gather passenger feedback about the screening process.”
The app, available for iPhone and Android phones, was conceived in response to complaints from Sikhs in the U.S, who since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are routinely subjected to additional inspection, Singh said. Some are made to remove their turbans, which Sikhs wear for religious reasons, Singh said.
The app is intended for everyone who feels they are racially profiled or subjected to other unfair treatment. It is also intended to provide better data on how often such incidents occur.
In light of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona, and the anniversary of the Rodney King trial “it has never been more readily apparent how the practice of racial profiling impacts all Americans,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The conference helped launch the app.
After completing screening, a person can go to the app and click on the “report” button. The app will automatically fill in the person’s name, phone number and email address. The app asks questions such as race and name of airport, as well as the basis of the complaint, such as religion or gender. It has “submit” and “share” buttons to post on social media that a complaint was filed. The app also contains information on rights of passengers and TSA procedures.
The Sikh Coalition gets hundreds of complaints of unfair treatment and profiling, Singh said. By contrast, he said, the Department of Homeland Security said in its last report to Congress on civil rights and civil liberties that 11 people in the U.S. submitted complaints in the first six month of 2011.
“My hope is that this app will exponentially increase the number of complaints filed with the TSA, flood the system so they get that this is a problem. For too long the Transportation Security Administration has been able to tell Congress this is not an issue, nobody’s complaining,” Singh said.
Passengers can ask to speak to supervisors or customer support managers at an airport, contact the TSA Contact Center, submit feedback through “Talk-to-TSA” online or file a civil rights complaint through its website, the agency said.
Prabhjit Singh, a motivational speaker, said he has been profiled 30 times, starting in Feb. 2007 when he was taking an early morning flight from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Alabama. In that incident, he was told he had to go through a mandatory pat-down of his turban, even though he had not set off the detector. But after asking for information on the TSA policy, a supervisor told him he could not fly, he said.
“Out of those 30 incidents, I have not yet been able to take myself and write down all the information I needed to and been able to convey that to the Sikh Coalition. This app will allow me to do that,” said Prabhjit Singh, who is not related to Amardeep Singh.
“When I sat down on that airplane, after that experience, I looked around at everybody else … and I thought, they did not have to go through what I had to go through to get on this airplane,” he said.
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FlyRights app: http://www.fly-rights.org
Transportation Security Administration complaint site: http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/civilrights/filing_a_complaint.shtm
The Sikh Coalition: http://www.sikhcoalition.org
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Suzanne Gamboa can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/APsgamboa
WASHINGTON (AP) — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says he does not want to be vice president now and possibly never. But then he referred to himself as … vice president.
Rubio was answering questions Thursday at a forum sponsored by the National Journal. He was asked repeatedly about his vice presidential aspirations and insisted he wants to remain in the Senate. As he explained why, he said that in several years “if I have done a good job as vice president ….” He quickly corrected himself by replacing vice president with senator.
It was unclear whether the slip was intentional. Rubio declined to answer reporters’ questions afterward.
Rubio is talked about as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney. He said Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman would be phenomenal for VP.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pew Hispanic Center finds that a majority of Hispanics prefer to identify themselves according to their families’ countries of origin, rather than by the government’s suggested terms “Hispanic” or “Latino.”
The study released Wednesday finds that 51 percent of Hispanics are likely to say that they identify first as Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban or another country to which they have family or ancestral ties. About a quarter say they identify as Latino or Hispanic and a fifth say American. About 50 million people in the U.S. are Hispanic.
The complexity of the Hispanic identity has drawn renewed interest following the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, who was African-American. The man who shot him, George Zimmerman, is the son of a white father and Hispanic mother originally from Peru.
WASHINGTON (AP) — At first, the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a white neighborhood watch volunteer was playing out like many previous tragedies that cut short the lives of young black men.
Soon however, it became obvious that sorting out racial dynamics in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin would not be simple. Police described the shooter, George Zimmerman, as white. His father called him a “Spanish speaking minority” with many black relatives and friends.
While public outrage simmered over perceptions that local police didn’t do enough to investigate Martin’s death, possible racial motives on Zimmerman’s part became tough to pin down. His background and associations cut across racial lines, and his racial identity didn’t fit neatly into a box.
“It’s easy to label this as an act of white racism, but it’s really an act of stereotyping, which many groups are capable of and it is occurring in the context of extraordinarily permissive laws,” said Manuel Pastor, a professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
On Twitter, there was genuine confusion about Zimmerman’s race. Is he Latino or white? Is Hispanic a race, or not? Shouldn’t he, a Latino, have known better than to engage in racial profiling? Might he be Jewish, based on his last name? Many said his Hispanic lineage had nothing to do with the fact that the justice system had failed Martin, while some said Zimmerman’s identity was very important.
“I’m actually happy that George Zimmerman is Hispanic so the usual white people are all guilty by virtue of their skin color stuff won’t work,” said a March 22 tweet by John Hawkins, who described himself as a professional blogger at Right Wing News.
Hispanic people can be black, white, Asian or mixed. Some 18 million Latinos checked the “some other race” category on their 2010 Census forms — which admonished in bold letters that Hispanic is not a race. So many Hispanics identified themselves as white, the overall number of white people in the United States increased.
“We sit in this in between place in the United States. In the U.S., when we think about race, it’s usually black and white. … Latinos complicate that dichotomy,” said Cynthia Duarte, associate director of research for the Institute of Latino Studies at Notre Dame.
On voter registration forms, George Zimmerman identified himself as Hispanic, as did his mother. His father, Robert, listed himself as white on voter registration forms. Zimmerman’s mother, Gladys, is originally from Peru.
Ethnicities in Peru run the gamut. Descendants of the original people or Amerindians of Peru, those who were under rule of the Inca empire, are the largest ethnic group, followed by those who are a mix of Spanish and Amerindian ancestry, also known as mestizos. Whites are about 15 percent of the population, followed by blacks, Asians and other groups. Class distinctions based on race and language persist in Peru, with whites at the top of the societal hierarchy and indigenous people often at the bottom, a vestige of Spanish colonialism.
Kay Hall, a former neighbor of the Zimmermans when they lived in Manassas, Va., said Zimmerman’s mother spoke fluent English and Spanish but she’s not certain if George Zimmerman or his brother spoke Spanish. She didn’t remember Gladys sharing any stories about her life in Peru or seeing the family carrying out any traditional Peruvian cultural activities.
“I saw Hispanics, blacks, all kinds of people visiting over there,” Hall said. “I don’t think they had any kind of racial problems.”
Neither Zimmerman nor his family members were available to comment about their family history. Beyond what’s in the police report, Zimmerman has yet to give his side of what happened the night of Feb. 26, when he called police to say he was following a “suspicious” person he believed was on drugs, while Martin, wearing a hooded sweat shirt, walked through the gated Sanford, Fla., townhome community where Zimmerman lives. Police have not charged Zimmerman, who told them he shot Martin in self-defense, something considered justified homicide under Florida’s “stand your ground law.”
In an interview with Orlando station WOFL FOX 35 that aired Wednesday night, Zimmerman’s father, Robert, said that despite dispatchers telling his son to stop following Martin, he kept going so he could get an address for police to check. He said his son was suspicious because of several break-ins and thought it was strange for someone to be walking between the town homes on a rainy night.
What Martin’s case represents most profoundly is how hazardous it is to judge people simply on the basis of the way they look, said Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza. The cautionary tale applies both to Martin and to Zimmerman, she said.
“The bottom line is you can’t tell if someone is Latino simply by looking at them,” Murguia said.
Where Zimmerman may fit within the range of Hispanic identity is another matter. Although Robert Zimmerman described his son as “Spanish speaking,” it’s clear from the 911 call made that night that George Zimmerman is comfortable speaking English. Some Latinos may not consider Zimmerman to be truly Latino, since only one of his parents is Hispanic.
Some Hispanics, mostly in the Southwest, will say they are Spanish to make clear they identify with Spanish explorers who came to the Americas in the 1500s. In Texas, Latino has only recently become an identifying term; Tejano, Chicano or Mexican American have been more common. Cubans, who make up a large share of Hispanics in Florida, are more likely to identify as white than Puerto Ricans, whose presence is growing in Florida.
Beyond that, there is the question of tensions between Hispanics and blacks. Florida also has had its share of this, namely last year’s shootings of black men by Cuban-American officers in Miami.
As anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant rhetoric has intensified in recent years, many Latinos have come to hold their collective breath when a crime occurs, many thinking: Please don’t let the perpetrator be Latino. Please don’t let the perpetrator be an immigrant. Please don’t let the perpetrator be in the country illegally.
“It pains me to see that someone who identifies himself as Latino was involved in this,” Murguia said. “But I want to make very clear that being Hispanic does not excuse or absolve George Zimmerman of his actions.”
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Follow Suzanne Gamboa on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APsgamboa .
WASHINGTON (AP) — American Indian leaders say they want support from two more Republican senators for the Violence Against Women Act and they are making a big push this week to muster support for the bill, which includes measures to specifically help American Indian and Alaska Native victims.
As of Tuesday, the legislation has 58 supporters in the Senate, including its sponsor Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Although that means a majority of senators support the act, it lacks the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster should one be launched if the bill reaches the Senate floor.
Tribal leaders’ search for additional supporters comes as heightened debate over insurance coverage for contraceptives has led Democrats try to make women’s rights an election-year issue. It was unknown whether that debate would provide momentum for the legislation considered by many to be a landmark law in protecting women.
“I hope so,” said John Dossett, attorney for the National Congress of American Indians. “Once we get the 60 votes it will be clear to the (Senate) majority leader (Harry Reid, D-Nev.) that he has the votes to move it to the floor.”
At a legislative summit of the National Congress of American Indians Tuesday, tribal leaders were given a list of senators, all Republicans, who represent states with reservations and tribal communities. The tribal leaders were told to press those senators to support the bill during meetings this week.
One of the provisions in the act would allow tribes to prosecute offenders who are not American Indian or Alaska Native when their victims are and the violence happens on a reservation.
The House has not taken action on any similar or companion legislation.
The act, first approved in 1994, expired last September. Although the act has been reauthorized several times, this year’s update ran into some Republican opposition in committee. A few senators criticized provisions regarding visas for immigrant victims of violence, language specifying services for gay and transgender victims.
The measures also would give tribes authority to prosecute non-Indians who commit violence against American Indian women, which raises concern among some opponents about giving tribal courts increased power over defendants who are not tribal members. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that tribes do not have authority over people who are not American Indian, even when the crime happens on a reservation and involves a member of a tribe.
“They ruined that bill as far as I’m concerned,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Tuesday. “They added things I can’t support.”
American Indian and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely than other U.S. women to be battered or raped, according to the National Congress of American Indians. Many are domestic violence victims whose abusers and assailants are not Native American.
Dossett said that has prevented tribal officials from prosecuting abusers to help prevent repeat violence. Often the crimes are not serious enough for the federal government to step in. Violence often must escalate before a perpetrator is prosecuted.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she’s aware of the concerns raised by her fellow GOP colleagues about tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians. “I’m hopeful this does not derail this legislation. This is too important for us,” she said.
Other senators on the tribal leaders’ list interviewed outside Senate chambers Tuesday did not immediately know where they stood on the legislation.
Other issues raised at the summit included ongoing negotiations over the transportation bill, now on the floor in the Senate.
Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, urged summit attendees to remain united in a goal to get increased spending on transportation, important for construction of roads on reservations and in tribal communities.
“In an environment of tight federal budgets some people expect us to become divided rather than maintain unity,” Keel said.
Tribal officials also got a chance to bid farewell to Tom Perrelli, associate U.S. Attorney General. Perrelli leaves the Department of Justice Friday. He is credited with working to improve public safety on tribal reservations.
Perrelli said he’s not leaving the department because he is tired of the work, but because his wife just had twins and they now have four boys under 6. He said he would continue to fight to end sexual assault and violence.
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Online: National Congress of American Indian:
Violence Against Women Act, S.1925:
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