Recent studies show that sexual violence against American Indian women in Indian Country occurs at rates more than twice that for non-Native women in the United States. Moreover, the maze of conflicting jurisdictional authority in Indian Country means that sexual violence against Indian women often goes unpunished. Non-Indian men constitute the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of sexual violence against Indian women but they rarely face prosecution by state or federal authorities, and they cannot be tried in tribal courts; in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court held that inherent tribal sovereign authority did not embrace criminal authority over non-Indians. As a result, Indian women rarely “enjoy the full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination” as articulated in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While the United States is not a signatory to this Declaration, Professor N. Bruce Duthu suggests that the existing sovereign-to-sovereign relationship and trust obligations between the federal government and Indian tribes obligates Congress, in conjunction with Indian tribes, to take measures to remedy this instance of “broken justice” in Indian Country. Duthu is Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College and the author of AMERICAN INDIANS AND THE LAW (2008). He was formerly Professor of Law at Vermont Law School and is an enrolled member of the United Houma Nation of Louisiana.