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Statistics
Indigenous women experience some of the highest rates of violence against any group in the United States. About 84% of Native American women in the United States experience any lifetime violence. This means Native women are 1.2 times more likely to experience violence than Non-Hispanic white women. 56.1% of Native American women experience sexual violence, 55.5% experience physical violence by an intimate partner, and 48.8% experience psychological aggression by an intimate partner. Furthermore, 97% of indigenous women who are victims of violence experience it at the hands of an perpetrator who is not Native and 35% of victims experience violence from a Native person. About 1/3rd of Native women are raped and are stalked at a rate double that of any other population.

Globalization
Under an intersectional framework that reveals the links between colonization, patriarchy and capitalism, indigenous women face violence due to corporate globalization. Rauna Kuokkanen, a professor of Arctic Indigenous Politics at University of Lapland, argues that globalization is an extension of systems of oppression, such as white supremacy, the patriarchy, and capitalism. These intersecting systems create new forms of violence. In the United States, this sexualized and racialized violence manifests can manifest as militarization. Indigenous women are increasingly recruited into the army due to the fewer choices they have as a result of the to the privatization of public services and education under globalization. Entering the military means being exposed to higher levels of sexual violence and the continuation of the United States’ collective violence against Native Americans. Incorporation of Native women into the army helps realize the goal of colonial assimilation and using Native women as soldiers to enforce the empire abroad means the United States can reinforce itself as a nation and suppress indigenous sovereignty.

Historical Oppression
Like Kuokkanen's intersectional approach to understanding violence against indigenous women, Catherine Burnette, a professor at Tulane University, explains that the intersection of colonialism, sexism, and racism multiplied to form a system called patriarchal colonialism. This colonization imposed new gender roles that compromised the traditional egalitarian model understood by Native nations. “Conquest, cultural invasion, divide and rule, and manipulation” relegated Native women to a lower status by being stripped of their political and religious power and often being raped and used as sex slaves by colonists. The patriarchal systems of Europeans treated women as subordinate figures, the property of their husbands, so indigenous women became vulnerable to such treatment as colonists began to take control of what is now the United States. Patriarchal colonialism falls under Burnette’s larger critical framework of historical oppression defined “the chronic, pervasive, and intergenerational experiences of subjugation that, over time, have been imposed, normalized, and internalized into the daily lives of many indigenous American peoples.”

Legal System
Sarah Deer argues that the prevalence of sexual violence that Native American women experience is tied to the United States legal system which upholds patriarchal structures rather than "women-centered societies"

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) or Domestic Violence
Indigenous women experience high levels of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the United States due to structural violence that can be tied to historical oppression. This high level of violence concerns Indigenous communities because Indigenous women are considered sacred in traditional matrilineal Native communities. Violence against Native women was extremely uncommon and deemed contrary to indigenous values .Furthermore, IPV’s association with mental illness corresponds to a higher rate of mental health problems, such as PTSD, depression, and substance abuse, which make Indigenous women even more susceptible to violence. Since IPV was likely very rare in Native nations before colonization, an overview of historical violence and oppression is crucial to understanding how this violence has manifested. IPV is the product of larger oppressive systems and historical disruptions that build upon each other. Burnette identifies "experiences of oppression, historical and contemporary losses, cultural disruption, manifestations of oppression, and dehumanizing beliefs and values" as possible reasons for the manifestation of IPV that Native women experience. This violence tends to manifest during long-term relationships and is often part of a cycle of abuse in intimate relationships that Native women have experience since they were children. Higher rates of IPV in Native communities may be correlated with low socioeconomic status.

Sexual Assault and Rape
Just like IPV, sexual assault was exceedingly rare in indigenous communities before colonization. The sexual assault and rape of indigenous women was used as a method of control and domination by colonizers. It was was a tactic used to destroy Native nations by enacting violence upon sacred members of indigenous society. The forcible removal and settler expansion of the United States of America was extremely violent and has often been characterized in sexual terms. The metaphorical raping of the land manifested as the literal raping of Native women. Furthermore, sexual violence was a commonly used tool by colonists due to its link with reproduction.

Rape often happens outside of intimate partnerships. Native women can be raped by many different types of people: strangers, friends, neighbors, relatives.