Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (28 page)

My grandparents did their best, but I was so removed from notions of family, obligation, or normalcy that I sought instant gratification—adhering to the philosophy, in a destructive way, that one only has today. I did not expect to live beyond my teenage years. I made a grand plan with some friends to run away to Australia and build a commune—a community of our own. I made it as far as the ferry terminal with stolen money and a criminal boyfriend waiting on board. My girlfriend and I were hauled to the City Jail where she spent three days and I spent two weeks, apparently due to my probation status and criminal record. The police immediately took all my belongings, including the leather string that held my shirt together, as well as the jail mattress, blanket, toothbrush, and anything moveable. I attempted to use my cowboy boots to lay my head on while curled up on the freezing concrete floor, but they promptly seized those as well. My grandmother came to visit once, staring at me through the bars, and cried how I shamed our family. I felt sorry for her, but numb to life. My uncle, back from Vietnam, told me I wasn’t the first one to be in jail. The future didn’t interest me, nor did the past.

My Sitka probation officer informed me I would be attending Mt. Edgecumbe Indian Boarding School. Even though it was just a two-minute ride by boat from Sitka, it seemed a lifetime away. It was the best curve life had thrown my way, as it would turn out, even though on registration day I was police-escorted to school in handcuffs and released to the administration. I eventually made good grades, got into some mischief, but I was never arrested again. The next year I followed a boyfriend to Fairbanks and entered a boarding home to complete my senior year of high school. I made a new start.

The boarding home parents, although Indian, were removed from the life of the village. In awkward attempts to make me feel welcomed, they inadvertently overcooked fish eggs and then seemed offended when I could not eat them. I was not accustomed to salad and dressings, and some other foods, and this caused immediate friction. I kept to myself, became involved in school activities, and began speaking out on current issues in classes. Although academically it was a good year, the home life was stressful. The day after graduation, the family told me their job was done and I had one hour to pack and get out. With no place to go, other than a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) plane ticket back to Sitka, I visited my grandparents for a couple of weeks, then left for Ketchikan to find my brothers. I was broke, and I was seventeen years old and homeless.

Back in Ketchikan, I hung out with one brother and we lived off things we hocked or sold, even camping out at Wards Cove in a tent. I ended up at the hospital suffering from malnutrition, they told me. Did we have a place to go so I could recover? I lied, said we did, but we didn’t. I was afraid they would try to do something with me if I said I had no place to go. We decided to go to Seattle and visit our father’s mother and at least eat, have a bed to sleep in, and then just go from there. We went hungry often and found ourselves rationing bread and sandwich meat for meals, standing in soup lines, or going to churches to get free food, or simply begging on the street. Once we were arrested in Seattle because my brother had a knife strapped on his belt. We didn’t know that was against the law in the city. They tried to find out from where we had run away. We told them we were not runaways. They called places in Alaska for an hour or so. We were not reported missing from anywhere. We had no place to go back to and, scratching their heads, they let us go. We hitchhiked around the country and eventually went our separate ways. In the worst days alone, I slept in trees, along side roads, or under discarded plastic in rain, and ate out of garbage cans. In the best days, I begged enough money to eat real meals, get a bed in a hostel, or meet up with generous people. At eighteen, I settled in Portland, got a couple of jobs with my BIA school typing training, got an efficiency apartment, and made a couple of friends. It seemed life wasn’t too bad, but demons in my head wouldn’t let me sleep or sit still, and I missed the mountains and skies of my homeland, and so I finally worked my way back to Alaska. I settled in Fairbanks and within months was so brutalized by a white man that belonged to some militia group that I spent the summer hiding in someone’s cabin out of sheer and total fear.

This sixty-year-old heavyset white man I met because my car ran out of gas said he had a bad heart, was alone, and needed help, and so, naively seeing this as an opportunity, I moved into his home and worked off rent by cleaning and cooking, as well as working during the week at the Native community center in Fairbanks. There, I heard stories of Native women murdered and dumped along the roadside and no one arrested for it. I listened to families cry, hopeless for justice. One night, the heavyset white man came into my room and raped me. He fell asleep in his room afterwards, and I crept into his room with a gun and held it to his head. I stood there and, with a profound realization, put the gun away, and stole away into the night, running down the road in my bare feet, carrying my boots. If I killed that white man, I would be hung for it or worse. I was a Native in a white man’s house. I ran hard.

Just as I crossed a road into the woods, his truck came screeching to a halt nearby, and he swung his shotgun around and fired. I ran to a house terrified, but no answer. I ran north through the woods, the birch trees too slim to hide me like the spruce or cedar trees of home. Hearing the gun, I dove into a ditch. I felt pain sear through my leg, but I dared not move. I pressed my face down into the earth, hoping the steam from my breath would not betray me. I felt the wetness of blood while I lay there.

Morning light began to break and I worked my way through the woods to my old boarding home parents’ house, and knocked on their daughter’s window. She pulled me into the house and cleaned my wound. I told her I landed on a nail. I really don’t know why I told her that. Later that morning, she urged me to tell her parents, but they immediately demanded that I leave and not jeopardize their family. That man would be hunting for me, and they didn’t want any trouble. Their fears were justified as it would turn out—I was unaware at the time that this same white man had raped six other Native women under similar conditions. The family was just as concerned about, as I was terrified of, the militia group that he belonged to as well. To add insult to injury, the police had thought to arrest me, at his request, for breaking and entering his house. I felt attacked on all fronts and terribly alone. I spent the summer hiding, going to work, and withdrawn from everything. I pretended things were fine, and quietly drank away pain. One day, during work, I saw a wino sitting on the riverbank and I went out and joined him.

I soon went to work on the pipeline, where I worked for three years, drank and drugged my way along, was raped in Arizona at knifepoint, the guy charged with a misdemeanor, and I eventually attempted suicide by overdose. By this point, I felt I had a sign tattooed onto my forehead that said, “Beat me—I’m a Victim.” No one ever came to my defense, I reflected, and I accepted in my demoralization that I was not worthy, that I deserved it somehow, and that I was simply marked. I nearly drank myself to death on a couple of occasions, played Russian roulette with a handgun, and fumbled through some attempts at relationships, while jumping from job to job. Upon the birth of my son, I felt the stirring to change my situation. I spent the first six years of his life seeking counseling and finally drug and alcohol treatment. During that time, I hit an emotional bottom, when a man I had dated over a couple years got drunk and committed suicide.

I was thirty-two when I finally got clean and sober. I spent the first two years of my sobriety suffering from what a therapist called post-traumatic stress disorder. I was lucky to stumble upon this therapist and, with hospitalization, and her treatment, I found life again. Unlike other therapists, she did not seek to medicate me. I believe my son was the sole reason I lived. It was love for him that moved me to clean up, go to school, and return to my culture.

On rare occasions, I still have nightmares and require more quiet space and privacy than maybe the average person, even though now I can enjoy people, enjoy the well-being of others, and rejoice in the camaraderie of tribal gatherings. In the effort to overcome, I may have overachieved, having run for the highest office in Alaska as a third-party candidate, fought at very public levels of controversy defending basic human and tribal rights, and graduated first in my family with a post-graduate degree. People wonder what motivates me, and all I can say is, a little kindness goes a long way, and tapping into the strength of my ancestors guided my sense of worth and value, and carries me today.

Furthermore, in my life, it was those little moments of someone extending a hand of love and kindness that touched my heart. It was the smiles and acceptance of some elders who took the time to talk to me and tell me I could lift myself up, and especially the elder who told me, “you’re not crazy, you’re hurt.” Somehow, the acknowledgment was overwhelming. I believe not only individuals, but the judicial system, and society, must show compassion while demanding, and rightly so, accountability. I believe truth combined with compassion saves lives.

Questions

1. How did the foster care system fail Benson and her brothers? How did this contribute to the violence she experienced throughout her life?
   
2. What recommendations do you have for the foster care system in its service to Native children? What can be done to make them safe within their foster homes?
   
3. What are signs of sexual abuse in children that Benson exhibited throughout her childhood? What are interventions that can be taken for children who are being abused or have experienced abuse?
   
4. Why was it so important for the elder to acknowledge Benson’s pain and attribute her behavior to the abuses she experienced? How can this help in the healing process? Why did community members not realize that her behavior was a reflection of her experiences?
   
5. How did the police contribute to her abuse and mistreatment?
   
6. What did she do or abuse to kill the pain of what she was experiencing?
   
7. In the end of the chapter Benson refers to the Native women who have gone missing in Alaska and the lack of justice for them. Do you think this is still going on today? Why do the murders of Native women receive so little attention? What can be done to combat this?
   

In Your Community

1. Is there a support system for children and teenagers in your community? Do they interact with elders?
   
2. What types of programs are there for women who have experienced violence such as that experienced by Benson?
   

Terms Used in Chapter 8

Ingenuity
: Inventive skill or imagination; cleverness.

Probation
: The act of suspending the sentence of a person convicted of a criminal offense and granting that person provisional freedom on the promise of good behavior.

Skiff
: A flat-bottom open boat of shallow draft, having a pointed bow and a square stern.

Suggested Further Reading

Bohn, Diane K. “Lifetime Physical and Sexual Abuse, Substance Abuse, Depression, and Suicide Attempts Among Native American Women.”
Issues in Mental Health Nursing
24 (2003): 333.

DeBruyn, Lemyra, et al. “Child Maltreatment in American Indian and Alaska Native Communities: Integrating Culture, History, and Public Health for Intervention and Prevention.”
Child Maltreatment
6 (2001): 89.

EchoHawk, Larry. “Child Sexual Abuse in Indian Country: Is the Guardian Keeping in Mind the Seventh Generation?”
New York University Journal of Legislative and Public Policy
5 (2001): 83, 107.

Gray, Norma. “Addressing Trauma in Substance Abuse Treatment with American Indian Adolescents.”
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
15 (1998): 393.

Hopfoll, Stevan E., et al. “The Impact of Perceived Child Physical and Sexual Abuse History on Native American Women’s Psychological Well-Being and AIDS Risk:”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
70 (2002): 252.

Koss, Mary P., et al. “Adverse Childhood Exposures and Alcohol Dependence Among Seven Native American Tribes.”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
25 (2003): 238.

WRONG!!!

When I was five years old, I saw my Dad slap my Mom
No one told her it was wrong

As I was growing up my brother disrespected my Mom
No one said it was wrong

When I was fifteen, my brother beat me
No one told him it was wrong

When my friend told me that a tribal elder molested her
No one told her it was wrong

When my cousin was killed by her husband
No one told the community it was wrong

When I was sexually harassed on the job
No one told my co-workers it was wrong

When I went to the Family Services Office and was treated unfairly
No one told them it was wrong

When the police asked me, “What did you do to make him hit you?”
Someone should have told them they were wrong

When he stood in front of the judge
They told him it was wrong

When my son mistreats his girlfriend
I will tell him it’s wrong