Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota

Full text

Garden
of Truth:
The Prostitution
and Trafficking
of Native Women
in Minnesota
By
Melissa Farley
Nicole Matthews
Sarah Deer
Guadalupe Lopez
Christine Stark
Eileen Hudon
Research by
Minnesota Indian Women’s
Sexual Assault Coalition
and
Prostitution Research
& Education
MISWAC cover full wrap final_Layout 1 10/19/11 2:32 PM Page 1

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Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota
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by
Melissa Farley, Nicole Matthews, Sarah Deer, Guadalupe Lopez,
Christine Stark, Eileen Hudon
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A project of Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition
and
Prostitution Research & Education
October 27, 2011
William Mitchell College of Law
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Cover art by
Catherine Whipple,Managing Editor, The Circle: News from a Native American Perspective
Nicole Matthews (MIWSAC) i at <nmatthews@miwsac.org> s
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Melissa Farley (PRE) is at <mfarley@prostitutionresearch.com>

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS..........................................................................................................................01
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY......................................................................................................................03
QUOTES FROM NATIVE WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION................................................................05
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................................06
FORWARD BY TWO INTERVIEWERS.............................................................................................08
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................10
Definitions...................................................................................................................................................10
Native People in Minnesota.........................................................................................................................11
Impact of Colonial History on Native Women............................................................................................13
Traumatic Antecedents to Prostitution Among Native Women..................................................................15
Social Harms................................................................................................................................................16
METHOD...................................................................................................................................................19
Procedure.....................................................................................................................................................20
RESULTS...................................................................................................................................................22
Demographics. ............................................................................................................................................22
Table 1. Age, Age of Entry, and Length of Time in Prostitution of Native American
Prostituted Women Compared to Those Prostituted in 9 Countries................................................22
National and Tribal Identities......................................................................................................................22
Table 2. Tribal Identities of 105 Prostituted Native American Women in Minnesota.....................24
Locations Where Women Were Prostituted and Trafficked........................................................................25
Table 3. Locations Where 105 Minnesota Native Women Were Prostituted and Knew of
Others Prostituting...........................................................................................................................27
Native American Women in Prostitution are Frequently Pimped...............................................................27
Ethnicity of Men Who Buy Native Women for Use in Prostitution............................................................27
VIOLENCE IN THE LIVES OF NATIVE WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION......................................28
Table 4. Violence in Prostitution of Native American Women and in a Study of Prostitution
in 9 Countries...................................................................................................................................28
Table 5. Number of Types of Lifetime Violence of 105 Native American Women in Prostitution
Compared to Those Prostituted in 9 Countries...............................................................................29
Physical and Mental Health Problems.........................................................................................................29
Table 6. Chronic Health Problems of 105 Native American Women in Minnesota Prostitution....30
The Emotional Reality of Prostitution.........................................................................................................31
Racism.........................................................................................................................................................32
Connecting Colonization and Prostitution...................................................................................................32
The Women's Connections and Disconnections with their Cultural Identities...........................................34
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder......................................................................................................................35
Table 7. PTSD Diagnosis and Self-Health Ratings of Native Women in Minnesota
Prostitution.......................................................................................................................................37

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Dissociation..................................................................................................................................................37
Table 8. Symptoms of Dissociation in Native Women Prostituting in Minnesota............................38
Substance Abuse..........................................................................................................................................39
ANTECEDENTS TO PROSTITUTION IN THE LIVES OF NATIVE WOMEN.............................40
Childhood Sexual Abuse..............................................................................................................................40
Rape as Adults.............................................................................................................................................40
Boarding Schools.........................................................................................................................................41
Foster and Adoptive Care.............................................................................................................................41
Arrests as Children and as Adults................................................................................................................42
Table 9. Arrests of Minnesota Native Prostituted Women as Minors and as Adults.......................43
SERVICES USED BY NATIVE WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION........................................................45
Substance Abuse Programs..........................................................................................................................45
Homeless Shelters........................................................................................................................................45
Domestic Violence Programs.......................................................................................................................46
Sexual Assault Programs..............................................................................................................................47
Other Services..............................................................................................................................................47
Urgent Needs of Native Women Who Seek to Escape Prostitution............................................................47
Table 10. Needs of 105 Prostituted Native American Women.........................................................48
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS..........................................................................................49
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................57

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
GOAL
Since Native women are at exceptionally high risk for poverty, homelessness, and sexual violence
which are elements in the trafficking of women, and because the needs of Native women are generally not
being met, and because prostituted women are at extremely high risk for violence and emotional trauma,
our goal was to assess the life circumstances of Native women in prostitution in Minnesota, a group of
women not previously studied in research such as this. We assessed their needs and the extent to which
those needs are or are not being met.
METHOD
We interviewed 105 Native women in prostitution for approximately 1.5 hours each,
administering 4 questionnaires that asked about family history, sexual and physical violence throughout
their lifetimes, homelessness, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and dissociation, use of available
services such as domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, rape crisis centers, and substance abuse
treatment. We asked the women about the extent to which they connected with their cultures, and if that
helped them or not. We asked about racism and colonialism. The questionnaires were both quantitative
and qualitative.
FINDINGS
About half of the women met a conservative legal definition of sex trafficking which involves
third-party control over the prostituting person by pimps or traffickers. Yet most (86%) interviewees felt
that no women really know what they're getting into when they begin prostituting, and that there is
deception and trickery involved.
• 79% of the women we interviewed had been sexually abused as children by an average of 4
perpetrators.
• More than two-thirds of the 105 women had family members who had attended boarding schools.
• 92% had been raped.
• 48% had been used by more than 200 sex buyers during their lifetimes. 16% had been used by at
least 900 sex buyers.
• 84% had been physically assaulted in prostitution.
• 72% suffered traumatic brain injuries in prostitution
• 98% were currently or previously homeless.
• Racism was an emotionally damaging element in these women's lives and a source of ongoing
stress.
• 62% saw a connection between prostitution and colonization, and explained that the devaluation of
women in prostitution was identical to the colonizing devaluation of Native people.
• 33% spoke of Native cultural or spiritual practices as an important part of who they were.
• 52% had PTSD at the time of the interview, a rate that is in the range of PTSD among combat
veterans. 71% had symptoms of dissociation.
• 80% had used outpatient substance abuse services. Many felt that they would have been helped
even more by inpatient treatment. 77% had used homeless shelters. 65% had used domestic
violence services. 33% had used sexual assault services.
• 92% wanted to escape prostitution
• Their most frequently stated needs were for individual counseling (75%) and peer support (73%),
reflecting a need for their unique experiences as Native women in prostitution to be heard and seen
by people who care about them. Two thirds needed housing and vocational counseling.
• Many of the women felt they owed their survival to Native cultural practices. Most wanted access
to Native healing approaches integrated with a range of mainstream services.

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RECOMMENDATIONS
Prostitution is a sexually exploitive, often violent economic option most often entered into by
those with a lengthy history of sexual, racial and economic victimization. Prostitution is only now
beginning to be understood as violence against women and children. It has rarely been included in
discussions of sexual violence against Native women. It is crucial to understand the sexual exploitation of
Native women in prostitution today in its historical context of colonial violence against nations.
In order for a woman to have the real choice to exit prostitution, a range of services must be
offered yet there are currently few or no available services especially designed for Native women in
prostitution.
We recommend increased state and federal funding for transitional and long term housing for
Native women and others seeking to escape prostitution. We recommend increased funding for Native
women's programs, including advocacy, physical and mental health care, job training and placement, legal
services, and research on these topics.
We urge state, local, and tribal officials to review and reconsider their policies toward victims of
prostitution and trafficking, including this new research about Native women. The arrest and prosecution
of victims is counter-productive and exacerbates their problems. As a Native woman interviewed for this
research study said, "We need people with hearts." Arresting sex buyers, not their victims, is a more
appropriate policy.

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QUOTES FROM NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN WHO WERE
PROSTITUTED AND TRAFFICKED IN MINNESOTA
“It’s like incest- no one wants to talk about it.”
“As far as I’m concerned, all prostitution is rape.”
“After you get into prostitution, you get used to it; it’s like using the bathroom. You don’t think about it
after a while, it takes all your feeling of being a woman away.”
“Prostitution is dangerous. It's like suicide.”
“I wouldn’t say there are pimps anymore. Now they’re all boyfriends.”
“When a man looks at a prostitute and a Native woman, he looks at them the same: ‘dirty’.”
“There’s times I’d walk around in a space-out because when I stop and think about reality I break down
and can’t handle it.”
“A john said to me, ‘I thought we killed all of you’.”
“Women like myself need someone they feel they can trust without being judged by how they lived their
life. We didn’t wake up and choose to become a whore or a hooker or a 'ho as they call us. We need
someone to understand where we came from and how we lived and that half of us were raped, beat, and
made to sell our bodies. We need people with hearts.”
“Back then I was not connected to my cultural identity. I thought prostitution was normal living.”
“My auntie tried to help – she would talk to me, get me involved in women’s groups, took me to sweats.”
“I’m reunited with my birth mom. I’m the only kid that dances with my mom- she made me an outfit by
hand.”
“[My culture] doesn’t put you around drugs or alcohol. It teaches you different values. It gives you
belonging and faith.”
“I was in the hospital. I was unstable – depression. It was a bad spirit. I wanted to smudge and was not
allowed to.”

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was a joint effort by MIWSAC and PRE. The Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual
Assault Coalition (MIWSAC) is a non-profit organization founded in 2001. It focuses on the special
needs of Native women who are victims of sexual violence. MIWSAC does not provide direct services
but provides education and information about sexual violence to Native communities and to service
providers.
Prostitution Research & Education (PRE) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 that
conducts research on prostitution, pornography and trafficking, and offers education and consultation to
researchers, survivors, the public and policymakers. Our goal is to abolish the institution of prostitution
while at the same time advocating for alternatives to trafficking and prostitution - including emotional and
physical healthcare for women in prostitution.
Funding for this study was provided by Women's Foundation of Minnesota, Tides Foundation,
Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Butler Family Foundation.
Jacqueline M. Golding conducted the data analysis and ran statistical analyses.
Angel Daniels, PRE staff member, made a major contribution to this study. She supervised
volunteers as they did data entry, and transcribed narrative notes, summarized the narrative items on two
of the questionnaires, and conducted qualitative analysis of the interviews.
Emily Inouye, PRE staff member, supervised volunteers' narrative transcriptions, conducted
literature reviews, research and editing. She also summarized some of the narrative items, and
constructed most of the tables in this Report.
Vednita Carter, Breaking Free Executive Director, was supportive of this research project and
encouraged Native women in their program to participate in the research.
Rudolph Ryser, Chair, Center for World Indigenous Studies, contributed our summary of how
Native people self-identify in terms of their family heritage identity versus reservation identities, and why
that multiplicity of identities exists today.
Alice Vachss, JD, made a contribution to this Report by categorizing the crimes committed by the
women as adults and as children. Ms. Vachss is the former Chief of the Special Victims Bureau of the
Queens (NYC) District Attorney's Office and currently a special prosecutor for sex crimes in the Lincoln
County (Oregon) District Attorney's Office.
Joy Friedman, Breaking Free staff, helped to categorize the crimes described by the women.
Aida Strom at Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center was a resource person for the women
we interviewed in Minneapolis/St Paul.
Sarah Curtiss at Mending the Sacred Hoop in Duluth was supportive of this research project,
scheduling appointments for the interviewers, providing offices and refreshments, and smudging.
Paula Morton of Mending the Sacred Hoop was an advocate for the women in Duluth and a
resource person for interviewers.

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Miriam Sosa, San Francisco State University, did data entry.
Katrina Crenshaw, Palo Alto University, Child Trauma Lab, did data entry.
Sister John Paul compiled the narrative items of questionnaires.
Jo Wang compiled the narrative items of questionnaires.
Olivia Hanning, University of California, Berkeley compiled the narrative items of questionnaires.
Sara Marie Campbell, J.D., William Mitchell College of Law, 2011 transcribed interviews.
Elizabeth Fuerst, Domestic Violence Advocate, NAYA Native American Youth and Family
Center, transcribed interviews.
Heather Monasky, J.D., William Mitchell College of Law, 2011
was a research assistant for Professor Deer and edited the References section of the paper.

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FORWARD BY TWO INTERVIEWERS
In 2001 when the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition (MIWSAC) was first
formed, we were hearing about Native women and girls being prostituted and trafficked. We heard about
how Native women and girls were prostituted on the ships in Duluth, Minnesota. We heard about Native
women being trafficked to and from reservations and urban areas. We heard of the disproportionately
high number of Native women being used in prostitution in the Minneapolis area (disproportionate
compared to the numbers of Native women in the population). We learned a lot from these early
dialogues about how to organize around this issue, and what needed to happen to help our sisters out.
We realized that we didn’t know enough - no one knew enough - about the unique experiences of our
Native sisters. We knew that in order to make significant changes, we needed to first of all listen to the
women who were harmed in prostitution.
We were happy to establish collaborations with two colleagues, Melissa Farley at Prostitution
Research & Education, who has conducted research studies of prostitution in 9 countries and who
facilitated the implementation of this research study. We also established a research and writing
collaboration with Sarah Deer, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law who has written about
historical relocation and trafficking of Native women.
As one of the interviewers for this project, I will be forever indebted to the Native women who
shared their stories with me. I could have never fully comprehended the way in which my life would be
changed by hearing their stories. Having never conducted research of this type before, I didn’t
understand the trauma I would personally struggle with as a result of these interviews. When we were
initially meeting to discuss who would do the interviews, and the effects of the interviews on the
interviewers, I didn’t believe what I was being told. I had done advocacy for several years, and had
heard many stories from women – I assumed these interviews would be much the same. I couldn’t have
been more wrong! After we began conducting the interviews, I began to feel a deep sadness, and would
be irritable and angry with those around me. I became increasingly more distrustful of people in my
community, and men who drive by my house. I was more fearful of something terrible happening to my
daughters, my nieces, and myself. I felt an incredible rage at what was happening to my Native sisters, -
to me; to my community; to the very life givers we hold sacred! I had dreams, and nightmares; I heard
the voices of our sisters in my sleep, and I was haunted by their stories. I will never forget waiting for
one of the women to show up for her interview, only to find out that she had passed away over the
weekend. I am sad that I never got to meet her, and that like many of our Native sisters, her life was cut
short. I grieve for her and for the other sisters that I will never have the opportunity to meet. I’m grateful
to the women we interviewed for this report; for sharing a part of themselves with me, for taking a risk,

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and for helping us to identify solutions that might change the future for Native women and girls!
Miigwetch!
The second interviewer explained,
When I was asked to help in the interviewing of Native women used in prostitution my first
thoughts were, “What am I getting myself in to? I am an advocate, I have experience helping.” Since
helping my Native sisters is my life’s work, I wanted to help in every way I could. At that point in time my
thinking was clouded by the social mainstreaming of prostitution and even the normalization of all the
violence that surrounds prostitution. I knew in my soul that it was wrong for women to be used in such a
way, but as a society we are groomed to believe that as women, our bodies are commodities to be sold
and we somehow always have a choice in whether or not prostitution happens.
The experience of a Native woman interviewing my own community, my sisters, was one of the
most life changing experiences I have had. I compare it to a birth of a child, a death of a parent, and a
spiritual assault. The interviews have forever changed me. The world does not look, feel, or taste the
same, trusting people morphed into something different. There was a reward with all the pain. I was there
to listen and to be present for these sisters. For some of them this was their first time anyone wanted to
know what happened and for others this was the first time they shared. Chi miigwetch nimisenh.
I cannot forget the guilt that I felt and continue to feel today. I felt very emotional and was
traumatized by witnessing the stories of these sisters' lives. That is the power of that kind of violence and
yet that is also the power of our sisters' voices when they are allowed to speak. With the interviews came
a sense of survivor guilt. I remember thinking to myself, I have made some of the same choices that were
made by them and for whatever reason, my story had a different ending. Not because I was smarter. Not
because I was better. Not because I didn’t deserve it. NO ONE deserves to have to sell his or her body! I
saw myself in them. I saw my mother, aunties, sister, and daughters in them. I find it difficult to separate
myself from the women I talked with. Together we all understand what it is to be a Native woman. Our
spirits feel the effects of the policies that were made to kill us off. Our backs carry the weight or racism;
our wombs are empty for all of our children who were taken away. My sisters' stories of torture, pain, and
survival will forever be etched in my heart and with that I have a responsibility. I feel that my
responsibility is to tell the truth of what prostitution and trafficking truly is and what it does to our people
and our nations.
I want to say thank you to all the people and organizations who helped in this project. We could
not have done this alone.

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INTRODUCTION
There is increasing public and academic awareness about violence perpetrated against American
Indian and Alaska Native women.1 This paper will address the health concerns of Native women in
prostitution, including colonial history, individual history of exploitation and the harms resulting. In
discussing the history of prostitution of Native women, we will discuss geopolitics and history of
colonization, racism, and oppression of Native women. Native women are particularly vulnerable to
sexual exploitation because of homelessness, poverty, medical problems, a lack of basic services and
resulting emotional distress and mental disorders. These vulnerabilities are exacerbated by the
longstanding efforts by the United States government to extinguish and/or assimilate Native people.
Native women are disproportionately impacted by prostitution, and are subject to high rates of violence
and assault.
Definitions
There are a variety of local, national, and international definitions of prostitution and trafficking.2
Systems of prostitution include exchange of sex acts for food and shelter and other needs; outcall/escort/
cell phone; Internet advertised prostitution; massage parlors; pornography of children and adults; strip
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1 Under United States law, an Indian is a person who meets two qualifications: (1) has some Indian blood, and (2) is
recognized as an Indian by members of his or her tribe or community. (U.S v. Rogers, 45 U.S. 567 (1846)). The politics of
Indian identity is complicated by poor terminology in English which fails in both in terms of accuracy and dignity. "American
Indian" and "Native American" refer generally to the same group of people. This article will use the terms interchangeably but
usually default to "Native women". See Table 2 for detailed information about the tribal identity of the women interviewed for
this report.
2 Currently, the United Nations (in one of the Palermo Protocols, adopted in 2000) defines "trafficking in persons" as "the
recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of
coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of
exploitation." Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children,
Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, pt. I, art. 3(a), Nov. 15, 2000, T.I.A.S.
No. 13127, 2237 U.N.T.S. 319. Viewing trafficked women as victims, not criminals, the Protocol establishes a method of
international judicial cooperation that permits prosecution of traffickers and organized criminals. It addresses a range of other
forms of sexual exploitation including pornography. The Palermo Protocol makes consent irrelevant to whether or not
trafficking has occurred. The most relevant federal (US) law is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which defines "sex
trafficking" as "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial
sex act." 22 U.S.C. Sec. 7102 (8). The federal criminal code defines "commercial sex act" as "“any sex act, on account of
which anything of value is given to or received by any person”. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1591(e)(3). In Minnesota, "sex trafficking" is
defined as "(1) receiving, recruiting, enticing, harboring, providing, or obtaining by any means an individual to aid in
the prostitution of the individual; or (2) receiving profit or anything of value, knowing or having reason to know it is
derived from an act described in clause (1)." Minn. Stat. 609.321(7a). A rigorous critique of the legal definitions of
prostitution and trafficking is beyond the scope of this report. Monasky (2011) provides a detailed summary of federal
law and provides an overview of the merits of the Swedish model which criminalizes the behavior of johns, pimps, and
traffickers but not the behavior of the victim. See also Swedish scholar Max Waltman's (2011) evaluation of the effects
of the Swedish law. Catharine A. MacKinnon analyzes and deconstructs conceptual confusions that abound in current
discourse in Prostitution, Trafficking, and Inequality, 2011.
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club prostitution; sauna-or nail parlor-based prostitution; live sex shows; street prostitution; peep shows;
phone sex; international and domestic trafficking; mail order bride or servile marriages; and prostitution
tourism. The authors understand trafficking to be a form of prostitution that involves third party control
and exploitation. However, given the multiple legal definitions at the federal, state, and tribal levels and
the varying degrees of understanding among those working on social justice issues and the general
population, we are using the terms "prostitution and trafficking" to refer to the experience of women
being used in the aforementioned variety of contexts.
Native People in Minnesota
It is necessary to be aware of a few basic facts about colonial geopolitics in order to understand the
context in which Native women are prostituted and trafficked. The state of Minnesota, officially founded
as a territory of the United States in 1849 and a state in 1858, can be considered a political imposition on
the lives of indigenous people. Pre-existing the state government were governments of two major cultural
groups made up of numerous individual nations (Child, 2007). The most populous groups are the Dakota
and Anishinaabe people (the latter are also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa). The metropolitan area of
Minneapolis and St. Paul is the twelfth highest urban population of Native people in the United States and
includes tribes indigenous to Minnesota and tribes from outside Minnesota. More than 83,000 Native
people live in Minnesota, constituting approximately 1.6% of the state's population (Minnesota House of
Representatives Research Department, 2007). Twenty-three percent of Minnesota's Indian people live in
Hennepin and Ramsey counties where Minneapolis, St. Paul, and suburbs are located. (Minnesota House
of Representatives Research Department, 2007).
The Anishinaabe people settled in the region now called Minnesota in the 1700s. (Tanner, 1987)
Today the United States recognizes seven Anishinaabe tribes in Minnesota. The seven tribes are Bois
Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, White Earth, and Red Lake. The U.S.
government considers each to be a “separate and distinct” nation although six of the seven tribes maintain
a form of shared government, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.
Dakota people have inhabited the area now known as Minnesota since time immemorial
(Waziyatawin, 2008). The confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers in present-day St. Paul,
Minnesota is considered by many Dakota people to be the place where life began (Waziyatawin, 2008).
Today the United States recognizes four sovereign Dakota tribes in Minnesota: Lower Sioux Indian
Community, Upper Sioux Indian Community, Shakopee-Mdewakanton Sioux Community, and Prairie
Island Indian Community. Today, most Dakota people live on reservations outside of Minnesota
(Waziyatawin, 2008).

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The Anishinaabe and Dakota people have survived despite repeated attempts to extinguish them
by murder, land theft and cultural destruction (Wilson, 2011; Child, 2007). They continue to battle
federal, state and local governments over land ownership, broken treaties, jurisdiction and racism. Today
Minnesota's tribal nations continue to assert their sovereignty in the form of economic development,
social services, tribal courts, and formal relationships with Minnesota and United States officials.
Nonetheless, colonialism has taken its toll on all Native people, and the particular vulnerability of women
who are prostituted causes them even greater harms.
Prior to contact with Europeans, Native people governed themselves quite effectively with a
variety of complex kinship systems and extended confederacies (Fletcher, 2011; Richland & Deer, 2010).
Oral histories and historical documents indicate that violence against Native women was extremely rare,
and that it was considered by some tribes to be a capital offense (Agtuca, 2008). Cultural expectations in
tribal communities resulted in very low occurrences of crimes against women and children. (Chenault,
2011; Earle, 2000; Columbus, 2000).
Colonization, which includes behavior that scholars have identified as oppressive and genocidal,
has inflicted great suffering on Native people (Million, 2009; Weaver, 2008; Poupart, 2003; Nielson,
1996). The advent of European settlers resulted in military resistance of Indians to colonial United States
policy. In Minnesota, after a military conflict in 1862, more than a thousand Dakota people were
imprisoned in a concentration camp at Fort Snelling (Chomsky, 1990; Millikan, 2010; Monjeau-Marz,
2005). That same year, Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey declared that, "[t]he Sioux Indians of
Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the State." (Carley, 2001). In
1863, Congress ordered all Dakota to leave the state. The federal statute, while not enforced today, has
never been repealed. [12 Stat. 819 (1863)].
Like women in military conflict zones elsewhere, Native women were at high risk for rape,
physical abuse, and racist verbal abuse from colonists (Pretty Sounding Flute, 2000; Smith, 2005).
Historian Colette Hyman (2009) explained,
Genocidal attacks on the Dakota placed survivors in untenable situations
where remaining alive meant more suffering and pain-for oneself and one's
family. Certainly, Dakota women did what they could to survive illness,
death, rotten and insufficient food rations, and sexual humiliation by
soldiers and other white men.
Colonial abuse aimed at destroying Native cultures persisted throughout the 20th century and
continues today. Native women and children "are among the most economically, socially, and politically
disenfranchised groups in the United States" (Poupart, 2003).

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The federal government has engaged in numerous tactics over the years to assimilate Native
people (Bell & Lim, 2005). The legacies of these policies play a significant role in the lives of Native
women today (Chenault, 2011; Perry, 2008). Particularly relevant to this report are periods known by
Indian scholars as the "boarding school era" and "relocation era." During the "boarding school" era, the
official policy of the federal government was require most Native children to off-reservation government
or church-run boarding schools where sexual abuse was a common occurrence (Deer, 2004a; Perry,
2002). The policy was an effort to force assimilation (Adams 1997). Many survivors of these boarding
schools have reported that they were physically assaulted for practicing their spiritual beliefs or speaking
their traditional language. The policy was an effort to force assimilation. By disconnecting children from
their families, there were no family members to protect them. Thus, several generations of Native people
grew up in a dangerous environment which stripped them of language and culture (Smith, 2003).
During the "relocation" era (1940s-1970s), the United States adopted assimilation as its official
policy (DeRosier, 1975). The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) encouraged Indian people to leave their
homes on reservations and move to urban areas. As a result thousands of Native people from Minnesota
reservations and elsewhere migrated to large U.S. cities including Minneapolis and St. Paul (Shoemaker,
1988). Often, the United States government did not provide social services, education, or vocational
training to Native people. Stranded in a culturally unfamiliar environment, often without extended family
and friends, Native people were vulnerable to exploitation which included prostitution.
Overt racism and stereotyping of Native people were common attitudes held by politicians, social
scientists and religious groups (Chenault, 2011; Mihesuah, 2009). For example, many social scientists
viewed Native peoples as "primitive" and studied their ability to "adapt to the modern world" during the
relocation era (Kuttner & Lorincz, 1970). Several studies from this era focus on Minneapolis Indian
communities and reflect racist Eurocentric attitudes. At the same time, these studies also indicate an
awareness of the suffering of Native peoples in urban areas and its connection to prostitution. For
example, Kuttner and Lorincz (1970) observed, "until World War II the only readily available
employment for Indians off reservations was prostitution for young women." United States government-
funded services were not guaranteed to Native people after relocation to any urban area, including
Minneapolis. The vast majority of Native women in Minneapolis did not receive any form of BIA
assistance after moving from homes on reservations (Woods and Harkins, 1968).
Impact of Colonial History on Native Women
In 1999, the United States Department of Justice (Greenfeld & Smith, 1999) released a report on
crime victimization in Native communities, noting that American Indians "have higher per capita rates of


14
violent victimizations" than other groups in the United States. The data confirmed anecdotal accounts of
devastatingly high rates of violent crime. These crimes include battery, sexual assault, domestic violence,
stalking and homicide. Since then, other federal compilations have come to the same conclusion (Perry,
2004; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). American Indians live in extremely adverse social and physical
environments that place them at very high risk of exposure to traumatic experiences. Rates of violent
victimization of American Indians are more than twice as high as the national average (Manson, Beals,
Klein, & Croy, 2005).
Native women are subject to high rates of childhood sexual assaults, domestic violence, and rape
according to researchers and advocates alike.(Chenault, 2011; Bachman, Zaykowski, Lanier, Poteyeva, &
Kallmyer, 2010; Evans-Campbell, Lindhorst, Huang, & Karina L. Walters, 2006; Malcoe, Duran, &
Montgomery, 2004; Saylors & Daliparthy, 2004). Violence against Native women occurs wherever they
live, not only on reservations (Clark & Johnson, 2008). For example, a study of Native women in the city
of New York found that over 65% had experienced some form of interpersonal violence including rape
(48%), domestic violence (40%), and childhood physical abuse (28%). Forty percent of the Native
women in the study had suffered multiple forms of interpersonal violence (Evans-Campbell, Lindhorst,
Huang, & Walters, 2006).
Prostitution is another form of this egregious violence against Native women. An honest review of
history indicates that European system of prostitution was imposed by force on tribal communities
through nearly every point of contact between Europeans and Native people. It is essential to understand
the history of this trafficking of Native women in order to reduce the epidemic of sexual violence against
them (Deer, 2010). Yet most research on violence against Native women in the United States fails to
include prostitution and sex trafficking as forms of sexual violence. Neither a 2007 Amnesty International
report about sexual assault perpetrated against Native American women in the United States nor a 2010
report on sexual violence against Native American women (Bachman, Zaykowski, Lanier, Poteyeva, &
Kallmyer, 2010) addressed prostitution and sex trafficking.
Many authors and researchers, however, have provided compelling evidence that the vast majority
of prostituted women were sexually assaulted as children (usually by multiple perpetrators) and are re-
victimized as adults in prostitution as they experience being hunted, dominated, harassed, assaulted, and
battered by johns and traffickers (Baldwin, 1999, 2003; Barry, 1995; Boyer, 2008; Boyer, Chapman and
Marshall, 1993; Dworkin, 1997; Farley, 2006; Farley, Cotton, Lynne, Zumbeck, Spiwak, Reyes, Alvarez,
Sezgin, 2003; Farley & Kelly, 2000; Farley, Lynne, and Cotton, 2005; Giobbe, 1991, 1993; Hoigard and
Finstad, 1986; Hughes, 1999; Hunter, 1994; Jeffreys, 1997; Leidholdt, 1993; MacKinnon and Dworkin,
1997; Miller and Schwartz, 1995; Raymond, 1998; Silbert.& Pines, 1982a, 1982b; Silbert, Pines, &


15
Lynch, 1982; Stark and Hodgson, 2003; Vanwesenbeeck, 1994.) Nelson (1993) has described the racism
which is intrinsic to all forms of prostitution.
The violence of prostitution includes murder. Brewer and colleagues (2006) and Potterat and
colleagues (2004) in separate studies estimated that women in prostitution were murdered more frequently
than any other group of women ever studied. A study of Vancouver prostitution reported a 36% incidence
of attempted murder (Cler-Cunningham & Christenson, 2001). The disappearance and murders of
thousands of Aboriginal women in Canada is an ongoing example of the violence against women in
prostitution. A hog butcher/john in British Columbia was charged with the murder of some of these
women but many of the murders are unsolved, sometimes uninvestigated. The women who have been
murdered in Vancouver are among the poorest women in prostitution, those who are bought for sexual use
by johns who specifically target them because the women are considered disposable (Culhane, 2003).
Aboriginal human rights groups, including the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, have criticized the
inadequate police response to violence and murder against extremely poor First Nations women in
Vancouver's Downtown East Side and throughout Canada (Wallace, 2010; Aboriginal Women's Action
Network, 2002). Some journalists have linked the disappearances of Aboriginal women to sex trafficking
(Taliman, 2010) Scholars have criticized media coverage of the women's disappearances, pointing out the
sexism, racism, and prejudice against prostituted women in most news articles (Jiwani & Young, 2006).
Traumatic Antecedents to Prostitution Among Native Women
The attempt to annihilate American Indians, whether through military murders, child removal or
assimilation, is central to American history. Native peoples' experience in the United States is marked by
surviving subjugation, occupation, and resisting assimilation and colonization (Chenault, 2011). Native
people have suffered generations of violence, emotional trauma, and enforced poverty as a result of
colonization by United States (Duran, Duran, & Yellow Horse Brave Heart, 1998). This overwhelming
history of trauma is associated with high rates of substance abuse, depression, and suicide (Ross, 2005;
Walters & Simoni, 2002). Colonization and racism result in extensive and insidious trauma that wears
away its victims’ mental and physical health (Root, 1996; Kelm, 1998).
Many studies indicate that Native people suffer from higher rates of mental disorders than the
general population (De Ravello, Abeita, & Brown, 2008; Gone, 2004; Beals, Manson, Whitesell, Spicer,
Novins & Mitchell, 2005; Hodge, Limb, & Cross, 2009). In addition to the historical trauma, Native
people suffer multiple and cumulative mental trauma in a contemporary setting when compared to other
groups (Robin, Chester, & Goldman, 1996). These traumatic events, combined with the historical trauma,
result in extremely high rates of mental distress and substance abuse (Bohn, 2003; Palacios & Portillo,


16
2009; Kirmayer, 1994). Substance abuse rates and addiction are also significantly elevated in Native
populations (Whitbeck, Chen, Hoyt, & Adams, 2004).
Because of the frequency of sexual and domestic violence perpetrated against them (Hamby and
Skupien, 1998), Native women have high rates of PTSD when compared to other groups of women
(Gnanadesikan, Novins & Beals, 2005; Robin, Chester and Goldman, 1996). While acknowledging these
high rates of trauma and mental health challenges in tribal communities, the authors also wish to
emphasize that Native people retain important strengths and power, which are oftentimes not the focus of
these studies. We share Denham's (2008, page 392) perspective:
Discussions concerning the consequences of colonialism and the challenges
facing American Indian people frequently do not illustrate the strengths
expressed by individuals and communities, as powerful stories, songs,
histories and strategies for resilience are often present behind the realities of
inequality, injustice and poverty. Studying the challenges American Indian
people confront is helpful and needed; however, such studies provide greater
benefit when combined with descriptions emphasizing the strengths of
Native people.
Social Harms
In addition to mental disorders, social scientists have also documented high rates of other social
harms, such as extreme poverty, homelessness, and chronic health problems in Native communities
(Perry, 2008; Palacios & Portilo, 2009; Beals, Manson, Whitesell, Spicer, Novins & Mitchell, 2005).
These social harms function as risk factors which create a vulnerability to trafficking for prostitution
among Native women.
Homelessness, a result of poverty, is linked to prostitution and trafficking (Farley, Cotton, Lynne,
Zumbeck, Spiwak & Reyes, 2003) and has been established as a primary risk factor for prostitution
(Boyer et al., 1993; Silbert & Pines, 1983; Louie, Luu, & Tong, 1991). Native people are significantly
over-represented in the homeless population in the United States (Zerger, 2004). When the state and
private agencies fail to offer women and children shelter, pimps provide housing via prostitution. When
women in prostitution are asked what they need, first on their list is housing (Farley & Barkan, 1998).
Housing instability on reservations sometimes results in migration to urban areas, leaving young women
vulnerable to prostitution. Although Native Americans constitute only 1% of adults and 2% of youth in
the general population, they constitute 11% of homeless adults and 20% of homeless youth (Minnesota
Coalition for the Homeless, 2008). In particular, Minnesota Native youth are over-represented among the
homeless (Koepplinger, 2009; Wilder Research, 2010).
Organized crime groups both on and off reservations play a significant role in the trafficking of
Native women. Youth gangs in Indian country are proliferating (Major, Egley, Howell, Mendenhall, &
Armonstrong, 2004; Misjak, 2009). Descriptions of prostitution and trafficking in Native communities


17

that are run by organized criminals have been reported to staff at the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual
Assault Coalition and to the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center (Koepplinger, 2009; Pierce,
2009).
Since 2008 several reports have highlighted the vulnerability of Minnesota Native women to
prostitution and sex trafficking. In one Minneapolis neighborhood, Native women accounted for 24% of
the women on probation for prostitution despite the fact that they comprised only 2% of the overall
Minneapolis population (Bortel, Ellingen, Ellison, & Thomas, 2008). Since the percentage is based on
their probation status, the actual number of Native prostituting women in that neighborhood is probably
higher than 24%. Many of these women had been trafficked. Collin (2011) described cases of trafficking
of Native women and girls via boats out of Duluth into international waters, as well as domestic
trafficking of poor young women from reservations to Minnesota and other US cities. Pierce (2009)
summarized historical, social and psychological factors channeling Native American women into
prostitution and trafficking. Of women in the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center programs,
40% of 95 women and girls had been sexually exploited in prostitution and 27% were victims of
trafficking as defined by Minnesota law (Pierce, 2009).
Experts acknowledge that Native women and girls are disproportionately impacted by prostitution.
The Anchorage Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that Alaska Native
women and girls are approximately 33% of all prostituted and trafficked women in Anchorage
(DeMarban, 2010). Yet Alaska Native people make up slightly less than 8% of the population in that city
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Journalist Valerie Taliman3 stated, "In my travels, Native women have
shared with me worrisome news of what is happening to their relatives in urban America and in the
Southwest. Twice in 2010, I was given accounts of young Navajo women being drugged at parties they
had gone to in Albuquerque and Farmington (New Mexico) and waking up in captivity and forced into
prostitution for days or weeks until they escaped. How they escaped, who the perpetrators were and what
happened to them was not revealed as the young women 'shut down' and refused to speak about their
attacks" (Valerie Taliman, personal communication, October 21, 2011).
Research from other parts of the world clearly indicates that indigenous women are
overrepresented in prostitution, reflecting a race hierarchy within the sexist and classist institution of
prostitution itself. The United States and Canada share a border and similar colonial history. Native
women are at greater risk for prostitution and trafficking than any other women in Canada (Lambertus,

3 Valerie Taliman is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and is West Coast Editor of Indian Country Today Media Network
(www.ictmn.com). Her series on the missing and murdered Native women in Canada won the 2011 Richard LaCourse award
for investigative reporting


18

2007). Studies of First Nations4 women in Canada have also noted that Native women are
disproportionately represented in prostitution (McKeown, Reid, & Orr, 2004; Farley, Lynne & Cotton,
2005). Fifty-two percent of women in a study of Vancouver prostitution were First Nations women
(Farley, Lynne & Cotton, 2005) compared to population estimates reporting that 7% of Vancouver’s
people are First Nations (Vancouver/Richmond Health Board, 1999). The overrepresentation of First
Nations women in prostitution and prostitution’s prevalence in an area of Vancouver with a high
proportion of First Nations residents reflects not only their poverty, but also First Nations' women's
marginalized and devalued status as Canadians. Others report similar findings. Additionally, First Nations
children and youth are more than 90 % of the visible sex trade in areas where the Aboriginal population is
less than 10 % (Kingsley, 2000).
In New Zealand, Plumridge and Abel (2001) observed that 7% of the Christchurch population was
Maori women but 19% of those in Christchurch prostitution were Maori. Maori women in prostitution
were significantly more likely than European-ancestry New Zealanders to have been re-victimized. The
authors interpret this to reflect the Aboriginal women’s poverty and lack of access to other opportunities
because of racism (Nixon, Tuttly, Down, Gorkoff, & Ursel, 2002). In the 1990s, Atayal and other
aboriginal girls comprised 70% of those in Taiwanese debt-bondage prostitution although they comprised
fewer than 2% of the total population (Hwang & Bedford, 2003). The researchers noted that pathways
into prostitution for aboriginal Taiwanese adolescents were similar to those pathways elsewhere:
globalization of the economy, social and cultural disruption, race/ethnic discrimination, and extremely
high levels of family violence.
Thus, a trend appears to be emerging from the research wherein the indigenous people of a
colonized country are more likely to be victims of prostitution and trafficking than other groups. This
study investigates the lives of prostituted Native women in Minnesota, asking them how they understand
the circumstances of their lives. The authors think that their responses help to clarify what happens to
indigenous women in a country where colonization has occurred.

4 "First Nations" and "Aboriginal" are commonly used terms in Canada to refer to people we call "Indian" or "Native" in the
USA.


19
METHOD
Breaking Free, a 15 year-old St. Paul agency helping women escape prostitution, made an
important contribution to starting this research project. Over the years, Breaking Free staff had worked
with a number of Native women in their programs. Several of those women expressed an interest in
participating in the research and were among our first interviewees at Breaking Free's offices.
Four interviewers were trained to administer the questionnaires and conduct the interviews. All
interviewers had a background in sexual abuse counseling and advocacy for Native women. With the
participating women's permission, demonstration interviews by an experienced researcher were observed
by the interviewers. The interviewers' first interviews were also observed with feedback given. Several
days of training took place during which time interviewers reviewed how to establish rapport, follow up
with open-ended questions, how to support the women while they discussed painful material, and how to
support the women in taking breaks or in ending the interview if needed. Interviewers had access to peer
feedback during the time the interviews were conducted. The first author was available for phone
consultation throughout the study.
Interviewers were Nicole Matthews, Guadalupe Lopez, Christine Stark, Eileen Hudon, and
Melissa Farley. Two of the interviewers were staff members of MIWSAC; two were members of the
Coalition. Four of the five interviewers identified as Native.
A number of sexual assault agencies throughout Minnesota are members of MIWSAC. We asked
these member agencies to help us identify women in their communities who might want to participate in
this research project. In Minneapolis, we reached out to Breaking Free and Minnesota Indian Women's
Resource Center (MIWRC). In Duluth, we worked with a number of programs affiliated with MIWSAC:
Mending the Sacred Hoop Coalition, Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, American Indian Community
Housing Organization, Dabinoo'igan Shelter, Min-No-Aya-Win Human Services, Fond du Lac sexual
assault advocate, and Program for Aid to Victims of Sexual Assault (PAVSA).
In Duluth, American Indian Community Housing Organization reached out to the community to
let them know about the research, posting flyers at food shelves, homeless shelters and other locations.
Mending the Sacred Hoop provided interview rooms and a welcoming atmosphere with refreshments and
a smudge bowl for interviewees and interviewers. Dabinoo'igan Shelter provided transportation for the
women and also was available to the women post-interview if they needed support. PAVSA and Min-No-
Aya-Win offered sexual assault advocacy. The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project provided an
advocate who was available to the women during the interviews and as a support resource after the
interviews.
In the Bemidji area, an advocate at the Anishinaabe Equay program put up flyers in the

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20
community, received calls from women who wished to participate in the research, and scheduled the
interviews. She also served as a resource for the women in the event of emotional distress and provided
ongoing support to several of the women. We also worked with the Anishinaabe Equay program of the
Sexual Assault Program of Beltrami, Cass & Hubbard Counties and the Nokimagiizis Program of the
Northwoods Coalition for Family Safety. Each organization provided interview space within their
buildings.
Procedure
The interviews lasted between one and two hours. The study protocol was reviewed by
Prostitution Research & Education's Ethics Review Committee. Each woman was read and provided with
her own copy of an informed consent, which described the purpose of the research, her ability to opt out
of the study at any time, risks and benefits of participating in the research, and a MIWSAC staff member
contact phone number which would be answered within 24 hours if she had questions about the study or
emotional distress and was in need of support. We provided each woman a $75 Visa gift card in
appreciation of her time. Many tribal spiritual beliefs include a great reverence and respect for plants,
flowers, and herbs. As part of our effort to humanize the women we interviewed, we asked each
participant to select a flower or plant name that would serve as her identifier. Thus, each of our interviews
were identified by a flower name (in addition to a number). This has allowed us to preserve anonymity
while still honoring their lives and their stories. It also provides a metaphor for how we see the women- as
beautiful and worthy of support and protection.
We used four questionnaires that included both quantitative questions and structured open-ended
questions. The Prostitution Questionnaire has been used previously in 9 countries (Farley, Cotton, Lynne,
Zumbeck, Spiwak & Reyes, 2003) and includes questions about age of entry into prostitution, experiences
of sexual and physical violence in childhood and as adults, use of pornography in prostitution, if they had
been homeless; if they had physical health problems; and if they used drugs or alcohol or both. We asked
whether respondents wished to leave prostitution and what they needed in order to leave. Other questions
inquired about the numbers of johns who have used them in prostitution.
We included items from the Dissociation subscale of Briere's Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC) -
40. The TSC was developed to assess trauma symptoms in survivors of childhood sexual abuse. TSC-40
total scores yield an alpha of .90, and the mean internal consistency for the subscales is .69 (Elliott &
Briere, 1992). Additionally, the TSC-40 has been used to distinguish an adult sample of childhood sexual
abuse survivors from a non-abused clinical sample (Briere & Runtz, 1989). The TSC-40 has empirically
demonstrated differences in symptoms between adults with different child abuse histories, such as
physical, sexual, and emotional abuse (Briere & Runtz, 1990).


21
The women we interviewed also completed the PTSD Checklist (PCL), a self-report research
inventory for assessing the symptoms of PTSD (Weathers et al, 1993; Blanchard, Jones-Alexander,
Buckley, & Forneris, 1996). Respondents were asked to rate symptoms of PTSD on a Likert-scored
scale. PCL test-retest reliability was .96. Internal consistency, as measured by an alpha coefficient was
.97. Validity of the scale was reflected in its strong correlations with the Mississippi Scale (.93); the PK
scale of the MMPI-2 (.77); and the Impact of Event Scale (.90) (Weathers et al, 1993). The PCL has
functioned comparably across different ethnic cultures in U.S.A. (Keane et al, 1996).
We measured symptoms of PTSD in two ways. First, using a procedure established by the authors of
the scale, we generated a measure of overall PTSD symptom severity by summing respondents' ratings
across all 17 items. Second, using Weathers' (1993) scoring suggestion, we considered a score of 3 or
above on a given PCL item to be a symptom of PTSD. Using those scores, we then noted whether each
respondent met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD. We report the numbers and percentages of respondents
who qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD.
We administered a Chronic Health Problem Questionnaire that included items developed from
responses to an earlier study that used an open-ended item which inquired about health problems of
women in prostitution.
We created a questionnaire, Native American Prostitution Questionnaire, to learn from
interviewees how they saw culture, historical trauma, boarding schools, foster care, adoption, tribal
identity, sexual violence and other concerns contributing to the exploitation of Native women in
prostitution.


22
RESULTS
Demographics
We interviewed 105 Native women who were prostituting in Minneapolis, Duluth and Bemidji,
Minnesota. The average age of the women was 35 years, (range 18-60 years, SD 11). They had been in
prostitution on average 14 years (range 0-43, SD = 11). The average age when they began prostituting
was 21 years (range 4-50 years, median = 18 years; SD = 8). Thirty-nine percent had been used in
prostitution when they were minors (younger than 18 years of age). Tables 1, 4, and 5 provide summary
information on demographics and experiences of violence during the 105 Native Minnesota women's lives
compared to a 9-country study of these same variables in the lives of 854 people in prostitution in 9
countries (Farley et al., 2003).
Table 1. Age, Age of Entry and Length of Time in Prostitution of Native American
Prostituted Women Compared to Those Prostituted in 9 Countries
Native Prostituted
Women in Minnesota
(n=105)
9 Country
Summary
(n=854) (SD)
Mean age (SD) 35 (11) 28 (8)
Age range 18-60 12-68
Mean age of entry to prostitution (SD) 21 (8) 19 (6)
Years in prostitution (SD) 14 (11) 9 (8)
Percent under 18 when entered prostitution 39% 47%
At the time of these interviews, more than a third (37%) of the women had been used by more than
500 men who bought them for sexual use. Eleven percent had been used by 500-900 men; 16% of the
women had been used in prostitution by 900-1000 men. At a most basic level, these numbers provide a
crude index of the harms perpetrated against these Native women in Minnesota prostitution.
Prostitution is intergenerational (Pierce, 2009). Fifty-seven percent of the 105 women we
interviewed had family members also involved in prostitution. These included cousins, sisters, mothers,
aunts, nieces, and daughters. Brothers and fathers, possibly involved in pimping, were also mentioned.
Fifty-eight percent of the women's families knew about their prostitution and in 43% of those instances,
the families had tried to help the women get out of prostitution.
National and Tribal Identities
Most Native people will give an identity connected to their "reservation" identity instead of their
"family heritage" identity. Virtually all Native people have multiple heritages and will also have two or
more reservation identities. Identity in Indian Country, despite appearances, does not really follow the
state system model. Identity follows family connections. Consequently a person who lives on White


23

Earth Reservation may actually be Cree, Oneida and Ojibwe. It is possible to have people living on a
reservation who do not share the "tribal identity" of the majority on the reservation, but who instead have
a "tribal identity" from another reservation altogether. This can be bewildering to Native Americans and
non-Natives alike. We have done our best to stay as close to the women's self-identifications as possible,
and have used their own categorizations, which are sometimes tribes or nations and sometimes
reservations. Although usually not accurate in terms of family lineage, self-identification is the most
important identity to the women. Women in this study were likely to self-identify based on whom in their
family or community taught them about their ancestry. In contrast, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, operating
as an arm of the United States, defines "who is an Indian" in approximately 12 different ways for the
purpose of services. The BIA labeling is not related to the women's identities as Native Americans.5
A significant majority (81%) of women identified as Anishinaabe, also known as Ojibwe and
Chippewa. Of the women who identified as Anishinaabe, 94% (77) identified as coming from an
Anishinaabe nation with one tribal affiliation. Other women described additional Anishinaabe tribal
affiliations. These included Leech Lake (20), Red Lake (17), White Earth (16), Mille Lacs (4), Bois Forte
(4), Grand Portage (3), Fond du Lac (2), Bad River (1), and Turtle Mountain (1). One woman identified
with two Anishinaabe tribal groups—Bad River and Fond du Lac, and 9 women did not further specify.
The remaining 6% of women who identified as Anishinaabe also identified with another nation—Ojibwe
and Sioux (2), Ojibwe and Dakota (1), and Red Lake and Dakota (1).
Less frequently, women identified themselves as Dakota/Lakota (4). These women further
identified as Sisseton Wahpeton (1), Cheyenne River (1), Rosebud (1) or Pine Ridge (1). One woman
identified as both Lakota and Apache. One woman each identified as Oneida, Menominee, and
Menominee and Ho-Chunk. One woman each reported affiliations with the Blackfoot/Cherokee,
Blackfoot/Choctaw, Ponca, Cree, and Cherokee/Sioux nations.
One woman identified as First Nations from Canada. Uncertain of her tribal affiliation, one
woman reported that her people came from North Carolina and Oklahoma. Four women identified as
Native American but did not provide national or tribal affiliations.

5 Rudolph Ryser, Ph.D., Chair, Center for World Indigenous Studies (cwis.org) contributed this section that we think so clearly
explains Native identities.


24
Table 2. Tribal Identities of 105 Prostituted Native American Women in Minnesota
Anishinaabe
Anishinaabe Only
Leech Lake, MN 20% (20)
Red Lake, MN 17% (17)
White Earth, MN 16% (16)
Mille Lacs, MN 4% (4)
Bois Forte, MN 4% (4)
Grand Portage, MN 3% (3)
Fond du Lac, MN 2% (2)
Bad River, WI 1% (1)
Turtle Mountain, ND 1% (1)
Not Specified 9% (9)
More Than One Anishinaabe Tribe
Bad River (WI) and Fond du Lac (MN) 1% (1)
More Than One Tribal Affiliation (w/ Anishinaabe)
Ojibwe and Dakota 1% (1)
Ojibwe and Sioux 2% (2)
Red Lake and Dakota 1% (1)
Total 81% (82)
Tribal Affiliation Outside Minnesota
Dakota - Sisseton Wahpeton (SD) 1% (1)
Lakota - Cheyenne River (SD) 1% (1)
Lakota - Rosebud (SD) 1% (1)
Lakota - Pine Ridge (SD) 1% (1)
Lakota/Apache 1% (1)
Blackfoot/Cherokee 1% (1)
Blackfoot/Choctaw 1% (1)
Ponca 1% (1)
Cree (Montana) 1% (1)
Cherokee and Sioux 1% (1)
Total 10% (10)
Regional Affiliations
Oneida 1% (1)
Menominee (Wisconsin) 1% (1)
Menominee and Ho-Chunk (Wisconsin) 1% (1)
Total 3% (3)
Canadian First Nations
Total 1% (1)
Uncertain of Affiliation or No Affiliation Given
Uncertain of Affiliation 1% (1)
No Tribal Affiliation Given 4% (4)
Total 5% (5)


25
A large majority (88%) of the women we interviewed grew up in Minnesota. Forty-four percent
grew up on reservations which were most often located in Minnesota (Leech Lake, White Earth, Red
Lake, Fond du Lac, Mille Lacs, Grand Portage, and Bois Forte). Fourteen percent of the reservations were
located outside Minnesota in South Dakota (Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Cheyenne River), Wisconsin
(Menominee), and Oklahoma (Ponca). Eleven percent of the women we interviewed grew up states other
than Minnesota (South Dakota, Oklahoma, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and West Virginia), and
1% grew up overseas (location unspecified).
At the time of the interview, all of the women currently lived in Minnesota. Most lived in either
Duluth (49%) or Minneapolis (27%). Only 6% currently live on reservations: Leech Lake (4%) or Fond
du Lac (2%). The remaining 19% lived in other Minnesota cities.
Locations Where Women Were Prostituted and Trafficked
The Minnesota women were prostituted in multiple locations. Eighty-five percent of the women
were used in street prostitution. Eighty-three percent were prostituted in private residences. Sixty-nine
percent had been prostituted at private parties, hotels or nightclubs and 68% were prostituted at bars.
Thirty-six percent were prostituted via outcall or escort services, 26% via phone sex businesses, 24% via
the Internet and 21% from reservations. The women also were prostituted at strip clubs (20%), casinos
(19%), saunas (16%), massage parlors (14%), for use in pornography (10%), peep shows (8%), brothels
(8%), farms (8%), live video chat (8%), church (2%), and cults (1%).
Most of the women had been prostituted in urban areas (77%). A significant majority (75%) had
engaged in prostitution in exchange for food, shelter, or drugs. Forty-five percent of the women had been
trafficked for the purpose of prostitution. While most were trafficked from Minneapolis/St Paul or
Duluth, they were also trafficked from the White Earth and the Menominee reservations and from
Chicago and Albuquerque. The women mentioned 32 states where they were transported for prostitution.
Sethi (2007) has described the methods used by domestic traffickers against Aboriginal girls in Canada
which are similar to those used in recruitment of Native women to prostitution in the United States.
Recruitment methods of pimps include enticement at schools or bars, recruitment as dancers, hitchhiking,
gang coercion, and enticement into prostitution via the Internet.
We think that the women's definitions of trafficking meet legal definitions of trafficking, in that
they were referring to third-party exploitation or pimp-controlled prostitution. The women often assumed
that trafficking only occurred when they were transported by pimps from one location to another for
prostitution. Transportation or movement from one place to another is a commonly misunderstood notion
of trafficking. Under most legal definitions, no transportation is required to have been trafficked (see
footnote 2, above). Eighty-six percent of our interviewees believed that most women do not know what

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prostitution is really like when they begin prostituting. In other words, they think that there is deception or
trickery involved in prostitution which are critical elements in most definitions of trafficking.
The women were frequently domestically trafficked under brutal pimp control.
My dad was very abusive to my mother and I ended up running away to
Chicago. When I was 17 I was stranded in Chicago and had to get home to
Wisconsin. I went to a party, there were lots of drugs, I got left there, and I
was roaming around. A pimp was nice to me, he gave me this, gave me that.
Then he took me to someone’s place and he said this guy – age 40 – he’s
interested in you. Then he started hitting me after I said no. I was so scared
I just did it. After that I kept doing it because I was afraid to get hit.
Another woman described being prostituted and trafficked in Las Vegas by her pimp, “The men just kept
coming and coming and I never slept or ate, I just had sex all the time. My pimp used the back of the van
[the location where johns used her for sex].” Another woman described her prostitution on ships out of
the port of Duluth which has been a site for the trafficking of Native women for decades (Pierce, 2009;
Scheffler, 2010). Transporting U.S. citizens for prostitution from Duluth across international boundary
waters between the U.S. and Canada meets the legal definition of international sex trafficking. Duluth
police in 2002 found evidence that three traffickers had prostituted up to 10 women and girls on foreign
ships in the port. Collin (2011) noted that approximately 1,000 ships a year dock at the Duluth harbor and
also described reports of women and children trafficked to ships' crews who are disappeared for months
before returning. Intergenerational harms persist in that some girls whose mothers were prostituted on the
boats were conceived during prostitution (Baran, 2009).
The women we interviewed noted where trafficking of others for prostitution had occurred. Of the
74% (75) who knew of others being trafficked, 60% said they knew of others being trafficked in strip
clubs. 59% knew of others prostituted at outcall and escort prostitution agencies, phone sex agencies, via
the Internet, on reservations, casinos, saunas, massage parlors, in pornography, peep shows, brothels, and
farms. See Table 3.

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27
Table 3. Locations Where 105 Minnesota Native Women Were
Prostituted and Knew of Others Prostituting
Women who were Others Known to
Location Interviewed Interviewees
Street 85% (89) 77% (58)
Private Home or Apartment 83% (87) 77% (58)
Private Parties/Hotels/Nightclubs 69% (72) 73% (55)
Bar 68% (71) 67% (50)
Outcall/Escort 36% (38) 59% (44)
Internet or Live Video Chat 32% (33) 64% (48)
Phone Sex Line 26% (27) 43% (32)
Reservation 21% (22) 36% (27)
Strip Club 20% (21) 60% (45)
Casino 19% (20) 35% (26)
Sauna 16% (17) 37% (28)
Massage Parlor 14% (15) 35% (26)
Pornography 10% (11) 29% (22)
Peep Show 8% (8) 28% (21)
Brothel 8% (8) 31% (23)
Farm 8% (8) 13% (10)
Church 2% (2) 1% (1)
Cult 1% (1) 1% (1)
Ship in Duluth Harbor 1% (1) 0
Native American Women in Prostitution are Frequently Pimped
About half (49%) of our interviewees gave most of their money from prostitution to pimps. The
women's mothers, children and other family members were named as recipients of the women's
prostitution monies 27% of the time. Forty-two percent of the time, the pimp/boyfriend who received the
prostitution money was gang-affiliated. The women named the gangs that their pimps were involved
with, frequently mentioning five Chicago-based gangs: Gangster Disciples, Black Gangsters, Four Corner
Hustlers, Stone Gang, and Vice Lords. The women also mentioned trafficking by Bloods, Sureños, and
Native Mob gangs, as well as an unnamed biker gang.
Ethnicity of Men Who Buy Native Women for Use in Prostitution
We asked the women about the ethnicity of their sex buyers. Of the men who bought them for
sexual use, a majority were White European-American (78%) or African American (65%) but also Latino
(44%), Native American (24%), or less frequently Asian (9%). These percentages are consistent with
other research on sexual violence against Native women which shows that most perpetrators of other
kinds of sexual violence against the women are also non-Native (Perry, 2004).

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VIOLENCE IN THE LIVES OF NATIVE WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION
Extreme and frequent violence was committed against these Native women in prostitution over the
course of their lives. Seventy-nine percent of the women we interviewed had been sexually assaulted as
children, by an average of 4 perpetrators. More than half (56%) had been physically abused by
caregivers.
Ninety-two percent of the Native women we interviewed had been raped in prostitution. More
than half of the women (53%) were raped 5-10 times, and 15% had been raped more than 20 times in
prostitution. Nearly half of the women (48%) had been used by more than 200 sex buyers during their
lifetimes. Sixteen percent estimated that they had been used by at least 900 sex buyers in their lifetimes.
Eighty-four percent of the women we interviewed had been physically assaulted while
prostituting. Most frequently the person who assaulted them was a john (44%), but the batterers were also
pimps (15%) or someone else (27%). More than half (52%) of the women we interviewed had been
physically threatened in the month prior to our interviewing them. Seventy-eight percent of the women
had been threatened with a gun, knife, or other weapon, 21% within the past month.
Ninety-eight percent of these Native women in prostitution were currently or previously homeless,
a fact that provides compelling evidence of the lack of alternatives for the women, as well as the
connection between poverty and prostitution.
Table 4. Violence in Prostitution of Native American Women
and in a Study of Prostitution in 9 Countries
Minnesota Native
Women in Prostitution
(n=105)
9 Country
Summary
(n=854)
Threatened with a weapon in prostitution 78% (73) 64% (503)
Physically assaulted in prostitution 84% (85) 73% (595)
Raped in prostitution 92% (92) 57% (483)
(Of those raped) raped more than five
times in prostitution 68% (50) 59% (286)
Current or past homelessness 98% (97) 75% (571)
As a child, was hit or beaten by caregiver
until injured or bruised 56% (55) 59% (448)
Sexual abuse as a child 79% (78) 63% (508)
Mean number of childhood sexual abuse
perpetrators 4 4
Median number of childhood sexual
abuse perpetrators 2 1
Current or Past Homelessness 98% (99) 75% (571)

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29
We asked the women about their experiences of four types of lifetime violence: childhood sexual
abuse, childhood physical abuse, rape as adults, and physical assault as adults. We then looked at how
many of the women had experienced none, one, two, three, or all four of these types of violence during
their lifetimes. Seventy-six percent of the women had experienced three or four types of violence, an
extremely high level of violence, even when compared that same level of violence among 854 people in
prostitution from nine countries. See Table 5.
Table 5. Number of Types of Lifetime Violence of 105 Native American Women
in Prostitution Compared to Those Prostituted in 9 Countries
Number of Types of Native American Women in 9 Country Summary
Lifetime Violence Prostitution (MN) (n=105) (n=854)
0 Types of Violence 2% (2) 13% (110)
1 Type of Violence 4% (4) 16% (133)
2 Types of Violence 29% (19) 20% (171)
3 Types of Violence 36% (36) 26% (222)
4 Types of Violence 40% (40) 25% (218)
Physical and Mental Health Problems
More than half (51%) of the women we interviewed had been diagnosed with a physical health
problem. The most commonly cited diagnoses were diabetes (13%), asthma (7%) and high blood pressure
(7%). The women also reported back injuries, hepatitis A and hepatitis C, and arthritis. Other problems
included anxiety, heart disease, stomach cancer, hypothyroidism, fibromyalgia, kidney disease,
incontinence, pancreatitis, neck, knee and heel injuries, phobia, hepatitis, anemia, blood clots, blood
disorder, deafness, pseudo-tumor cerebri, chronic pain, narcolepsy, scoliosis.
When asked about chronic health problems on the Chronic Health Problems Questionnaire
(CHPQ), more than half of the women reported muscle aches or pains (72%), memory problems (69%),
trouble concentrating (69%), headaches or migraines (57%), vision problems (55%), and joint pain (52%).
A third of the women stated that they experienced including stomach pain or bloating (48%), neck pain
(44%), shortness of breath (39%), allergies (38%), nausea (35%), pain or numbness in hands or feet
(33%), asthma (32%), and dizziness (30%). The women also reported experiencing a variety of other
chronic health problems, including constipation or diarrhea (28%), rapid or irregular heartbeat (28%),
trouble with balance or walking (27%), swelling of arms, hands, legs, or feet (27%), carpal tunnel (27%),
painful menstruation (25%), muscle weakness or paralysis (25%), chest pain (24%), vomiting (24%),
hearing problems (23%), trembling (22%), sweaty hands (22%), skin problems (20%), jaw or throat pain
(19%), cold or flu-like symptoms (19%), vaginal pain (13%), loss of feeling on skin (13%), pain in
breasts (12%), pelvic pain (10%), and difficulty swallowing (6%).

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Table 6. Chronic Health Problems of 105 Native American
Women in Minnesota Prostitution
Chronic Health Problem Percent (n)
Muscle aches or pains 72% (76)
Memory problems 69% (72)
Trouble concentrating 69% (72)
Headaches or Migraines 57% (60)
Vision problems 55% (58)
Joint pain 52% (52)
Stomach ache or upset stomach or bloating 48% (50)
Neck pain 44% (44)
Shortness of breath 39% (41)
Allergies 38% (40)
Nausea 36% (36)
Pain or numbness in hands or feet 33% (34)
Asthma 32% (33)
Dizziness 30% (31)
Constipation or diarrhea 28% (29)
Rapid or irregular heart beat 28% (29)
Trouble with balance or walking 27% (28)
Swelling of arms, hands, legs, or feet 27% (28)
Carpal tunnel 27% (26)
Painful menstruation 25% (26)
Muscle weakness or paralysis 25% (25)
Chest pain 24% (25)
Vomiting 24% (25)
Hearing problems 23% (24)
Trembling 22% (23)
Sweaty hands 22% (23)
Skin problems 20% (21)
Jaw or throat pain 19% (20)
Cold or flu-like symptoms 19% (20)
Vaginal pain 13% (14)
Loss of feeling on skin 13% (14)
Pain in breasts 12% (13)
Pelvic pain 10% (10)
Difficulty swallowing 6% (6)
Almost three-fourths of the women (72%) had suffered head injuries which can be described as traumatic
brain injury (TBI). These included the following symptoms and sequelae: broken jaws, fractured
cheekbones, missing teeth, punched lips, black eyes, blood clots in the head, hearing loss, memory loss,
headaches, and neck problems. Additional violent injuries suffered by the women included flesh wounds,
broken bones, arm/shoulder injuries, scars or bruises, knee/ankle injuries, being raped, kicked, strangled,

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burned or shot. One woman said, “I had a broken nose from being beaten by a pimp. [I experienced]
sexual torture from my boyfriend so I have problems in my left hip. How do you tell a doctor about
this?” Obviously, the women have urgent health concerns that need to be addressed by specialists who
approach the women in an accepting, nonjudgmental manner.
Sixty-five percent of the women had been diagnosed with a mental health problem. Three-fourths
(78%) of those women had been diagnosed with depression. Seventy-one percent had been diagnosed
with anxiety disorders (including generalized anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, PTSD (28%), and obsessive
compulsive disorder). Another 33% of the women had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Less
commonly reported were attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disorders (20%), sleep
problems (6%), schizophrenia, and dissociative identity disorder.
Forty percent of the women had been psychiatrically hospitalized. Family members of 49% of the
women had been psychiatrically hospitalized. Most often these were mothers, sisters or grandmothers,
but also brothers, cousins, fathers, and son or daughters.
Several women had struggled to use traditional spiritual healing practices for their mental
problems, but their physicians had objected to these practices. “I was in the hospital. I was unstable –
depression. It was a bad spirit. I wanted to smudge and was not allowed to.” Another woman told her
physicians that she suffered from bad dreams and was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her
doctor prescribed medicine to stop the bad dreams but, she said, “I know that our dreams mean something
so I don’t take the meds. I need those dreams."
Fifty-six percent of the women were taking medications at the time of their interviews. Of these
women, 80% were prescribed medication to manage a psychological condition. Fourteen percent took
sleeping pills regularly, and 11% were medicated for chronic pain. Sixty-one percent of respondents used
medications for chronic medical disease such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
The Emotional Reality of Prostitution
We asked the women we interviewed to list five words that described their feelings during
prostitution. Of the 456 responses 90% (412) were negative words, 7% (32) were positive, and the
remaining 3% (12) were neutral. Some words were used by many of the women to describe their feelings
during their prostitution. The word "dirty" was used by more than a third of the women (36%) of the
women to indicate how they felt during prostitution. This word sadly reflects the women's internalization
of johns' vicious and humiliating judgments of the women they buy for sexual use. Additional frequently
used words were sad, lonely, scared, disgusted, angry, numb, ashamed, guilty, nasty, ugly, depressed, and
used. Many of these words are the same words used by incest survivors and rape survivors to describe
their feelings about themselves (Herman, 1992).

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Racism
Race and ethnic prejudice is integral to prostitution. Sex buyers purchase women in prostitution
on the basis of the buyer's ethnic stereotypes; in this study, stereotypes about Native women. “When a
man looks at a prostitute and a Native woman, he looks at them the same: ‘dirty’.” Prostituting women in
this study felt the same pain that women everywhere suffer in response to verbal abuse. The prejudicial
words caused them greater pain than the physical assaults and rapes, and the damage lasts longer. As one
of our interviewees said, "You can get over the hit, the pain, but the words keep lingering on."
Forty-two percent of the prostituted women we interviewed had been racially insulted by sex
buyers and/or pimps. The racist verbal abuse (savage, squaw) was linked to sexist verbal abuse (whore,
slut). Racist generalizations about alcohol abuse were common. Hatred of the women's skin color was
reflected in comments such as “Why don’t you go back to the rez – go wash the brown off you.” Other
racist remarks by johns were homicidal. "I thought we killed all of you." These racist remarks were the
ones that could be written down. Some were unprintable. For some sex buyers, the racist degradation was
sexually arousing and was integral to his sexual use of Native women. One woman noted that johns often
“would say degrading things during and after” prostitution. Another woman said that it was expected of
her to tolerate the racist verbal abuse. “You don’t get paid if you talk back."
Native American women were fetishized as exotic others. One woman we interviewed described
johns' obsessive attraction to Native women. “It was taboo to be with a Native woman. When guys asked
my ethnicity and I said [Native], they wanted to come right there on the spot." In some cases, johns
wanted to role-play colonist and colonized as part of prostitution, “He likes my hair down and sometimes
he calls me Pocahontas. He likes to role play like that. He wants me to call him John”
On occasion, the women had been racially and sexually harassed by police officers. “The police
harass me a lot. They see me riding up on the sidewalk and assume I’m drunk. They assume Native
Americans are all drunk.” Another woman described racist prejudice against Native cultural practices in
Catholic schools where “the nuns tried to beat my culture out of me.”
Connecting Colonization and Prostitution
A majority of the women we interviewed (62%) saw the connection between colonization and
prostitution of Native women. Some women observed the profound inequality produced by both
institutions. One way of understanding colonization is that it removed Native peoples' life options, with
prostitution being one of the few options left for some women. “I’m doing what I can to survive, just the
way Native Americans did what they could to survive with what was given to them by the government:
disease, alcohol, violence.” Other women described the common losses of basic human rights resulting
from colonization and from prostitution: loss of traditional ways of living, loss of social status, and loss

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of self-respect. “The living conditions. I see a connection to poverty and public housing. I’m put down
anyway, so why not prostitution? I’m called a ‘squaw’, so why not?” The devaluation of women in
prostitution was seen as identical to devaluation of colonized Native people. “Back then they treated us
like nothing. And when I was out there [prostituting] I felt like nothing.”
Several women explained that the concepts of sexism and prostitution were unfamiliar to Native
people until contact with colonists. For example, “Our Native people weren’t aware of anything about
prostitution until the British came and started raping our Native women and had them as slaves and using
them for sex.” Another woman said that white European colonists brought with them a “culture of
prostitution” and imposed it on Native women. Another woman saw the sexism of colonists toward their
own women and compared it to prostitution. “The way that the white people treated their women is the
same way that pimps treat their hoes. And then Native men started treating us like that.” Expanding the
colonist/pimp analogy, another woman saw United States itself as pimp. “The government was the pimp
to the Indians”
Others saw the commonality between colonization and prostitution of Native women in the desire
to subordinate another person. “It’s how they treat you. Like cowboys and Indians. They’d rape the
women and take them and sell them. Just like Black people and slavery. We’re not supposed to have
anything. Not supposed to say anything. Not supposed to look them in the eye or be disrespectful.”
Another woman saw that colonists and johns “have to have somebody to make feel inferior. To make
themselves feel better.” The process of colonization, one woman said, reduced Native women to
commodities to be bought and used. She saw the same commodification in today's sexual objectification
of Native women. “You can’t walk down the streets anymore because they’re pulling people over asking
‘how much you worth?’"
When discussing their cultural identities, racism was mentioned by some interviewees. Several
women were frustrated that not only did they experience racism from non-Native Americans (one woman
was called "dirty Indian" by white European American women), but they also experienced racism from
their own communities. Several women said that because they were "mixed race" and not full-blooded
Indians, members of their own communities rejected them. One woman who sought help on her
reservation was rejected because her daughter appeared too "white." Several women felt alienated from
all communities: "I identify as Native when johns call me a Black bitch. I tell my Native sisters that you
can’t treat me bad because you look like a full Native and I don’t. I’m half Native too and we should all
get along and love each other and help each other. You can’t treat somebody different just because they
look different." Another woman, whose family included both Native American and African American
ancestors, explained her sense of disempowerment in the community. "I’m just as much this part as that

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34
part, even though I’m separated out as African or Black. Don’t cut me up and divide me in half. Respect
me as a woman, as a whole person. Give me my props. Give me my worth." Another woman explained,
"I’ve been too light for the Black side, and too White for the Native side of the family.” Referring to her
multiracial identity, another woman said, “It seems like my whole life, I have lived in two worlds…I don’t
have any sense of belonging".
The Women's Connections and Disconnections with their Cultural Identities
Many women felt disconnected from Native cultures. Some were not taught about their traditions
by their families (“I was not brought up knowing anything about my culture”), others felt that city living
made it more difficult to connect with their histories and cultures (“I have never learned anything about
our history and culture. Living in the cities, none of these were available to me”). A number of women
felt that prostitution and substance abuse disconnected them from their cultural identities. Other women
saw the disconnection from their cultural identity as being directly related to their prostitution (“Now I
feel distant. It has a lot to do with the prostitution”) or to substance use (“While I was using, I put my
spirituality on the back burner because I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and use the sacred things we use to
purify ourselves"). A feeling of shame sometimes prevented these women from connecting with their
culture or with other Native Americans. One woman explained, “I’m such an embarrassment to my race.
A lot of people know what I do, so I stay away.” One woman stated that she wanted to reconnect with her
culture but felt that she was “dirty” and did not belong there.
Some women were rejected by their communities because of their involvement in prostitution.
One woman said that her father was embarrassed by her prostitution and that "I’m a disgrace to him."
Several women were shunned in their communities sometimes by being denied enrollment. “They’re not
accepting about the prostitution," said one woman. Another sought help from her tribe but was rejected
because, she said, “people from the reservation don’t support people like me." Pierce (2009) noted a
similar judgmental attitude on the part of some elders in some communities and a reluctance to openly
discuss sexual violence.
While many interviewees felt a sense of distance from their cultural identities, many spoke of a
desire to reconnect to their cultures or to connect with it for the first time. "I'm still trying to find
myself…being more connected to my cultural identity would help me find my path." Some women felt
that being more connected with their cultures would help them recover from prostitution (“I would like to
learn more about ways to help me heal”). Many women wanted a connection with their cultures in order
"to belong. Maybe that’s just it. I’d have somewhere to belong.”
Their children helped the women connect with their cultures. "Just having people come into my
life with traditional ways like sweats, ceremonies, and pow wow. I have faith now and my children helped

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35
me a lot because I don’t want them to grow up the way I did." "The only way (kids) can survive in this
world is if they have our culture and our ways. My kids are learning the language and they go to pow
wows. They pray and smudge every day. They’re not around any of the stuff I was around when I was
little."
Some of the women we interviewed already had a strong connection with their cultural identity.
Feeling understood and supported by other Native Americans was often cited as a way that cultural
identity helped the women survive prostitution. "Pray together, burn sage, pray. Confide in one another,
open and embrace each other." Others spoke of the importance of having Native American people that
they could look up to and seek advice from: “Just knowing that there’s healthy Native ladies out here that
I can talk to.” “I see a Native therapist and she helps me.” “I’ve had to go to medicine men to get
doctored because the white field cannot help you. Because they cannot see it.” Some women told us how
important it was for them to feel the strength of a shared history and shared strength with other Native
Americans. “Just believing, and knowing that our people had made it before, through everything."
Some women credit their survival to their cultural identity and find strength in spiritual practices.
A third (34) of our interviewees described specific Native cultural or spiritual practices as an important
part of who they were, including sweats, smudging, pow wows, dancing, using tobacco, and praying. One
woman incorporated cultural practices into substance abuse treatment that ultimately helped her escape
prostitution: “When I got into treatment I went through a pipe ceremony and sought to find myself again.
It took me two weeks to come back to reality…From the treatment center, I entered my first sweat lodge.
That’s what opened my eyes. I made it all the way through. I knew I wasn’t alone." Finally, one woman
explained, “My spirituality helped me survive. If I didn’t have that I wouldn’t have had anything to fall
on to keep me sane and give me hope that tomorrow is going to be a better day. And there is something in
store for us, each and every one of us. My mother instilled that in me since I was young – how the tribes
spiritually worked."
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can result when people have experienced
…extreme traumatic stressors involving direct personal experience of an event
that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury; threat to one's personal
integrity; witnessing an event that involves death, injury or a threat to the physical
integrity of another person; learning about unexpected or violent death, serious
harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or other close
associate (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).
Most prostitution, most of the time includes these traumatic stressors. In response to these events, the
person with PTSD experiences fear and powerlessness, oscillating between emotional numbing to

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36
emotional/physiologic hyperarousal. PTSD is likely to be especially severe or long lasting when the
stressor is planned and implemented by humans (as in war, rape, incest, battering, torture, or prostitution)
rather than being a natural catastrophe.
Exposure to paid or unpaid sexual violence may result in symptoms of PTSD. Symptoms are grouped
into three categories: B) traumatic re-experiencing of events, or flashbacks; C) avoidance of situations
which are reminiscent of the traumatic events, and a protective emotional numbing of responsiveness; and
D) autonomic nervous system hyper arousal (such as jittery irritability, being super-alert, or insomnia).
The symptoms of PTSD may accumulate over one's lifetime. Many studies report a positive correlation
between a history of childhood sexual assault and symptoms of PTSD in adult women (Friedman &
Schnurr, 1995; Noll, Horowitz, Bonanno, Trickett, & Putnam, 2003; Ullman, Naidowski & Filipas, 2009).
Since almost all prostituted women have histories of childhood sexual abuse, this undoubtedly contributes
to their symptoms of posttraumatic stress. PTSD is not only related to the overall number of traumatic
events, but it is also directly related to the severity of that violence (Housekamp & Foy, 1991).
The incidence of PTSD has been investigated among battered women and ranges from 45% to as
high as 84% (Housekamp and Foy, 1991; Saunders, 1994; Kemp et al, 1991). The prevalence of PTSD
among prostituted people from 9 countries was 68% (Farley, Cotton, Lynne, Zumbeck, Spiwak, & Reyes,
2003) which is in the same range as that of combat veterans (Weathers, Litz, Herman, Huska, & Keane,
1993). For comparison, we note that the incidence of PTSD in the adult population of the United States is
8% (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, and Nelson, 1995).
In this study, 70% of the women met the criterion for symptom-level traumatic re-experiencing
of events, or flashbacks; 61% met symptom-level criteria for avoidance and numbing symptoms
(avoidance of situations which are reminiscent of the traumatic events and a protective emotional
numbing of responsiveness), and 74% met symptom-level criteria for autonomic nervous system
hyperarousal (such as jittery irritability, being super-alert or insomnia). Fifty-two percent of these Native
women in prostitution met all three criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD.
We also asked about the severity of each woman's symptoms of PTSD. The average severity of
PTSD for women without a childhood abuse history is 24 (SD=7) and for women with both childhood
physical and sexual abuse, the average PTSD severity is 37 (SD=15) (Farley & Patsalides, 2001). The
average severity of the Native women we interviewed was 51 (SD=19). This severity of PTSD is in the
range of combat veterans seeking treatment (51, SD=20), and Persian Gulf war veterans (35, SD=16)
(Weathers et al., 1993). In another study (of military veterans), PTSD severity scores above 50, such as
these women's, were associated with poorer health and functional impairment (Dobie, Kivlahan,
Maynard, Bush, Davis, & Bradley, 2004).

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We looked at the impact of PTSD on women's physical health, using their self-ratings of overall
health, a measure known to be valid and positively correlated with physician assessment of physical
health (Erikssona, Undena, and Elofssonb, 2001; Miyamichi, R., Mayumi, T., Asaoka, M., Matsuda, N.,
2011). The more severe the women's symptoms of PTSD, the poorer their health ratings (r = .22, p=.024,
N=101). Women with PTSD were more likely to report poor or fair health and much less likely to report
very good or excellent health than women without PTSD (chisq (2, N=103) = 8.244, p = .016).
Furthermore, when we looked at the three components of PTSD, criterion B (re-experiencing traumatic
memories or flashbacks) was not statistically significant with respect to its association with self-health
ratings. PTSD Criterion C symptoms (avoidance of reminders of traumatic memories) was however
significantly related to the women's health. Women who have criterion C symptoms are more likely to
report poor/fair health and less likely to report good/excellent health than women without PTSD (chisq (2,
N=103) = 6.508, p = .039). Similarly, women who had symptoms of PTSD criterion D (autonomic
nervous system hyperarousal) were more likely to report poor/fair health and less likely to report
good/excellent health than women without PTSD (chisq (2, N=103) = 7.362, p = .025). See Table 9.
Table 7. PTSD Diagnosis and Self-Health Ratings of
Native Women in Minnesota Prostitution
Women with PTSD Women without PTSD
Health Rating (n=54) (n=49)
Poor/Fair 48% 31%
Good 39% 33%
Very good/Excellent 13% 37%
Dissociation
Dissociation permits psychological survival, whether the traumatic event(s) are slavery, military
combat, incest, or prostitution. Dissociation is an elaborate escape and avoidance strategy in which
overwhelming human cruelty results in fragmentation of the mind into different parts of the self that
observe, experience, react, as well as those that do not know about the harm. A primary function of
dissociation is to handle the overwhelming fear, pain and to deal with the encounter with systematized
cruelty that is experienced during prostitution (and earlier abuse), by splitting that off from the rest of the
self. Given overwhelming and cumulative trauma experienced by Native women in prostitution, their
extended use of dissociation is easy to understand (Ross, Farley, and Schwartz, 2003).
The dissociative response to prostitution is an extreme version of the denial that occurs daily in all
sectors of society: bad things are ignored, or we pretend they will go away, or we call them by another
name (Schwartz, 2000). Paradoxically, although the dissociative adaptation protects the person from the

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emotional impact of trauma, it increases the risk of further victimization since the survivor tends to
dissociate in response to actual danger cues that are similar to the original trauma.
We asked the women in this study about their current symptoms of dissociation, using the
Dissociation Subscale of the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40). Scores of 2 or 3 indicate a clinically
significant frequency of dissociative symptoms. Table 8 indicates the percentages of women we
interviewed who had clinically significant symptoms of dissociation. Almost three-quarters (71%) of the
women we interviewed had clinically significant symptoms of "spacing out," a colloquial description of
dissociation itself. Extremely common among people with symptoms of dissociation, the women also
reported memory problems (68%). More than half of the women had breakthrough symptoms of PTSD -
flashbacks - (64%) and derealization (59%). Half of the women felt that they were not in their bodies.
Twenty-eight percent reported dizziness at a clinically symptomatic level.
Table 8. Symptoms of Dissociation in Native Women Prostituting in Minnesota
Symptom Mean SD Range
Percentage (n) Rating Symptom
at Clinical Level
Flashbacks 1.8 1.0 0-3 65% (65)
Spacing Out 2.0 1.0 0-3 71% (72)
Dizziness 0.9 1.0 0-3 28% (29)
Memory Problems 1.9 1.1 0-3 68% (69)
Derealization 1.7 1.0 0-3 59% (60)
Not in Your Body 1.4 1.1 0-3 50% (51)
The severity of the women's dissociation was highly correlated with their health status. The more
severe her dissociative symptoms, the more likely the women were to report fair/poor health (r = .35,
p=.0003, N=102). Another way of looking at this relationship between dissociation and physical health
problems was also significant. We compared women reporting poor/fair health with those reporting
good/very good/excellent health. Of 54 women who were above the median on dissociation, 56% reported
poor/fair health, compared to only 25% of the 48 women below the median on dissociation (chisq (1,
N=102) = 9.795, p = .002).
The women eloquently explained how dissociation helped them survive prostitution.
"If you’re having sex with someone you don’t want to, you leave."
“When the johns were sexually assaulting me, I could be in England or somewhere else until they
were done.”
" There’s times I’d walk around in a space-out because when I stop and think about reality I break
down and can’t handle it."

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39
"[Dissociation is] cutting myself off from my body. I think of it like a game. Then it's [the
prostitution] done and over with."
"It's a way of blocking memories...leading a double life within."
Several women spoke of learning to dissociate during sexual assaults when they were children, "I learned
how to do that [dissociate] when I was a child being raped." Another woman spoke of dissociating when
she "was nine years old and being raped, my mind left my body and was looking down from the ceiling. I
don’t want to be that person on the streets worrying about where the next hit is coming from, losing my
kids, hurting them. I’ll tell you one thing: I’m a strong woman to survive all the shit I’ve survived from
the age of two." Several women described their drug abuse as a means of chemically dissociating painful,
traumatic events. For example, one woman said, "...that's why I did a lot of drugs - to numb myself- – so I
didn’t know what was going on and I could just leave my body." Another woman said, "When I smoked
weed, I was able to shut everything down and not think about anything."
Substance Abuse
Two-thirds (67%) of the women we interviewed used alcohol and more than half (59%) used
drugs. The women's average age was 35 years, with a range of 18 to 60 years old. They had used drugs
or alcohol on average for 18 years, with a range of 2 to 57 years (median = 15, SD =12).
Approximately equal percentages of the women (slightly less than one-fourth of those using drugs
and/or alcohol) began using those substances before prostituting and after prostituting. “Being dependent
on [drugs] made me vulnerable to prostitution.”
A majority of the women (61%) who used drugs or alcohol described the need to chemically
dissociate or numb themselves from the physical and emotional pain during prostitution. One woman
explained that she used drugs “so it can numb me, so I can do what they want me to do.” Another woman
said “It made it easier to lay down with somebody, and it made me not care.” “I would want to be high to
perform any kind of sex. I didn’t want to be sober.”
Many women (43%) also used drugs or alcohol after prostituting in order to blank out traumatic
flashbacks or memories of prostitution. "I drank to take away the memory," and “Sometimes I get
depressed and I think about some of the stuff I did and I want to drink,” and “I guess I use drugs to make
my body not care so much about what I did.” This type of use of substance abuse to numb traumatic
memories is typical of other populations with PTSD, for example combat veterans and survivors of sexual
and domestic violence (McFarlane, 2001; Stewart, Ouimette, and Brown, 2002; Norris, Foster &
Weishaar, 2002).
Some women described how drugs and alcohol helped them cope with other traumatic events in
their lives such as loss of custody of children, loss of a relationship, physical and sexual violence. “When

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I first got raped was when I started alcohol.” Others began using drugs or alcohol in childhood. Several
interviewees described how substance abuse affected their psychosocial development, for example, “My
thought process really came to a halt at the age I started using. I started smoking marijuana at age 10,
and started cocaine at age 15.”
More than a quarter (27%) of our interviewees had been deliberately addicted by
pimp/boyfriend/husband (less frequently family member or dealer) in order to coerce them into
prostitution.
More than a half (61%) of the women had been introduced to drugs or alcohol by family members.
Sometimes parents gave them alcohol or drugs as entertainment (“My mom thought it would be funny to
give us wine coolers and stuff when we were 10”) or as a sedative (“My brother and I were forced to
smoke weed [at ages five and sex] by family members to go to sleep.") In this interviewee's life, sadly,
she had done the same with her daughter. Substance abuse was sometimes considered a normal part of
family life. “When I was little, my dad gave me a beer. My mom would teach me how to smoke weed,"
and "Alcohol was always part of the family." Siblings, cousins, and grandparents less frequently provided
our interviewees drugs or alcohol when they were children. "My grandfather gave me Crown Royal when
I was two."
Crack/cocaine was the drug of choice for 35% of the women, and marijuana was drug of choice
for 28%. Methamphetamine/speed (9%), pain pills/Vicodin/Lortab (7%), and heroin, Oxycontin, MDMA
(ecstasy), LSD, morphine, PCP, Xanax, downers, nicotine, and Methadone were also mentioned as
preferred drugs.
ANTECEDENTS TO PROSTITUTION IN THE LIVES OF NATIVE WOMEN
Childhood Sexual Abuse
Seventy-nine percent of our interviewees had been sexually abused as children, by an average of
four men (range 1-40, median = 2, SD = 6.3). Childhood sexual abuse was a critical factor in these
women's later prostitution. In some women's lives, the sexual abuse they experienced as children was
prostitution or pimping by family members. "My dad sold us to his friends when I was younger,” said one
woman. Another woman's father offered her up for sexual abuse when she was four years old in
exchange for his receiving a tattoo.
Rape As Adults
Rape as adults contributed to the women's entry into prostitution. After one respondent was raped,
she acceded to prostitution: “I figured why not get paid for acting out, it’s being taken anyway." Another

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interviewee explained that being sexually assaulted numbed her to prostitution, “It was easier to
prostitute after the sexual assault.” The same dissociative responses that women develop to survive the
trauma of rapes as children and rapes as adults, is used to survive the paid rapes of prostitution.
Boarding Schools
More than two-thirds (69%) of the 105 women we interviewed had family members who attended
boarding schools. The relatives who attended boarding schools were grandmothers (42%), mothers
(35%), grandfathers (26%), sisters (17%), fathers (17%), cousins (17%), brothers (14%), great
grandmothers (7%), great grandfathers (6%), aunts or uncles (6%), and a daughter (1%). Another 7%
were unsure whether or not family members attended boarding schools. Boarding schools were located in
South Dakota (Flandreau Industrial School, Marty Mission, St. Francis, Stephan), Minnesota (Mission
School, Red Lake School, Shattuck), Oklahoma (Riverside, Oaks Mission School, Chilocco Indian
School, River), North Dakota (Wahpeton), California (Sherman), Kansas (Haskell Indian Junior College),
Arizona (GMA), Idaho, Wisconsin, and Canada.
Of relatives who attended boarding schools, more than two-thirds (69%) were known by the
women to have been abused there. All were verbally or mentally abused, most (94%) of those abused
were spiritually or culturally abused, most (94%) were physically abused, and 27% of the women's
relatives were known to also have been sexually abused in boarding schools. The boarding school abuse
was perpetrated by teachers, church officials, and government officials. Nine percent of the women we
interviewed had themselves attended boarding schools.
Foster And Adoptive Care
Forty-six percent (48) of the women we interviewed had been in foster care. They had been in an
average of 5 different foster homes (range = 1-20, median = 3, SD = 4.8).
By the age of five, 34% of the women had been in an average of 3.7 foster homes. Of those women, they
had been in an average of 3.7 foster homes when younger than 5 (range = 1-10, median = 3, SD = 3.3).
Between age six and ten, 53% had been in an average of 3.4 foster homes (range = 0-14, median = 2, SD
= 4.1). Between eleven and eighteen years of age, 73% of the women had been in an average of 2.8 foster
homes (range 0-16, median = 1, SD = 3.5). The children were placed in Native American foster homes
36% of the time.
Immediately prior to being placed (of the 46% of the women we interviewed who had been in
foster care), 89% of those women were living in Minnesota, 7% lived in Wisconsin and 4% lived in South
Dakota. Twenty percent of the women were living on reservations prior to being placed in foster care.
These included Red Lake, Bois Fort, and Leech Lake (in Minnesota) and Rosebud and Pine Ridge in
South Dakota.

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The 87 foster care locations were most often in Duluth, St Paul or Minneapolis (38), other
Minnesota locations (30), and less frequently on Minnesota reservations (7) or a South Dakota reservation
(1).
Several women spoke to interviewers about the reasons for their foster care or adoptive placement.
They were children of alcoholics or drug addicts, often running away from home or "delinquent," both of
which can be seen as help-seeking behavior in children. They took care of mothers who were emotionally
incapacitated, homeless or addicted. All the women were attempting to escape abuse from male relatives
or neglect/abandonment from family. Several were placed in foster care upon the death of grandparents.
Almost half (46%) of the women in foster care had been abused, most often verbally or mentally
abused (86%), spiritually abused (81%), culturally abused (76%), physically abused (67%), and sexually
abused (38%). Most frequently the abuser was the foster mother (57%), foster brother (52%), or foster
father (45%). Twenty-nine percent of the time, the abuser was a foster sister or others in the extended
family.
Of the five interviewees who were adopted, all were abused spiritually or culturally in their
adoptive family. As with the women who lived in foster homes, the adoptees reported verbal abuse,
physical abuse, and sexual abuse. The most frequent abuser was the adoptive mother and slightly less
frequently the adoptive father. One woman's story was illuminating. Violet (name changed) had been
raised in several foster homes. In one of the foster homes, missionary foster parents called Violet and her
sisters "little savages" and frequently reminded them that they should be grateful to have a home. Violet
was sexually abused as a child by adult male relatives and family friends. Kidnapped at age 12 and
trafficked to a Midwest City, she was beaten, raped, forcibly addicted to drugs, and sold into prostitution.
It was difficult to escape prostitution, and until she found support and services at Breaking Free
(Minneapolis agency for women escaping prostitution) she was not able to get out. She now connects her
own prostitution with a multigenerational history of injustice and abuse, including her mom's abuse in a
boarding school, alcoholism of many family members, and family members' prostitution. Violet said that
finding her cultural identity was part of the path of her escape from prostitution. This included learning
her people’s ‘old ways’ of praying and dancing.
Arrests As Children And As Adults
More than half (52%) of the women were arrested as minors an average of 8 times (range 1-60
times, median = 3, SD = 12). Several had been arrested for prostitution as children, rather than their
prostitution understood either by the police or by social services as sexual assault on a child. The most
commonly reported arrests for the women as minors included assault and battery (17%), underaged

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drinking (15%), truancy (14%), and theft (9%). Eighty-nine percent of their arrests as children resulted in
convictions.
Eighty-eight percent of the women were arrested as adults an average of 4 times (range = 1-39,
median = 2, SD = 6). The most commonly reported arrests by the women when they were 18 or older
included drunk driving or DUI (14%), prostitution (12%), theft (10%), and assault and battery (8%).
Eighty-four percent of the women's arrests resulted in convictions.
Table 9. Arrests of Minnesota Native Prostituted Women as Minors and as Adults
Type of Crime Under Age 18 Age 18 or Older
Assault
Murder 0 1
Attempted Murder 0 1
Assault & Battery 24 19
Assault & Battery w/ Weapon 0 6
Terroristic Threats 0 3
Possession of Dangerous Weapon 0 1
Total 24 31
Domestic Violence and Crimes Against Children
Domestic Violence/Assault 0 9
Violation of Restraining Order 0 1
Promoting Prostitution of Minor 0 1
Endangering Unborn Fetus/Child Endangerment 0 2
Total 0 13
Robbery/Burglary
Attempted Robbery/Robbery 1 2
Breaking & Entering 2 3
Total 3 5
Property Crimes
Theft/Shoplifting 29 29
Larceny by Check Bouncing 0 5
Forgery 1 3
Trespassing 0 3
Property Damage 3 2
Tampering w/ a Vehicle 0 1
Larceny by Trick 0 1
Welfare Fraud 0 1
Total 33 45
Probable Accessorial Conduct to Crime by Dominant Partner
Obstruction of Justice 0 1
Aiding and Abetting Murder 0 1
Aiding and Abetting 0 1
Receiving and Concealing False Information 0 1
Total 0 4
continued on next page

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Table 9 cont. Arrests of Minnesota Native Prostituted Women as Minors and as Adults
Type of Crime Under Age 18 Age 18 or Older
Crimes Against Authority - Police/Courts
Assault & Battery on Police Officer 0 2
Resisting Arrest/Fleeing Police Officer 0 2
Probation Violation 3 3
High Speed Chase 1 0
Escape 0 1
Protesting 2 0
Total 6 8
Crimes Against Authority - Disorderly Conduct
Disorderly Conduct 5 13
Loitering 1 2
Jaywalking 0 1
Disturbing the Peace 0 1
Total 6 17
Crimes Against Authority - Driving Infractions
Drunk Driving or DUI/DWI 0 35
Driving After Revocation of License 0 9
Driving Without a License 1 6
Traffic Violation 1 4
Driving Without Insurance 0 4
Reckless Driving 0 1
Total 2 59
Substance Abuse
Drug Raid 0 5
Drug Sales - Marijuana 0 1
Drug Possession - Cocaine 0 1
Drug Possession - Marijuana 1 2
Drug Possession 1 5
Drug Possession w/ Attempt to Distribute 1 1
Possession of Drug Paraphernalia 1 2
Drunk in Public 0 4
Open Container 0 1
Underaged Drinking 21 6
Sniffing/Spray Painting 1 0
Total 26 28
Prostitution
Prostitution 5 29
Disorderly House 0 1
Total 5 30
Status Crimes: Juveniles
Running Away/Truancy 32 0
Breaking Curfew 2 0
Not Finishing Court-Ordered Treatment 1 0
Total 35 0
The women's arrests can be understood in part as reflecting the conditions of their lives, their lack
of security and alternatives to prostitution, homelessness, their substance abuse, and their resistance to

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authority. In many categories of crimes such as assaults, crimes against authority, substance abuse, and
property crimes, the children committed almost as many crimes as the adult women, suggesting that early
in their lives they may have lacked access to adult protection, substance abuse treatment, housing, and
effective psychological counseling. Several of the women were convicted of crimes that were likely
committed while they were under the control of a dominant partner, such as a pimp. The multiple arrests
of these women serve as a barrier to escape from prostitution. Once a woman has an arrest on her record,
especially if she is older than age18, a criminal record is a barrier to obtaining affordable housing,
employment, and frequently even essential social services.
SERVICES USED BY NATIVE WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION
Substance Abuse Programs
Eighty percent of the women we interviewed had used outpatient substance abuse treatment
programs and most of those women (85%) found the experience helpful. Yet many felt that they needed
inpatient substance abuse treatment. Almost all (91%) of the substance abuse programs used by the
women were located in Minnesota and the remaining 9% were in other states including South Dakota,
Michigan, Virginia, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Nine percent of the women had used substance abuse
programs on reservations, including Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, Red Lake and Cass Lake
which is part of Leech Lake. Two percent of respondents were denied services to substance abuse
programs.
Many of the women said they appreciated the emotional support received in substance abuse
programs. “I got to talk about a lot of stuff that happened and got to alleviate some of that pain” Several
women said that the substance abuse services they received were “culturally Native specific” and felt that
it was a place to speak, to be heard, and to be with people who were also recovering addicts who could
understand their experiences.
Of those who did not feel that the substance abuse treatment was helpful, several blamed their own
lack of motivation and another woman stated that sobriety made traumatic memories intolerable. Another
woman felt that her medical problems were not cared for. One woman stated that the substance abuse
treatment program she attended was not culturally relevant for her.
Homeless Shelters
Seventy-seven percent (65) of the women we interviewed had used homeless shelters. Most (75%)
of these women found the experience helpful. The women had used homeless shelters an average of 4.8
times (median = 2, range from 1 to 100). Sixty-three percent of the homeless shelters used by our

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interviewees were located in Minneapolis or Duluth. Ten percent of the women used homeless shelters on
reservations, including Red Lake and Cass Lake on the Leech Lake reservation.
The women most frequently appreciated the provision of shelter, food, and showers. They
appreciated the additional services provided by some shelters such as help in locating housing. The
women appreciated emotional support and physical protection from pimps and batterers. For one
respondent, a homeless shelter became her “home away from home,” and she had “lots of good
memories” about her 18 different stays there. She became so close to the staff of that shelter, that they
attended her graduations from treatment, and remain friends today. A few women also acknowledged the
importance of the safety that was provided by homeless shelters (“They protect women from pimps and
women beaters") but others felt that services were lacking for certain women ("If you’re battered it seems
you get more help”).
Twenty-five percent of the women who had used homeless shelters did not find them helpful.
Some were denied services because they had used the shelter previously, other shelters were full. One
woman felt that she was denied services at a homeless shelter because of racism. Several women felt that
shelter staff failed to provide emotional support. Several women felt unsafe in the shelter. “Everything I
was involved with in the streets was going on right inside the shelter: drugs, alcohol. You could go out
front and turn a trick.” Three women had been solicited for prostitution inside or in front of the homeless
shelter. “Because I had been in prostitution it was hard. They tried to solicit and threaten me – they
conned me.” Some women felt that there was a general lack of resources to provide longer term housing
assistance.
Domestic Violence Programs
A majority (63%) of the women we interviewed had used domestic violence services and 95% of
those women found the programs helpful in that they provided housing, safety, and emotional support.
"They listened. They provided me with resources. They didn’t make you feel like a bad person. They
were kind hearted people” “[Shelter] was helpful just hearing the other women’s stories. Just knowing
that you can get out of [prostitution] if you had the right resources and if you want to.” Several women
noted that some shelters provided legal services such as restraining orders and divorce papers.
Ninety percent of the DV programs used by the women were in Minnesota. Ten percent were in
other states including North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Two women had attended programs
on the Leech Lake reservation.
Only two women responded when we asked why they believed they had been denied domestic
violence services. One reason was that the program the woman went to was full. The other respondent
said that the program was too overbearing and the staff at the program did not connect well to the people

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47
they were serving. “DV programs are overbearing where I felt like everything was my fault. They are
just there because they are getting paid. It didn’t feel a connection.”
Several women explained how some programs were not helpful, including a lack of resources and
referrals, a lack of individual counseling. One woman had been evicted from a shelter because she got
drunk. Finally, one interviewee said that the shelter was too physically close to her abuser, "It was hard
because the person I was scared of lived one block away."
Sexual Assault Programs
Thirty-three percent of the women we interviewed had used sexual assault services since they had
been in prostitution, and most (86%) had found the programs useful because they were listened to,
received support, and realized they were not alone. One woman said, “It just felt good to tell my story. I
didn’t know that so many other people have been sexually assaulted.” The prostituted women we
interviewed particularly appreciated the therapy and the sexual assault counseling they received. One
woman said, “It stopped me from doing drugs and prostitution… My basic needs were met by them.” The
women appreciated having received legal services, information about sexual assault, and medical
services.
Many (40%) of the women used sexual assault programs in Duluth and 20% had used programs in
Minneapolis. Others used programs in St. Paul, Bemidji, Detroit Lakes, Superior, Crow Wing, and
Cloquet. Only one woman accessed a sexual assault program on the Fond du Lac reservation.
Of the several women who did not find the sexual assault program helpful, two felt discriminated
against because they were prostituting. Others felt the staff failed to understand them or that they looked
down on the women. One woman said, "[sexual assault services] is on [ ] Street. Pimps hang out in front
– they know if you go there you are trying to escape, so they are threatening us with violence if you go
there and they see you coming out. We need sexual assault services that pimps don’t know the location
of."
Other Services
The women also described receiving helpful services from public health clinics, food programs
and programs that helped them transition out of prostitution such as Breaking Free in St. Paul.
Urgent Needs of Native Women Who Seek to Escape Prostitution
We asked the women what they needed. Ninety-two percent of our interviewees wanted to escape
prostitution. Individual counseling (endorsed by 75%) and peer support (73%) were most frequently
mentioned, reflecting these women's need for their unique experiences as Native women in prostitution to
be heard and seen by people who care about them. Two-thirds (68%) of the women said that they needed

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vocational training and housing (67%). Fifty-eight percent of the women needed substance abuse
treatment. Half of them needed self-defense training, presumably because of the frequent violence of
prostitution. They also expressed a need for health care (48%), legal assistance (45%), physical protection
from a pimp (26%), and childcare (26%). See Table 10.
Table 10. Needs of 105 Prostituted Native American Women
Native Minnesota Prostituted Women in
Need Women (n=105) 9 Countries (n=854)
Individual Counseling 75% (79) 56%(431)
Peer Support 73% (77) 51%(393)
Vocational Training 68% (72) 76% (600)
Home or Safe Place 67% (71) 75%(618)
Substance Abuse Treatment 58% (62) 47%(356)
Self-Defense Training 50% (53) 45%(340)
Health Care 48% (51) 61%(480)
Legal Assistance 34% (36) 51%(366)
Physical Protection From a Pimp 26% (28) 23%(157)
Childcare 26% (28) 44%(335)
Legalized Prostitution 10% (11) 34%(251)
Although it is sometimes assumed that legalization of prostitution would decrease its violence,
many of our interviewees did not think that they would be safer from physical and sexual assault if
prostitution were legal. Only 10% of the 106 women thought that legal prostitution would help resolve
some of the problems encountered in their lives. This one in ten contrasts with one in three (34%) women
in the international study of prostitution who felt that legal prostitution would protect them from violence.
We also asked the women a follow-up question regarding their opinion with respect to whether or not
legal prostitution would make it safer for sex workers. We deliberately used an expression (sex work)
that reflected a prostitution-industry advocacy perspective. Only 17% of the women thought that legal
sex work would increase their safety.
A number of the women said that if they were out of prostitution, they would like return to school
and to be in one of the helping professions such as nursing or social work. Many wanted to help other
women get out of prostitution, like this woman who said, "At the hotel there were other women in
prostitution. The vice were in the room next to me. An officer who knew my younger daughter and said
you are so much better than this. I told him I was in it for my kids. He didn’t arrest me; he referred me to
Breaking Free. I would love to go with the police when they go to bust these girls and talk to them about a
better way."

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49
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Expressing his concern about sexual violence in Indian Country, President Barack Obama said,
"When one in three Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes, that is an assault on our
national conscience; it is an affront to our shared humanity; it is something that we cannot allow to
continue" (Administration of Barack Obama, 2010). A fourth-generation survivor of prostitution,
interviewed for this study, lived under the shadow of 500 years of colonial oppression. Sexual violence -
which includes prostitution and trafficking - against Native women is a deeply-rooted phenomenon. It is
not a new problem. Like many of the women we interviewed, she spoke about the rapes of women in her
family and her resignation to sexual violence in her community. Some of the women viewed their
oppression as Native women in and of itself as a primary reason they were targeted by sexually predatory
johns, pimps, and traffickers. The racist and sexist verbal abuse described here provides some
confirmation for this violent predation of Native women as hated/eroticized objects.
The Minnesota Native women we interviewed were in an almost constant state of revictimization.
The assaults against them were part of a lifetime surround of exploitation and abuse. Seventy-nine percent
of our interviewees had been sexually abused as children by an average of four men. Other research has
also found that a history of sexual assaults is a common precursor to prostitution. One young woman told
Silbert and Pines (1982a, p. 488), "I started turning tricks to show my father what he made me." Dworkin
(1997, p. 143) described incest as ‘boot camp’ for prostitution.
Native Americans have experienced high rates of not only current traumatic events but historical
trauma that impacts them today. More than a third of the women we interviewed had mothers or
grandmothers who were placed in boarding schools, and a fourth of their grandfathers had been in
boarding schools. Two thirds of these relatives were known to have been abused in the schools, and
many of them, according to the women we interviewed, were physically or sexually abused in the schools
and were culturally or spiritually abused. The brutal school/government/church practices aimed at
destroying cultures have resulted in generations of harms to individuals and tribes. For readers unfamiliar
with how the schools operated, we cite at length from a report addressing the effects of boarding schools
on Native peoples and their cultures,
Beginning in the late 1800s, U.S. government policy toward Native American people
emphasized forced assimilation into the world of the white man. The Indian boarding
school was designed to remove children from the influence of their parents and Tribe and
create a new social environment where they could be civilized. Discipline in these schools
was harsh and the daily routine rigid. Children were required to speak only English and
were punished for using their native language. Their hair, an important cultural symbol,
was cut short. Uniforms replaced individually created and uniquely decorated native

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clothes. Visits home were few and far between. Clearly, the boarding school was an effort
to destroy cultural identity; unfortunately, it was quite successful. Many who attended these
schools lost touch with their tribal language, religious beliefs, customs, and social norms.
The boarding school experience has had a far-reaching effect on Native American culture
and family structure. Those people who spent much of their childhood in boarding schools
were deprived of an opportunity to experience family life, and many reached their
adulthood with no clear concept of parenting behavior and family functioning. The
boarding school effectively destroyed the intergenerational transmission of family and
parenting knowledge and behaviors. Now, one or more generations after the boarding
school era, many Native Americans are ill-prepared for the parent role.
The boarding schools not only destroyed or distorted the intergenerational (cultural)
transmission of family and parenting knowledge and behavior, but they also introduced
new and dysfunctional behaviors, such as the use of severe punishment in child rearing.
Parents who had as children been spanked and hit while attending boarding school
responded similarly to their own children. Before the boarding school era, the use of
physical discipline was uncommon in most Tribes.
Even worse, a report published by the National Resource Center on Child Sexual Abuse
[1990] cites evidence that many Native American children were sexually abused while
attending boarding schools. The introduction of child sexual abuse into tribal communities,
where it had not existed before, is especially troublesome: Native American people tend not
to talk openly about sex because sexual matters are highly private matters. This cultural
taboo prevents the sexually abused child from reporting the offense. For the same reason,
adults troubled by childhood sexual abuse avoid using professional services to cope with
unresolved issues. When cases of child sexual abuse are disclosed, the tribal community is
thrown into conflict and is often unable or unwilling to deal with the problem.
The boarding schools also disrupted the cultural transmission of parent-child attachment
behaviors, which has created personal and family problems that have persisted over as
many as three generations. As a sad aftereffect of these disruptions, we now see many
Native America children being raised by biological parents with few parenting skills; some
children are being raised by grandparents who lack real attachment to their own children,
the parents of their grandchildren. The lack of parenting skills and the problems in
attachment place children at risk of abuse or neglect. Unless these problems are dealt with,
each new generation is at risk of repeating this dysfunction cycle. (Horejsi, Craig, & Pablo,
1992).
While not all boarding schools were abusive and mandatory attendance was discontinued by the
late 1960s, many Native people still suffer from the intergenerational impact of systemic abuse and forced
assimilation (Yellow Horse Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998). In the last five years, several victims of
boarding school abuse have filed civil tort lawsuits in federal and state court to seek remedies for the
violence they experienced in the 1950s and 1960s (Woodard, 2011). In 2010, a Catholic diocese in
Alaska issued a formal apology for sexual abuse perpetrated by priests in Catholic schools in remote
Native villages (Trahant, 2011). Government-run boarding schools for Native people continue to exist
today, and the United States acknowledges that it is not doing a good enough job policing the background
checks of employees (Deer, 2004b).

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51
The violence (incest, rape, domestic violence, verbal abuse) against these women in prostitution
were part of a lifetime surround of exploitation and abuse. Of the women we interviewed, ninety-two
percent had been raped. More than half of the women we interviewed met diagnostic criteria for
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The PTSD of these women is associated with the violence
experienced by these women as children, as adults, and throughout their lives in prostitution. Campbell,
Greeson, Bybee, and Raja (2008) summarized the multiplicity of health effects caused by violence
especially after PTSD occurs. Sexual assaults as children placed women at risk for revictimization just as
their rapes as adults increase the vulnerability to prostitution (West, Williams, and Siegel, 2000). Our
findings that both PTSD and dissociation were associated with poorer health is consistent with others'
findings (Dobie, Kivlahan, Maynard, Bush, Davis, and Bradley, 2004; Frayne, Seaver, Loveland,
Christiansen, Spiro, Parker, and Skinner, 2004; Schnurr & Green, 2004;).
Experiences of violence over the course of one’s lifetime have a cumulative effect on PTSD
symptoms (Follette, Polusny, Bechtle, & Naugle, 1996). Historical trauma as experienced by Indian
people has been known to cause symptoms of PTSD and other mental disorders such as depression (Cole,
2006). West (2004) has pointed out that the low socioeconomic status of African American women puts
them at risk for future interpersonal violence. We suggest that a history of colonization, itself creating
socioeconomic losses and barriers (among other harms), operates similarly with Native women,
increasing their vulnerability to sexual violence. American Indian children and adolescents who
experience sexual trauma and multiple traumatic experiences are at high risk for developing PTSD
(Gnanadesikan, Novins, & Beals, 2005). The insidious trauma of racism is another cause of these
women's emotional distress and disorders (Root, 1996). The severity of the violence in trafficking for
prostitution and the length of time the woman was in prostitution are also strongly related to incidence of
PTSD (Hossain, Zimmerman, Abas, Light, and Watts, 2010). Unfortunately the numbing symptoms
typical of both PTSD and dissociation were found by Ullman and colleagues (2009) to increase the
likelihood of revictimization. The revictimization of Native survivors of prostitution requires
sophisticated assessment of clients who seek services at public health agencies, agencies providing
Native-focused services, or specialized centers such as rape crisis or domestic violence centers.
Symptoms from recent traumatic experiences may not only cause distress in and of themselves, but may
amplify symptoms from earlier violence and abuse (Follette, Polusy, Bechtle, & Naugle, 1996).
Women in prostitution self-medicate for depression and PTSD with drugs and alcohol. A need for
drug and alcohol addiction treatment was voiced by more than half (58%) of those we interviewed. An
approach that simultaneously treats substance abuse and PTSD has proven more effective than treatment
that only treats substance abuse and fails to address PTSD (Epstein, Saunders, Kilpatrick, & Resnick,

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52
1998; Najavits, Weiss, Shaw, & Muenz, 1998; Ouimette, Kimerling, Shaw, & Moos, 2000).
We also noted a high incidence (71%) of symptoms of dissociation among these Native women in
prostitution. They told us how essential dissociation was to their survival during prostitution and in some
instances how they had learned to dissociate during childhood sexual assaults. Psychological symptoms,
including dissociative symptoms, can be understood in cultural perspective (Kirmayer, Young, and
Robbins, 1994). Gingrich (2006) investigated the ways that dissociative symptoms are seen in indigenous
Filipino culture. Most dissociative symptoms that other cultures would see as pathological were also
considered pathological by indigenous Filipinos, with the exception of amnesia. Kirmayer suggested that
dissociative phenomena can be seen as the result of an interaction between psychological and social
processes that are affected by culture. He observed, "In a culture where mechanical time is not valued to
the same extent that it is in the Western world, an individual may be incorrectly identified as having
amnesia, when not knowing, not remembering, and involuntariness are socially sanctioned or normative.
In such a culture, experiences of amnesia can be seen as socially embedded and therefore not
pathological” (Kirmayer, 1994). Both LaPointe (2008) and Pierce (2009) offer anecdotal support for the
ways in which some dissociative symptoms promote spiritual healing among Native women.
Prostitution is a sexually exploitive, often violent economic option most often entered into by
those with a lengthy history of sexual, racial and economic victimization. Prostitution is only now
beginning to be understood as violence against women and children. It has rarely been included in
discussions of sexual violence against Native women. It is crucial to understand the sexual exploitation of
Native women in prostitution today in its historical context of colonial violence against nations (Frideres,
1993; Ryser, 1995; Waldram, 1997).
Women who are marginalized because of colonialism's devastating historical impact, because of
their lack of opportunities and education, because of race and ethnic discrimination, poverty, previous
physical and emotional harm and abandonment are the people purchased in prostitution. Women who
have the fewest real choices available to them are those who are in prostitution. The critical question to
ask with respect to the women we interviewed is not “did she consent?” but “has she been offered the real
choice to exist without prostituting?”
Ninety-two percent of the Native women we interviewed wanted to escape prostitution. In order
for a woman to have the real choice to exit prostitution, a range services must be offered. Any
intervention for those in prostitution must first acknowledge prostitution as a form of violence. As with
battered women, physical safety is a critical concern. In order to address the harm of prostitution it is
necessary to use education, prevention and intervention strategies similar to those dedicated to other
forms of gender based abuse such as rape and intimate partner violence. This understanding of

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53
prostitution as violence against women must then become a part of public policy and it must be
structurally implemented in public health care, mental health services, substance abuse treatment,
homeless shelters, rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters (Stark & Hodgson, 2003). The health
provider must become not only culturally competent regarding differences between nations in culture and
language but also acquainted with community services, anti-violence resources, and agencies specifically
dedicated to offering services to women in prostitution (Polacca, 2003). Specialized training of health
care providers and advocates in service provision to women in prostitution is essential. Peer support and
program development and implementation by survivors of prostitution, Native and non-Native alike, is
essential. Two-thirds of the women we interviewed expressed a need for vocational training. Specialized
training in providing vocational rehabilitation for prostitution survivors is crucial (Baldwin, 2003).
The women we interviewed for this study were clear that they wanted to escape prostitution and
that their primary need in that exiting process was for emotional and social support. Despite their lack of
stable housing, poverty, and need for medical care including substance abuse, they most frequently
endorsed needs for individual counseling and peer support. They used homeless shelters, substance abuse
treatment programs, domestic violence programs, and rape crisis centers and were generally satisfied with
these. However, the women regularly noted that they wanted more individual counseling and wanted
Native-focused programs integrated within all of these services.
A general health strategy for Native women should involve equitable access to health services,
Native control of services, and diverse approaches that respond to cultural priorities and community needs
(Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). Health care practitioners, especially those in the field
of mental health, as well as advocates in related fields, need to apply a holistic healing approach to Native
American women that embraces traditional healing (Hodge, Limb, & Cross, 2009). Models for healing of
Native women in prostitution would include a decolonizing perspective that analyzes historical trauma,
violent crimes, family violence, child abuse and neglect, discrimination, unresolved grief and mourning.
Cultural moderators of these traumatic experiences that would promote healing include family/community
support, traditional spiritual practices and medicine, and a positive Native identity (Walters, Simoni &
Evans-Campbell, 2002). A study of the needs of Vancouver prostituted women underscores these
recommendations (Benoit, Carroll & Chaudhry, 2002). Willlmon-Haque & Bigfoot (2008) and Gone
(2004) describe a number of culturally relevant trauma treatment programs for American Indians and
Alaska Natives.
Unfortunately, mental health programs for Native people are inadequate and underfunded. A
Department of Health and Human Services report concluded that shortages of highly skilled providers
limit American Indians' and Alaska Natives' access to mental health services (Office of Evaluation and

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54
Inspection Services, 2011). This finding is consistent with the general dilemma of underfunding vital
services for Native people. Another U.S. report also concluded that critical services for Native people
were underfunded, concluding in 2003 that this failure was a "crisis" and urged immediate action (Alba &
Zieseness, 2003).
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Fadiman, 1992), a groundbreaking book about the
need for culturally relevant and inclusive healing, described the clash of Hmong and U.S. cultures with
tragic consequences in the life of one little girl. The same phenomenon has been observed among Native
people in the United States. Western-trained practitioners and advocates are often untrained to provide
competent services for Native people which honor their belief systems and history (Grandbois, 2005).
A specific set of provider requirements for cultural competency in mental health care of Native
Americans has been published. Requirements include a recognition of the ways that Eurocentric
professional values may conflict with or be responsible to the needs of Native Americans seeking mental
health treatment; a recognition of differences in symptom expression, symptom language, and
symptomatic patterns in Native Americans with mental illness/emotional disturbance; a recognition of
differences in thresholds of individual and social distress in Native American consumers and tolerance of
symptoms by their natural support systems. This would include the individual, the family, their informal
and formal social context; a recognition of differences in the attribution of mental illness and issues
around stigma specific to Native American cultures; a recognition of differences in the acceptability and
effectiveness of different treatment modalities in Native American populations; a recognition of culture-
bound syndromes associated with the Native American populations and subcultures being served; the
need for formally trained interpreters by clinicians who are not bilingual; a recognition of the effects of
class and ethnicity on behavior, attitudes, and values; awareness of help seeking behaviors of Native
Americans; recognition of self treatment behaviors of Native American which includes the abuse of
alcohol and other substances as ‘medication;’ recognition of the role and manifestation of spirituality,
cultural traditions, and faith in Native American families; recognition of the role of verbal and nonverbal
language, speech patterns, and communication styles in Native American communities; recognition of the
effects of human service policies on Native American and reduction of barriers through informed
participation in systems change efforts; awareness of resources (agencies, persons, informal helping
networks, research) that can be used by or on behalf of Native American consumers and communities; a
recognition of the role and types of power relationships within the community, agency, or institution and
their impact on Native Americans (Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 1998).
Many of the women in this study expressed a longing to connect or reconnect with Native cultural
and spiritual traditions. These cultural practices should be made available to them by nonjudgmental


55
people who are educated about the devastating impact of prostitution. Although most women wanted the
opportunity to use traditional healing methods, we note that some women did not want to do that. They
did not want to participate in Native cultural practices, yet they identified as Native women. We respect
these women's choices - and their mistrust - just as we respect women who want more opportunities to
connect with their cultures. It is extremely important that no woman be pressured to participate in any
spiritual practice if she is uncomfortable. Women in prostitution have been manipulated, coerced, and
betrayed by johns and pimps, sometimes by government agencies and health providers. They must be
fully accepted as Native women whose choice not to participate in cultural practices is honored.
In our opinion, western medical treatment of PTSD and dissociation is best combined with
traditional healing for Native women who want to escape prostitution. The Peguis First Nation
community in Manitoba found that a combination of traditional and western healing approaches was
especially effective for those who suffer from emotional problems, including those related to alcohol and
drug abuse, violence, and suicide (Cohen as cited in Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996).
We note with optimism that a recent report on combat veterans with PTSD found that vets who were
awarded disability benefits had significantly lower rates of poverty and homelessness than those who
were denied these services (Murdoch, Sayer, Spoont, Rosenheck, Noorbaloochi, Griffin, Arbisi & Hagel,
2011). Our point here is that the provision of culturally relevant services and healthcare is very likely to
reduce the appalling levels of poverty and homelessness among Native women in prostitution.
Many of the women we interviewed would benefit from legal services, including family law
(divorce and child custody), criminal expungement, disability law and benefits law. Johnson (in press)
provides policy reform recommendations to ensure that Native women who have been trafficked have the
same access to services as do international victims of trafficking.
We recommend that Congress immediately increase funding for Native women's programs,
including advocacy, physical and mental health care, job training and placement, legal services, and
research on these topics. Ideally, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and relevant House Committees
will hold field hearings to listen directly to the voices of Native women and their advocates about the
devastating impact of prostitution and trafficking.
We recommend that federal and state funding be provided for both emergency/transitional housing
and also for long-term housing for these women, 98% of whom have been or are homeless.
We recommend that state officials provide funding to both reservation-based and urban-based
Native programs that offer health services, advocacy, and counseling to Native women and girls in
prostitution and trafficking.

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56
We recommend that homeless shelters, sexual assault programs, domestic violence programs, and
Native women's programs, both urban and reservation-based, educate their staff members to recognize,
empathize, and support victims of prostitution and trafficking.
We recommend that educational institutions, including those providing training in law, medicine,
the social sciences, and substance abuse, include the voices of Native women in their curricula.
We urge state, local, and tribal officials to review and reconsider their policies toward victims of
prostitution and trafficking. For example the arrest and prosecution of victims is counter-productive and
exacerbates the problems. As Native woman interviewed for this research study said, "We need people
with hearts." Arresting sex buyers, not their victims, is a more appropriate policy.
We urge all readers of this research to listen to the voices of Native women to provide guidance
for solutions to these problems. Many Native women's voices are quoted here.
We close by turning to the wisdom and strength of Native people.
Each tribal culture offers unique perspectives on trauma, violence, loss, and healing. Because most
of the women in this study identified as Anishinaabe or Dakota, we reference the spiritual philosophy of
these two cultures. As we make changes that benefit Native women and generations to come, these key
principles, summarized by Benton-Benai (1988) are essential:
In the Anishinaabe culture, it is said that the Creator appointed seven grandfathers
to watch over the Earth's people. Each of the seven grandfathers provided a gift to
the people: to cherish knowledge is to know wisdom; to know love is to know
peace; to honor all of Creation is to have respect; bravery is to face the foe with
integrity; honesty in facing a situation is to be brave; humility is to know yourself
as a sacred part of the Creation; truth is to know all of these things.
Dakota culture is epitomized by twelve fundamental values that are essential to the traditional Dakota way
of life and may themselves function as resources for healing. As summarized by Garrett, White, Galovan,
Akipa, & Rensink (2009) Dakota values include:
unsiiciyapi (humility), wowacintanka (perseverance), wowoohola (respect),
wayuonihan (honour), cantoknake (love), icicupi (sacrifice), wowicake (truth),
waunsilapi (compassion), woohitike (bravery), cantewasake (fortitude),
canteyuke (generosity), and woksape (wisdom).
Miigwetch!
Pidamaya!
Mvto!
Thank you!

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57
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Garden
of Truth:
The Prostitution
and Trafficking
of Native Women
in Minnesota
By
Melissa Farley
Nicole Matthews
Sarah Deer
Guadalupe Lopez
Christine Stark
Eileen Hudon
Research by
Minnesota Indian Women’s
Sexual Assault Coalition
and
Prostitution Research
& Education
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