Echo-Hawk, A. (2018). Our Bodies, Our Stories: Sexual Violence Among Native Women in Seattle, WA.

Abstract

*This report contains strong language about violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women. This report is the first of the Our Bodies, Our Stories series…In 2010, Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) partnered with the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to administer a comprehensive sexual violence survey to better understand the experiences of urban Native women in Seattle, Washington. King County, where Seattle is located, has a large urban Indian population of approximately 44,500 people. This survey attempted to gather a well-rounded understanding of multiple forms of sexual violence perpetrated against this population, including whether a woman was raped or coerced into sex. In this initial release of the data, a valuable snapshot is exposed for communities and healthcare providers serving urban Native women. However, these results cannot be generalized to all urban Native women in Seattle nor generalized across all urban Native women throughout the United States because participants were predominantly low-income and homeless women. Over half of the participants lacked permanent housing, and nearly all of them earned less than $25,000 a year. Despite these important limitations, the results presented in this report indicate the urgent need to gather additional data from a wide range of urban Native women to assess the impact of sexual violence in Seattle and nationally.