News Briefs

Speaker Deconstructs Sexual Violence in American Genocide

Andy Smith, UC Santa Cruz PhD student and activist, delivered a lecture last Monday reconceptualizing rape within, not only a sexual violation context, but also a colonial violation context.
An organizer of the “Color of Violence” conference at Santa Cruz, Smith opened explaining the marginalization of women of color within the anti-violence movement. “On one hand, they find themselves silenced from their [racial] community on an argument of unity, but on the other side, the anti-violence movement is telling them, ‘leave that community; those are your abusers.’”
Smith explained that colonial mentality is directly related to sexual violence. “We’ve failed to look at how rape is not just a tool of patriarchy, but a tool of colonial mentality, structured on the logic of sexual violence.”
As an entry place for the analysis, Smith considered the present site of Oberlin College. “Think of the land now: this College would not exist without the rape and genocide of Native American women, and integral part of how America became America,” she said.
Her talk ranged in evidence from popular culture’s degradation of Native Americans as dirty in soap commercials, to proof of medical experimentation on Native Alaskans.
Amidst horrific tales of massacre and mutilation, she called attention to present day genocide. “Although many of these more explicit massacres of genocide are over in North America, they’re not over in Latin America because our military dollars continue to support massacres in Guatemala, Chiapas, etc,” she said.
The final installment of the Indigenous Womens’ Speaker Series, the event was attended by apporximately 30 students and administrators.

—Adrian Leung