An Era of Violence Against Native Women: Uncovering Colonial Violence in the U.S. Violence Against Women Act

美国总统拜登在谈到《2021年暴力侵害妇女法案》(VAWA)的重新授权时称，性侵率是一种流行病，在无数有遭受虐待风险的[原住民]女性中流行，结论是，这是一场紧迫的危机(2021)。VAWA于1994年首次颁布，代表着一个立法时代，它将针对美国土著妇女的暴力危机描述为一个需要利用美国联邦法律“解决”的“问题”。27年后，暴力行为有增无减，近85%的土著妇女报告说，她们一生中经历过性暴力。虽然VAWA包括加强刑事管辖权和为部落提供资金的“解决方案”，但VAWA“解决”的“问题”几乎没有受到关注。我的项目挑战了“问题”显而易见的假设。我没有讨论意图或“有效性”，而是展示了VAWA制造、构成和塑造它声称要解决的暴力的方式。通过部署土著女权主义者和非殖民化框架，我介入了评估性政策研究，以探索联邦政策话语如何(重新)产生土著妇女面临的非常真实的暴力。随着拜登政府将《暴力侵害妇女法》列为优先事项，批判性地评价其在(重新)制造对土著妇女的暴力行为中所起的作用是至关重要的。通过对《暴力侵害妇女法案》中提出的问题化--或将问题表现为问题的方式--进行讯问，我回答了一个首要问题：在《针对妇女的暴力法案》中，关于土著妇女的问题代表了什么？使用巴基(2009)的《代表什么问题？》(WPR)话语政策分析工具，我讨论了文本中的问题化，潜在的逻辑，沉默和争论，以及活的和话语的效果。我还考虑：1.华夏民族内部的问题化如何依赖于被视为理所当然的殖民话语的“真相地位”？2.在华夏民族时期，这些问题化是如何改变或稳定的？3.华夏民族联盟援引了哪些形式的政府心态和生物政治？4.华夏民族联盟的原住民倡导者如何重现或质疑这些问题化？我的研究结合了一种交叉的、非殖民化的方法，为历史法律研究和殖民者殖民研究提供了三个贡献。首先，我打破了传统的评估性政策分析，揭示了潜在的殖民主义逻辑。关于土著妇女的现有研究在很大程度上是“有效性驱动的”，使用法律框架来解释立法的历史和漏洞(Crepelle，2020；Reed，2018)，而土著学者也将土著妇女纳入土著法律体系(Agtuca，2014；Allison，2019；Deer，2015)。尽管现有的话语分析讨论了与非土著妇女有关的暴力侵害妇女法(Meisel，2016)，但我的研究独特地将话语分析与历史和性别方法相结合，以变性法律中根深蒂固的殖民真理，为土著妇女想象其他安全途径创造了空间。其次，我的分析将WPR方法引入了美国的非殖民化以及政策和法律研究。这项研究基于我2020年在伦敦政治经济学院发表的论文《印度妇女的安全》：《2013年重新授权对妇女的暴力法案》中的殖民主义逻辑问题，该法案只关注VAWA的一次迭代。这种方法为这两个领域提供了一个新的解释框架，以理解美国法律中的殖民暴力。最后，通过将VAWA定位为联邦印第安人法律中一个有意义的时代，我揭示了殖民主义是一个专门针对土著妇女的暴力、持续的项目。虽然有些人评价瓦努阿瓦是一个广泛的反暴力政策时期(Gover&Moore，2021年)，但没有人认为这项长达数十年的立法是一种复杂但有凝聚力的治理土著人民的方法。

Speaking on the 2021 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), U.S. President Joe Biden referred to the rate of sexual assault as 'a pandemic within a pandemic for countless [Native] women at risk for abuse,' concluding, 'this is an urgent crisis' (2021). The VAWA-first enacted in 1994-represents an era of legislation that presents the 'crisis' of violence against Native American women as a 'problem' to 'solve' using U.S. federal law.After 27 years, the violence continues unabated, as nearly 85 percent of Native women report experiencing sexual violence in their lifetime. While the VAWA includes 'solutions' that enhanced criminal jurisdiction and funding for tribes, little attention has been paid to the 'problem' the VAWA 'addresses'. My project challenges the assumption that the 'problem' is obvious. Eschewing discussions of intent or 'effectiveness', I show the ways the VAWA creates, constitutes, and shapes the very violence it claims to solve. By deploying Indigenous feminist and decolonising frameworks, I intervene in evaluative policy research to explore how the very real violence Native women face is (re)produced by federal policy discourse. As the Biden administration prioritises the VAWA, it is essential to critically appraise its role in (re)creating violence against Indigenous women.By interrogating the problematizations-or ways in which issues are represented as problems-offered in the VAWA, I answer the overarching question: What is the problem represented to be in the Violence Against Women Act regarding Native women?Using Bacchi's (2009) 'What's the Problem Represented to Be?' (WPR) discursive policy analysis tool, I address the problematizations in the text, the underlying logics, the silences and contestations, and the lived and discursive effects. I also consider:1. How do the problematizations within the VAWA rely on the taken-for-granted 'truth status' of colonial discourses?2. How have these problematizations changed or stabilised over the era of the VAWA?3. What forms of governmentality and biopolitics are invoked by the VAWA?4. How are these problematizations reproduced or contested by Native advocates of the VAWA?My research offers three contributions toward historical legal studies and settler colonial studies by incorporating an intersectional, decolonising approach. First, I break from traditional evaluative policy analysis to uncover underlying coloniallogics. Existing research on the VAWA is largely 'effectiveness-driven', using legal frameworks to explain the history and loopholes of the legislation (Crepelle, 2020; Reed, 2018), while Native scholars have also situated the VAWA within Indigenous legal systems (Agtuca, 2014; Allison, 2019; Deer, 2015). Although existing discursive analyses discuss the VAWA in relation to non-Native women (Meisel, 2016), my research uniquely combines discursive analysis with historical and gendered approaches to denaturalise the ingrained colonial truths in the law, creating space to imagine alternative paths to safety for Indigenous women. Second, my analysis introduces the WPR methodology to decolonising and policy and legal studies in the U.S. This research builds on my 2020 thesis from the LSE, No 'Safety for Indian Women': Problematizing Logics of Colonialism in the 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which focused on just one iteration of the VAWA. This approach offers both fields a new interpretative framework to understand colonial violence in U.S. law.Finally, by positioning the VAWA as a meaningful era in Federal Indian Law, I uncover colonialism as a violent, ongoing project specifically targeting Native women. While some have evaluated the VAWA as a period of broad anti-violence policy (Gover & Moore, 2021), none have considered the decades-long legislation as a complex, but cohesive approach to governing Native peoples.