Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

by Patty Krawec

Sexual assault is often framed in terms of what the victim was wearing or doing or drinking. But sexual assault is the imposition of power; it is about who the victim is. And that is something that Black and Native women and girls and queer or two-spirit people can’t do anything about. White women are taught that they can keep themselves safe as long as they conform to certain ideas about how proper white women behave. It isn’t true, but it provides them with the illusion of control; it is a way of showing the world that they are respectable and worthy of care, not like “those other women” who are not worthy, who are “asking for it.” Black and Native women, as well as queer and two-spirit people (who exist outside of certain ideas about what men and women are supposed to be like), were seen in the past, and still today, as always sexually available, always promiscuous, always outside of good moral existence.