a display of imagination on the reservation

"Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation." -Sherman Alexie

I've had the drafty bits of an angry-feminist post rustling around for a week or two, inspired partly by the fantastic contributions to the International Women's Day edition of Carnival of Feminists at Uma's, and partly by from news reports of a couple of awful rape cases, the South Dakota matter, and a lot of small daily reminders of the devastating commonness violence-sexual, physical, social--against women and girls. And I ended up feeling too bleakly hopeless to want to write it (one of the reasons I've shied away from women's rights as the central focus of my research or activism--I spent a year or two working for the Women's Center of my undergraduate university as a researcher on human trafficking and sexual violence, and the nature of the material I was researching wore me down.) But today I read something that cheered me up immensely, with regard to the South Dakotan chapter in the ongoing campaign to legislate away our sovereignty over our bodies. Cecilia Fire Thunder, elected president of the Oglala Sioux nation and a former nurse and healthcare worker, has declared:

I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.

(As BitchPhd reminds us, the Pine Ridge reservation, like many, could use some financial assistance. So if you have any money to spare, go strike a double blow for the rights of women & indigenous people by donating.)

It occurs to me that this may provide a model for resistance to the state-level abortion bans likely to arise in the wake of an anti-Roe decision by the Supreme Court, and to the already-existing de facto lack of access to abortion and other reproductive services in many rural areas of the country (87% of counties and 97% for rural counties in the US have no abortion provider; some states--like South Dakota--only have a single clinic, with the resulting necessity of time, travel, and expense making access harder). Imagine a network of Planned Parenthoods on the reservations (places often in serious need of women's healthcare providers in general) throughout these states. If Roe is struck down, it's not going to affect women like me very much--I have always lived in places where my rights are protected; Washington and New York states both legalized abortion before Roe and continue to have some of the most liberal abortion-access regimes (with respect to parental notification/consent laws, waiting periods, etc) in the country. It's very easy, I think, to get complacent when privilege--geographical, financial, educational, or otherwise--means that you don't have to worry (the original half-written angry feminist post was partly inspired by a rereading of "The Convenience of Subservience", and the thought that Jalal's argument has some resonance to current debates in the US). I'd like to see a little less complacency and a little more direct action. Given that the new Supreme Court can't be counted on to strike down more restrictive laws (and that, God forbid, we're one more vacancy away from an anti-Roe majority), it's time to seek practical methods for helping other women while continuing to fight on the national level. The Haven coalition--a sort of underground railroad that hosts women traveling to NY from states with more restrictive laws--is one model. And before Roe, there was Jane. Maybe the reservations are next. And now a few lines in Ani Di Franco's spoken-word piece self-evident (better listened-to than read) have a new resonance:

here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore

here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman's voice

I'll drink to that.