Jennifer Denetdale: Gender violence on the Navajo Nation

Like so many other times, I stopped at a gas station just outside the boundary of the Navajo Nation. As I start to pump gas in my SUV for my trip back to Albuquerque, a young Diné woman approaches me and asks if she might catch a ride to Gallup, a bordertown about 15 minutes away. Apprehensive about strangers in my car, especially when I am alone, I look at her and say, “Let me think about it.” She nods and goes to stand against the store front.

I forget about her and just as I drive off, she knocks on my window and asks, “Will you give me a ride to Gallup, please?” I look at her for some time. Finally, I gesture “get in.” She climbs in and her story begins. She had been with her family who went to Gallup to sell Navajo tacos; they had made barely enough for gas money to return home, about a hundred and fifty miles away. During the course of the day, her younger sister hit their mother as she was driving them home. She shows me how her sister hit their mother with a backhand to the face. She elaborated to say that her father was an alcoholic who did little to intervene when their mother was being battered and that violent fights were a part of her family life. She got out of the truck at the store because she was trying to change her life. Her open jacket revealed her pregnancy. She was on her way back to her boyfriend’s home in a Navajo community off of Interstate 40. She thought that once she got to Gallup, she could hitch another ride. I took her all the way back to her boyfriend’s home, about twenty miles out of my way. As I parked in front of his home, she thanked me with a hug. I told her to take care of herself and her baby.

One of the darkest secrets that we talk about only to each other, what is considered private and intimate, is actually epidemic in our nation and communities. It shapes how we make our nation and communities and how we treat each other as relatives and family. The young woman’s story of violence is common place and I not only have heard so many such stories, but have been a victim myself. I have lent my ear and support for those who experienced rape, assaults, domestic violence, gender discrimination, harassment, and hate crimes.