Danielle Miller: Media lauds violence against our Indian children

When Native children are being assaulted, the immediate reaction should not be to seek justifications for the attack. This is exactly what the Rapid City Journal did, by finding any argument they can to victim blame the assaulted students.

This pattern has already emerged through other Rapid City publications. KotaTv news recently released a story mitigating the actions of racist perpetrators by referring to the assault as “bad behavior”. KotaTV also published another article as a tactic to garner sympathy for those institutions complicit in negligence to address the incident until it went viral. The article deflected from the trauma suffered by Native students and centered the harassment of Eagle sales workers. The article was also used as an act of damage control to distance the Eagle Sales name from the incident. The concern was all centered on protecting the brand and attempting to shift the narrative to frame their workers as victims.

The reshaping of narratives is unacceptable because it mitigates acts of violence. Respectability politics do not justify violence. Victim blaming is rape culture. Racists and abusers use this rhetoric as fuel to justify violence against the marginalized.