First Americans

METHOD
We interviewed 105 Native women in prostitution for approximately 1.5 hours each, administering 4 questionnaires that asked about family history, sexual and physical violence throughout their lifetimes, homelessness, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and dissociation, use of available services such as domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, rape crisis centers, and substance abuse treatment. We asked the women about the extent to which they connected with their cultures, and if that helped them or not. We asked about racism and colonialism. The questionnaires were both quantitative and qualitative.

FINDINGS
About half of the women met a conservative legal definition of sex trafficking which involves third-party control over the prostituting person by pimps or traffickers. Yet most (86%) interviewees felt that no women really know what they're getting into when they begin prostituting, and that there is deception and trickery involved.

• 79% of the women we interviewed had been sexually abused as children by an average of 4 perpetrators.
• More than two-thirds of the 105 women had family members who had attended boarding schools.
• 92% had been raped.
• 48% had been used by more than 200 sex buyers during their lifetimes. 16% had been used by at least 900 sex buyers.
• 84% had been physically assaulted in prostitution.
• 72% suffered traumatic brain injuries in prostitution
• 98% were currently or previously homeless.

<snip> there's more

"I’ve been raped my whole life. What else do you want to know?”

A trafficked Anishinaabe woman in her late 50s said this to me during an interview in Duluth. She was 4 the first time she was raped. As one of five women who interviewed 105 Native trafficked women in Minnesota for the report “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota,” I hear her words reverberate in my mind.