Understanding Tragedy
Ashley Conlon
Content Warning: Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence
Growing up in Alaska, stories of sexual assault and domestic violence were always in the news. My family rarely watched the news and yet the stories were still everywhere. The posters on telephone poles always had pictures of missing women, and our friend’s parents who are lawyers and detectives were always cautiously telling us the content of their cases. I often wonder if my peers and I were desensitized to the tragedy as we were growing up. But reading the books On Call in the Arctic by Thomas J. Sims and The Round House by Lousie Erdrich, changed my perspective on hearing the stories of Native women experiencing sexual assault and domestic violence in Alaska and the United States.
Reading On Call in the Arctic made the stories real when I read them in the newspaper or heard them on the radio. Thomas J. Sims recounts his time in Nome as a U.S. Public Health Service doctor. One thing that pulled me into the story was when he discussed how he wasn’t welcomed into the community because he was white. The previous white doctor had gotten an underage Native girl pregnant and wanted her to get an abortion. Even though he had a wife and child, the community was still worried for their youth. Unfortunately, they are justified in their worry. Native women are 250% more likely to be victims of domestic violence in Alaska, 84.3% of Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, and 56.1% of Native women will experience sexual violence (NCAI). This is only the tip of the statistics Iceberg. Sims’ story gave faces and names to people in Nome and other remote Alaskan villages, so when I heard stories of sexual assault and domestic violence in the news I would pause more than I had previously to listen.
While reading On Call In the Arctic gave me a little more understanding of the nuance and tragedy surrounding Native women and sexual assault, it wasn’t until reading The Round House by Louise Erdrich that I fully realized the emotional and physical toll it takes on women, their family, and communities. She uses a 13-year-old boy, Joe Coutts, as a narrator who walks the audience through the time after his mom’s, Geraldine, assault. His father, a judge on the reservation, struggles with being a husband supporting his wife and a judge trying to get justice for her. Both Joe and his father struggle to figure out who assaulted Geraldine as she is severely depressed. They both don’t know how to help her so they focus on solving the case so they don’t feel helpless. This was incredibly eye-opening for me as I hadn’t thought about the immediate family and community impact of sexual assault.
One of the issues brought up in The Round House is jurisdiction and the complications that the police bring to solving sexual assault cases involving Native women. The physical roundhouse, a yurt-like structure for ceremonies, is on the reservation above the bank of a lake which is federal land, and the forest next to the roundhouse is fie (privately owned). So Joe and his father are constantly trying to get Geraldine to talk about her assault because if it happened on reservation land, Joe’s father has jurisdiction to investigate; otherwise, it has to be conducted by the FBI. There are always similar issues in Alaska. Where the assault happens impacts who investigates. Last year, I heard of a woman who was gang-raped next to the federal building in Anchorage. The security personnel who saw this happen were state troopers and were instructed that they could not intervene because it was not happening on federal land. They needed to call the Anchorage police but by the time they arrived, everyone was gone. Hearing this story I immediately thought of The Round House, and I felt incredibly heartbroken for the girl, not only because of the trauma she endured but also because of where the assault happened no one could help her in time.
Louise Erdrich brings to light a very heartbreaking reality in The Round House. Many times sexual assault happens because of the perpetrator’s feelings of superiority over their victims. She does this through Linden Lark’s sense of superiority over the two women he assaults, Geraldine and Mayla. He says, “I could be rich, but I’d rather have shown you, both of you, what you are. I won’t get caught, he said.” This is not a new experience for women, especially Native women. This passage especially his saying “I won’t get caught” has stuck with me as a moment of epiphany. My reading setting wasn’t out of the ordinary, a typical high school classroom. Blinding fluorescent lights, former students’ grad announcements hanging proudly behind the teacher’s desk, a closet full of spirit week costumes, a corner full of necessary art supplies. Students sitting at tables whispering, sleeping, or watching the sun rise out the window were a daily occurrence. Even though the closest person was within reach, I felt miles away. I was just hit with a ton of bricks.
Everything made sense: the telephone pole posters, news stories, and bleak conversations with our parents’ friends. I finally began to understand the severity and nuance of sexual assault in the Native community that I had heard about for years and years.
Works Cited
Erdrich, Louise. The Round House. Harper, 2012.
“Violence Against AI/AN Women & Girls – Data Trends.” NCAI. https://ncai.org/section/vawa/overview/key-statistics. Accessed 13 Feb. 2025.