National Stalking Awareness Month spotlights shocking crime that strikes rural Native Americans.

Nearly three and a half million people in the United States report that one or more people are stalking them, according to a 2009 U.S. Department of Justice report, “Stalking Victimization in the United States.”

Three people become victims of stalking every minute.

And American Indians and Alaska Natives are stalked more than any one other ethnic group.

“It’s a hate crime,” said Ann Dapice, Ph.D., a Lenape/Cherokee and director of Education and Research at T.K. Wolf, Inc., an American Indian stalking authority agency that works with victims.

“The biggest problem we have is no one who is stalked gets any help. No one will stop stalkers. And stalkers know that,” Dapice said.

T.K. Wolf is an Oklahoma-based non-profit counseling, research and educational organization. They began a Stalking Initiative ten years ago after learning there were so many American Indian stalking victims, and realizing their stalking clients were not receiving assistance from agencies or law enforcement.

“We kept referring stalking victims to domestic violence agencies, but they kept coming back saying, ‘They’re not understanding what we’re dealing with,’” Dapice said.

Stalking among Native Americans is mainly against the leaders–tribal attorneys, activists, artists, and tribal leaders, Dapice said. The only two ways to stop it, she said, are peer pressure, “Peers must tell them this is not appropriate behavior.” The other is the law.

Why can stalkers act with impunity? Less than one percent go to jail.

Agencies and the law usually categorize stalking as battering or domestic violence, where services are limited to ‘known intimates.’ Yet the Department of Justice report shows this group represents only 30.3 percent of stalking victims. ‘Known others,’ like co-workers, relatives, classmates, and neighbors account for 45.1 percent.

And a surprising one in four victims don’t know their stalkers.

‘Strangers’ make up 10.6 percent of stalkers. ‘Unknowns’ account for another 16.9 percent. Some forms of this stalking is organized, gang, proxy or vigilante stalking – “cause” stalking similar to tactics once used by the Ku Klux Klan. Some perpetrators hire groups to stalk their victims.

“There are people who stalk relationships, people who stalk in order to do revenge, people who stalk political and entertainment figures,” says Dapice. “There is group and proxy stalking. There are different motives but whatever it is, it is always a power play.”

DOJ statistics show that in Indian country, most of the violence has been non-Native Americans against Native Americans. It’s not because stalking victims are on tribal lands, as is often assumed, Dapice said. “No one, Indian or non-Indian who is stalked gets any help.”

Worse, some people blame the victims so they’re afraid to come out of the closet.

Men make up 27 percent of stalking victims, “and are just as victimized as women, in some ways doubly so, because police will say ‘what’s wrong with you, why can’t you protect yourself?’” Dapice said the police blame the judges, and the judges blame the system. “Everyone blames everyone else and eventually it’s somebody else’s fault, and nothing gets done.”

Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a familiar term used with stalking victims. T.K. Wolf uses another: Continuous Acute Traumatic Syndrome. Victims think it has let up, only to have it start again.

Some people try moving to a new community to escape. “Stalkers are the first ones to make friends with the police in any community, so often moving makes no difference,” said Dapice. “Stalkers will walk around a neighborhood and tell lies and stories about the victim.”

The agency’s website indicates stalkers, from most to least often stalk by telephone, home surveillance, following physically, driving by home, appearing at workplace, sending letters and emails, spreading gossip and “gaslighting,” a term used when they try to make victims think they’ve gone “crazy,” damaging property, threatening to harm others, breaking and entering, sending unwanted gifts, physically and sexually assaulting victims, injuring and killing pets, kidnapping and arson. Dapice has listened to victims who have reported all these methods.

Stalking victims often report such bizarre behaviors that they have trouble convincing others that this is happening—including the professionals who are formally assigned to respond to them.

January is National Stalking Awareness Month. This year’s theme — “Stalking: Know It. Name It. Stop It.” — challenges the nation to fight this dangerous crime by learning more about it. They’re asking the public to promote the month with posters, Social Networking Status Updates, Sample Public Service Announcements, Certificates of Appreciation and Buttons, Magnets, Logos.

A Tides Foundation Indigenous Peoples Fund Award is funding a T.K. Wolf study that will assist tribes and agencies in providing better responses to victims and perpetrators, and an educational documentary that tells the story of stalking in Indian country.

T.K. Wolf is sponsoring an anonymous online survey through Integrated Concepts, Inc., that will contribute further information regarding the needs of Indian country related to stalking. To participate, visit www.iconceptsinc.com, select Services, select Stalking Survey, enter Password: Tides_Foundation, take Survey, select Submit.

The National Stalking Awareness Month site offers help and resources for Victims, and information on stalking for Service Providers, Law Enforcement and Prosecutors. Visit www.stalkingawarenessmonth.org/resources.

You can read more of Terri Hansen's work at Indian Country Today.

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