Alaska's secret shame.

Here’s some news Sarah Palin never mentioned on her Alaskan reality show: Alaska Native women and girls are facing a dire trafficking problem. Sex-traffickers often lure the victims to Anchorage, where they’re separated from their local support network and then coerced into the sex trade. Investigators say that this trend has been on the rise for the past couple years, and they fear Alaska Natives are targeted due to their “versatile” look—which makes them easier to advertise on the Internet as Hawaiian or Asian. So how can both the Alaskan and tribal governments stop failing these girls? Two words: prosecution and education. Tell Governor Sean Parnell and the state legislature to strengthen Alaska state laws to mirror federal penalties and work with tribal governments to fund a trafficking-specific education program for families.

Amnesty International has estimated that Native American women are 2.5 times more likely than other American women to experience sexual assault in their lifetime. Previously victimized women and girls are prime targets for traffickers. Statistics show that within 48 hours of being on the street, one in three of runaways will be drawn into prostitution. The trafficking victims are then reluctant to seek help, due to psychological abuse, and an unwillingness to tell their small village communities what has happened to them.

Alaska’s state trafficking laws are relatively weak. Currently, authorities often choose to prosecute pimps under federal sex trafficking laws, as the state law only allows for prosecution of trafficking if the victim is transferred across state lines. Unsurprisingly, this system isn’t working. An investigator told The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that even when girls are separated from their pimp and provided social services, the prosecutions are few and far between. Governor Parnell and the state legislature need to strengthen Alaska’s state laws to mirror the federal laws, and get traffickers off the street for good. This legislation can't come soon enough.

(You can read more by clicking here.)

I have spent my entire life in this state, and have seen first hand the unconscionable attitudes of men, from virtually every ethnicity, toward our native women. They are far more likely to be raped, molested, or to suffer domestic abuse than any other group of women in the state.

According to the US Dept. of Justice's own statistics, Native American and Alaska Native women are nearly three times more likely to be raped than women in the US in general. Too often Native American victims of rape have to go through a maze of federal, state, tribal and local laws to achieve any justice at all, while the agencies responsible for seeking justice on their behalf are severely underfunded and inadequate. Federal law limits the criminal sentences that tribal courts can impose and prohibits tribal courts from trying non-Indian suspects - even though data collected by the Department of Justice shows that up to 86% of perpetrators are non-Indian.

When Sarah Palin dismissively labeled Women's Right advocates as purposefully  "portraying women as victims" while suggesting that all women had to do to exercise their rights was to stand up to the men who had subjugated them, was a total slap in the face to women all over the world, but an especially ignorant and hateful thing to say concerning the indigenous women of the state in which she served as Governor.

Thankfully Sarah Palin is no longer part of the equation when it comes to protecting our fellow Alaskans.  In fact after this weekend she is essentially insignificant to ANY debate about reducing violence.

Today the person to reach out to is Governor Sean Parnell, and though in many ways he is a carbon copy of Palin, he HAS at least done some work to protect our mothers, daughters, and sisters.

So perhaps HE will be more receptive than his pathetically inept predecessor and respond if enough people sign this petition.

But if you don't think that is enough, than perhaps he would appreciate receiving an e-mail from you suggesting how he can better protect some of his most vulnerable constituents.

Personally I did both.