Last week’s hearing of the House Tribal Affairs Committee on tribal justice highlighted the high rates of violence and sexual assault against Alaska Native women. Alaska Native women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than white women in Alaska, according to statistics provided at the hearing. And, more than 80% of those women have faced violence in their lifetime. The hearing comes against the backdrop of a high-profile trial in Anchorage where a man is accused of targeting and brutally murdering two Alaska Native women.
But for far-right Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance, the hearing struck a nerve.
“What I hear in this committee is that Alaska Native women feel it’s exclusive to your experience because it sounds exactly what I’ve heard of white women in my community,” she said. “It’s the same thing, but what I continue to hear in this committee over and over again is if you’re the only one.”
Vance struck a defiant and scolding tone with the presenters, admonishing them for leaving white women out of the presentation on tribal justice.
“I ask that when you come and present that you remember you have white sisters who are going through the same thing,” she said. “And they don’t feel they have justice either.”
A clip of her comments circulated over the weekend, as did the in-committee response from Fairbanks Democratic Rep. Ashley Carrick, who took issue with the claim that Alaska Native women and white women experience the same while going through the state’s criminal justice system.
“I take some exception at the idea this presentation is excluding white women,” she said. “As a white woman from urban Alaska, I can’t say how much it hurts my heart to hear about the disparity. While the suffering is the same for the victims, the causes of that violence are not the same, and the response to that violence is not the same and the justice for the victims is not the same. Until it’s the same, we have a lot of work to do.”
During Monday’s floor session, Vance offered an apology of sorts. She called her comments “less than gracious” and said it wasn’t her intention to minimize the issues facing Alaska Native women.
“It was not my heart,” she said. “And when we talk about sexual violence and justice, it’s messy and dirty and my words created offense. It is not my heart or my intention to ever create an offense, especially on such a deeply important topic to Alaskans. I in no way want to dishonor the voice of the victims of sexual violence or the Alaska Native voice, who has been crying out for justice for so long. What I should have said is that evil does not discriminate. … I ask you to forgive me for not listening with understanding first.”
It’s not the first time Vance has been grabbing attention, particularly around the issue of sexual assault and violence. A longtime supporter of far-right Rep. David Eastman’s membership on the House Judiciary Committee, Vance blocked a change in law that would have barred private and religious schools from hiring someone who sexually abused a minor, matching the existing rules for public schools. Last week, she also voted against a measure that would have raised the age of consent in Alaska from 16 to 18.
The most forceful repudiation of her comments came from the House Tribal Affairs Committee Chair Rep. CJ McCormick. He noted that legislators last year tried to divert funding away from an investigator for missing murdered Indigenous women cases and into election fraud investigations. He recalled how during a pause in that debate, he spoke to a woman whose sister had been working to get justice in a sexual assault case for two years only to see the charges dropped.
“The systems we have in place in this state further victimize our victims, and frankly the systems we have are inequitable,” he said. “The fact of the matter is rural Alaska is disadvantaged. The fact of the matter is it is harder for people in rural Alaska to get justice. If a woman is in a domestic violence situation in a village, they have nowhere to go. So, oftentimes they have to return to the home of their abuser. They don’t have the same resources.”
With emotion welling up throughout the speech, McCormick apologized for getting frustrated and sad about the situation but said it’s critical to understand that not all things are equal in Alaska’s criminal justice system.
“I would be remiss if I did not speak to the pain that our communities must endure and the responsibility that we have — that we’re currently failing — to provide these necessary services to people to end the pain, the pain that has been going on for far too long,” he said. “I am very glad to see the progress being made, but we are not here to sit and rest on the progress that we have made. We are here to make a difference and serve the people who have been silenced for so long.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.