The fossil fuel industry is breeding lawless hubs of human trafficking and sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls in the Great Lakes and Great Plains region of the United States and Canada, but women are fighting to stop the violence. A coalition of Indigenous and women’s organizations, including Honor the Earth, Brave Heart Society, the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, One Billion Rising and the Indigenous Women’s Network have filed a request for intervention with the United Nations. The request focuses on the Bakken oil fields of western North Dakota and eastern Montana, and the Tar Sands region of Alberta, Canada, where an influx of industry workers into temporary housing “man-camps” is causing a rapid rise in sexual violence. Members of the coalition draw attention to current violence as an extension of a legacy of colonization, genocide and systematic abuses towards Indigenous peoples, which has always had a disproportional impact on women and girls. Photo credit: John Isaiah Pepion
