Fracking linked to increased sexual abuse among indigenous women, one organization claims

By Danielle Chemtob

Even if you don’t consider yourself an environmentalist, you’ve likely heard of fracking. Yet few people actually understand what the term means, and why the practice of fracking is so dangerous.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process that involves pumping fluid into the ground at a high pressure to extract natural gas. Many advocacy groups often highlight the environmental consequences of fracking—the unsafe chemicals involved, the water wasted, and contamination issues, to name a few—but few people are aware of the practice’s impact on the health and well-being of indigenous women. The Women’s Earth Alliance is trying to change that.

The organization is currently partnering with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network in a project called “Violence on the Land, Violence on our Bodies: Building an Indigenous Response to Environmental Violence.” The project aims to document experiences of indigenous women and how their reproductive health is affected by the fracking industry.

Kahea Pacheco of Women’s Earth Alliance explained that this harm to women is part of what she calls “environmental violence.” She defined the term as “the deliberate release of toxins or the deliberate practice of other harmful environmentally degrading industries on our lands and territories despite evidence that they cause a range of serious health and social impacts which disproportionately affect indigenous communities.”

According to Pacheco, Native American women are two and a half times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than non native women in the United States. Pacheco said that this is partially due to the fracking industry. She explained that near extraction sites, male workers from out of town  set up in temporary and remote housing camps, often outnumber the women in the area considerably, leading to increased cases of assault, domestic violence, and drug use.

“When we’re looking at just the reproductive health socially of indigenous women and youth in resource industry impacted communities, we’re looking at communities that are being flooded with large numbers of young men coming to live  and work in a dangerous field in workers’ camps sometimes called ‘man camps,’ by local native communities” she said.

Pacheco said that there are two types of these housing units—documented and undocumented. Those that are documented are sponsored by the companies that employ the men, and usually have resources on-site such as cell phone services, bathrooms, stores, etc.

However, the undocumented temporary housing, which are informal and are not sponsored by the extraction industries, can pose the biggest threat to indigenous women.

“Undocumented camps are threats to native communities, because they’re often simply 50 to 100 trailers that ranchers or farmers rent out located in isolated or desolate areas, where emergency and cell phone services are not usually the priority or are not usually available,” Pacheco said. “So you have an influx of non indigenous people coming into traditionally native communities.”

Pacheco believes that it is important to protect women's rights due to their significant role in the success of their communities.

“When women thrive, communities thrive,” Pacheco said. “Women are often the center of communities - the center of the home - and they are often the people who do work with the resources around them, and they provide food for their families. So these are the women that just need a few more resources and the tools to take what they’re already doing to the next level and address the concerns that they already have.”

According to Pacheco, the next step in dealing with this issue is for the environmental movement to recognize that women's’ well-being is a concern intertwined with their own goals.

“Everything connected to the land is connected to our bodies,” Pacheco said. “The first step is recognizing that environmental violence is real, that environmentally degrading practices have social impacts as well as health impacts, and have all these impacts that disproportionately affect indigenous communities.”

Although some argue that fracking has economic benefits, Pacheco said, “all the economic wealth in the world will be nothing if we do not have the environment we need to survive in. When there’s no air, are you going to breathe dollars?”