American Indigenous Women: Mothers Disrespected

I know that the "memories" of Pre-Colonial America are idealized and generalized, I know that there are at least hundreds of different nations and their sexual politics vary widely and that it wasn't a utopian paradise, but the main point is that women were generally respected.

I can't begin to say how unjust that the last five centuries of American Indigenous history are. The women have suffered some particular cruelties. Before European contact, rape and domestic violence were virtually unknown in the Americas and were punished accordingly when they happened; the view was/is that if women have the power to create life, in the same breath can they not also destroy life? Therefore, women and girls were to be shown nothing but respect as the mothers of the future generations of their nations. 
Every nation was/is different in their approach, but generally women were respected and had their autonomy and rites of passage like menarche were celebrated as a girl's blossoming into womanhood.

Then the colonizing countries of Europe shattered that world as well as shattered the women themselves. Columbus himself encouraged the sale of girls eight years of age into sexual slavery. Cortes, Pizarro, and De Soto did similarly in Mexico and South America.

Pocahontas (1595-1617, born Matoaka and later known as Amonute before she was married to John Rolfe and became "Rebecca Rolfe") was kidnapped by the English in 1613 in the middle of the First Anglo-Powhatan War and legend says that they raped her and killed her husband Kocoum, with whom she already had a daughter Ka-Okee. We don't know what Pocahontas thought about her marriage to John Rolfe.

As the California Gold Rush progressed and Californian Indigenous nations had the rug yanked out from under them, tribal autonomy as well as community and family life were undermined as the young men were forced to work on ranches. Not only did it disrupt family life, but there were no able-bodied men to protect their women, children, and elders; the white men invariably came without their families and saw a chance to take advantage of these vulnerable villages and simultaneously assert their authority. So many women from girls of five years to matriarchs of ninety were violated by these sexual terrorists that they often had to flee their villages; Squaw Valley, California, is named because it's one of the major places that the women and girls took shelter, and "Squaw Valley" is an even bigger insult to Indigenous women because these women were rape victims. And their men, the men were powerless to avenge their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, their wives...

That same powerlessness has led to the disproportionately high degree of domestic violence in many Indigenous communities. And easily one out of three Indigenous women is a victim of rape/violent attack or will be one. Indigenous women and Black men are both in a very vulnerable position, especially since people of color disproportionately suffer from environmental racism. 
The same disrespect is given to the Mother of all of us: Gaia, Danu, Pachamama, Mother Earth, She is the one who has given life to everybody who has existed and in just a few centuries some of Her own children have dishonored and devastated Her.

I say that we restore to American Indigenous Women (and to American First Nations, in general) their honor, their dignity, the respect that they deserve! Restore to them what has been stolen from them.