Keeping Native Children Safe

Keeping Native Children Safe examines child sexual abuse in Native communities, especially when abuse allegations arise in custody cases. It helps advocates, courts, and service providers better understand trauma, protect children, support non-offending parents, and respond with greater accountability, cultural awareness, and care.

Maureen L. White Eagle (Métis) is a lawyer, writer, and facilitator whose work focuses on justice, safety, and leadership in Native communities. She has authored and developed resources on sexual violence, tribal legal issues, and victim services, and is the founder of Partners for Women’s Equality, which supports Indigenous women’s leadership.

Recognizing the Risks Across All Ages

The Podcast on Crimes Against Women's episode "Teens, Tech, and Trust: Teen Dating Violence in the Digital Age" extends the conversation into adolescence, showing how the same patterns of control and exploitation can take new forms online, and why prevention has to grow with the realities young people face.

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Keeping Children Safe Key Takeaways

Child sexual abuse is not an isolated event with a single moment of harm. It often reshapes a child’s sense of trust, safety, memory, behavior, and relationships over time, while also affecting the protective parent, extended family, and the larger community responding to the abuse.

The resource places child sexual abuse in Native communities within a broader historical context shaped by colonization, family disruption, racism, and intergenerational trauma. Rather than treating abuse as an individual problem alone, it explains how larger systems of violence and dispossession continue to shape vulnerability, response, and the possibilities for healing.

A major concern is how often children and protective mothers are doubted when abuse is disclosed in custody disputes. The guide explains how bias, stereotypes, and unrealistic expectations for proof can lead systems to separate children from safe caregivers and deepen the harm already caused by abuse.

White Eagle also emphasizes that child sexual abuse often overlaps with other forms of violence. By showing how these harms interact, it paints a fuller picture of why abuse is so difficult to interrupt without informed, coordinated support.

White Eagle calls for professionals and communities alike to protect the bond between children and protective parents, and build systems that move beyond disbelief toward long-term support.