FRESNO, Calif. – At the last two preliminary hearings for Patty Dawson’s alleged attacker, Jennifer Fraser, there was a strong Native American presence outside the Fresno Superior Courthouse. On January 23 and again on February 6, supporters of Dawson surrounded a drum group singing traditional songs. Several people held signs demanding “Justice for Patty Dawson” and dozens of people shook hands with Dawson as she arrived with her family.

The drum groups were there to remind Fresno District Attorney Elizabeth Egan that the Native community is getting frustrated as they await prosecution of Fraser and two other assailants who allegedly chased, spat on and brutally attacked Dawson last summer, leaving her unconscious on a city street. Fraser was arrested in September and posted bond.

Fraser is charged with felonious assault, defined under California law as “an attack on another individual in which the attacker uses a dangerous weapon and seeks to cause serious harm but stops short of an attempt to kill the victim.”

Fraser had requested a plea bargain, but the Dawson family insists they want the case fully prosecuted, and the charges against her elevated to a federal hate crime. Fresno District Attorney Elizabeth Egan has said she was “unaware” of any problems in this case, though dozens of Native people have packed the courtroom on three occasions.

Carol Russo, a conciliation specialist with the U.S. Justice Department is now monitoring the case and recently met with Egan to address concerns of the Dawson family and other Fresno residents, who say there is racism and discrimination evident in the way the case is being handled.

The next preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 5, and Russo said she will attempt to set up a formal meeting with Egan on March 7 for community members to discuss Dawson’s case and similar complaints from communities of color in Fresno and Clovis.

At the last hearing, Dawson supporters who were waiting to pass through metal detectors noticed Fraser, 27, standing in the same line. Suddenly aware that people recognized her, Fraser approached a Fresno Sheriff’s officer, whispering and pointing to the line. Moments later, three officers escorted Fraser to Courtroom 31, where Judge Brant Bramer was presiding over her case.

Fraser was isolated in a corner with deputies as Dawson, her family, and the dozens of peaceful supporters filled the courtroom. Several people loudly asked the Fresno County Sheriffs “Why are you protecting a KKK member?” and, “Fraser is the violent one, so why is she getting protection?”

Dawson, an Apache and Navajo nurse, remained calm and watched the events of the day unfold, but later said she was disappointed that the prosecutors and police seemed to be giving protection to her attacker.

Dawson says many things are unusual in the prosecution of this case, including the failure of the police to fully investigate the crime or to include Dawson’s full statement in the police reports. Though she says she has talked to detectives at least three times since the attack, Dawson has been unable to obtain police reports that include her statements. Twice now, she has visited the Fresno Superior Court Clerk’s offices to obtain copies of her statements, but was told no such documents could be found. When she asked Fresno police for copies of her statements to police, she was told they could not share them with her.

“I’m worried that they did not include all the things that led up to the attack,” says Dawson. “When I spoke to police, they kept asking me what I did to provoke the attack and implied it was road rage. Where in the police reports does it show that they bumped my car, chased me through city streets trying to run me off the road while yelling and spitting at me? I was terrified by the time they caught up with me and attacked me. I want to know why they did this to me.”

She also wonders why it took police more than three months to arrest Fraser, though they had witnesses who chased her car and reported her license plate number the day of the attack. Nor have the other two men in the car with Fraser been arrested.

DA Can’t See Hate Crime

The Dawson family, with the assistance of an attorney, arranged a brief meeting in mid-January with the Fresno District Attorney’s supervisor handling the case, Blake Gunderson, to share their concerns that a full investigation has not been done.

Dawson’s parents drove up from Los Angeles for this meeting, and Patty brought her husband, local organizer Gloria Hernandez, and an advocate familiar with the legal system. But once inside Gunderson’s office, he said there was not enough room for everyone and that only four people could stay. Dawson’s husband, mother, and two others had to leave. DOJ officials were concerned when they heard this, because there’s a conference room nearby and Gunderson could easily have held the meeting there, allowing the family to be present.

In the meeting, Gunderson allegedly told Dawson that he “didn’t see a hate crime here.” He told her that since she couldn’t remember the exact words her assailants were yelling when they chased her and spat on her, it was hard for him to prove it was race-related. “He said that if I was able to write down exactly what they said, it might help my case. So what I’m hearing is that I’m supposed to remember every detail after being beaten unconscious, write it all down for them, then do my own investigation to get evidence of a hate crime,” said Dawson, in tears. “I just want them to do their jobs. No matter how much I repeat myself about what happened that day, I’m not being heard. I’ve talked to detectives three times now, and I even saw my other attacker in court with Jennifer Fraser. I remember him from that day. They are still walking around free after tearing my life apart.”

The case has now attracted the attention and support of several chapters of the American Indian Movement that sent representatives to the last two hearings in Fresno. Tony Gonzales, AIM-West director, says, “We need to stress the federal obligation to the safety of American Indians. We now know of five cases like Patty’s in the West where our people have been attacked. AIM-WEST will be making inquiries to initiate a national hot line for people to call in hate crime attacks of this nature.”

He says AIM and other supporters plan to be at the next scheduled hearing on March 5 hearing in Fresno.

Meanwhile, local support is growing through online petitions and letters of support directed to the District Attorney’s Office.

FRESNO – The day before the January 23 court hearing on her case, Patty Dawson prepared traditional Navajo naneskaadi (tortillas) over an open fire and served a potluck meal for friends who had traveled hundreds of miles to attend her hearing.

The simple trailer home she shares with partner, Delaine Bill, is nestled into remote forested foothills near Kings Canyon National Park on allotment land his family has owned for more than 100 years. There is no running water or electricity— their only source of power comes through a nearby pump-house where they can shower and cook. The family relies on a potbelly wood stove for heat in the winter.

Their ancestors are buried here, and the land holds strong spiritual and cultural ties for the family. They’ve raised their children, kept to themselves and lived a clean life without drugs or alcohol as members of the Native “wellbriety” movement. “Mono people have always lived here, long before settlers started moving in,” says Bill, pointing to hundreds of mortar holes etched into granite rocks alongside a creek on their property that anthropologists say are more than 500 years old.

But the beauty of the land can’t hide the insidious threat at their back door: numerous white supremacists have moved into the foothills, and some of them are running drug operations near national park lands.

While exact numbers are hard to come by, it is well known that the Ku Klux Klan and other groups have had an active presence in the Fresno region since the 1960s, and California now has more than 68 active hate groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which estimates that at least a dozen hate groups are active in the Fresno area. That includes the KKK, Aryan Nations, California Skin Heads, Holy Nation of Odin, Aryan Terror Brigade, Bay Area National Anarchists, Blood and Honour America Division, the Creativity Alliance and Vinland Folk Resistance.

An Everyday Reminder

For Dawson, who says she was chased, spat on and brutally beaten by Jennifer Devette Fraser and two accomplices last June, there are constant reminders of people who hate Indians.

On their drive to work and school each day, Dawson and her family pass through Squaw Valley, a town that refuses to change its name despite the fact that it is offensive to local Natives and many others.

Dawson says one of her neighbors—who brands his cattle with swastikas—drives by her home most days in a truck adorned with a swastika. It is not uncommon to see men at the courthouse and other public places with shaved heads and swastika tattoos covering their faces, arms and necks.

Due to increasing gang problems, in December 2010, the city of Clovis approved new policies designed to crack down on white supremacist gangs trying to stake out certain parks in Fresno as new territory, said Clovis Police Captain Vince Leonardo. Police now have more power to prevent gang members from loitering in public places and intimidating passersby.

Three days after Dawson’s attack The Fresno Bee reported that three juveniles had been arrested on felony vandalism and hate-crime charges after going on a “graffiti rampage” during which they tagged about 20 homes, cars and fences with swastikas and white-supremacy slogans.

On Halloween night last year, four months after Dawson was beaten, a local Native teen, Jason Cerritos, was buying snacks at the Arco station where Dawson says she was attacked. From the back of the store, he says he saw five or six men in white hoods and gowns talking to a black man standing at the cash register. “At first I thought maybe they were dressed up for Halloween, but then I heard them harassing this guy,” he told Indian Country Today Media Network. “They were saying ‘Don’t worry, we’re not prejudiced or anything. In fact, we got some black people in our family—they’re still hanging out back in the trees.’”

They laughed as the man fled, and Cerritos says the clerk told him later that it was not the first time the men had come in dressed in hoods.

Gloria Hernandez, a local activist who is organizing support meetings for Dawson, said, “There was a lot of media attention since the graffiti was in a neighborhood where lots of police and correctional officers live, but there was absolutely no coverage when an Indian woman was beaten unconscious.”

Going to Court

Fraser has been charged with felonious assault; prosecutors say they do not have evidence to prove that the attack was racially motivated, and therefore, a hate crime. Dawson believes her attackers saw the dream catcher and beads hanging on her rear view mirror and singled her out.

Under federal law, the definition of a hate crime is “a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim…because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation of any person against a person or property motivated by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.”

Dawson has not received any medical treatment for injuries she suffered—including a concussion, broken bones in her face and nose, and symptoms of PTSD—because she has no insurance, no money and the nearest clinic that will treat her is in Sacramento, a three-hour drive away. She says she mainly relies on her family’s ceremonies and prayers for healing while awaiting prosecution of her attackers. “That’s what keeps me and my family going – spirituality, sweat lodge and the drum.”

At the sacred fire built the morning of the potluck, John Dawson prayed and thanked dozens of guests for coming to support his daughter. Singers from several tribes sat down to a traditional drum sprinkled with a tobacco blessings, and sang Mono, Apache, and Dine’ songs as guests arrived for food and fellowship.

As the conversation turned to the next day’s preliminary hearing for Fraser’s trial, supporters expressed frustration that Fresno and Clovis police have not more aggressively investigated and prosecuted the other two people that Dawson saw with Fraser the day of the attack.

Since the June 14, 2011 assault, three preliminary hearings have been postponed at the public defender’s request, first because Fraser suddenly claimed she was part Native American. The public defender told Judge Bramer that Fraser should only be charged with felonious assault and not a hate crime since she was claiming to be part Native American.  However, by the next hearing, Fraser did not produce any evidence of Native heritage.

At a late October hearing, Fraser made an appearance and asked for a continuance because she was going to have a baby.  Then on February 6, the public defender told the judge he had just completed a big case and needed time “to reacquaint himself with the details of the Fraser case.”  The next hearing is scheduled for March 5.

Dawson says what happened to her was never accurately recorded in the police report that prosecutors are relying on, and she has not been able to find any supplemental police reports that contain her victim’s statement that attempts to explain the attackers’ intentions. “I was unconscious when police came to the emergency room, and I suffered a concussion from the beating, so I couldn’t remember all the details. Things are coming back to me more as time passes, and I’m upset that the police report they are relying on doesn’t have my side of the story,” she said.

“I gave the police statements three times now explaining how those three people hit my bumper, chased me for more than a mile, tried to run me off the road, screamed at me, spit at me, and finally hit me through an open window when I had to stop for a traffic light. Why? I think it’s because I’m a brown woman. I didn’t do anything to them to provoke this.”

Leonard Pine Flower, a father of six who lives in Fresno, says he is compelled to stand in support of Dawson as a Native man who wants to ensure their women and children are safe. “We can’t let them get away with beating our women,” he said. “We worry that our children will be next. We plan to be visible in numbers at every court hearing to make sure the Fresno District Attorney does not ignore this hate crime.”

For Native families who have been dealing with racism directed toward their children and elders alike, Patty represents their mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and grandmothers.

“I never thought something like this would happen to me,” says Dawson. “But it did, and now I have to speak up so that this doesn’t happen to other women. I just want the DA and the justice system to do their job and prosecute this as the hate crime that it is.”

According to the California Attorney General’s Office, no hate crimes against Native Americans were reported in 2011. Part of the problem, says Olin Jones, director of Native American Affairs in the AG’s Office, is that Indian people assume they will not get justice in the judicial system, so they don’t report them.

Another factor is that many police departments – like Clovis and Fresno – have never had any cultural sensitivity training and may lack awareness of how race plays into assaults against people of color.

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