It was a Saturday night, last June 4, when Blackie, a 46-year-old Navajo, left the bar at the Anasazi Inn on foot, walking west along one of Farmington's main drags. He later told police he'd only made it as far as the parking lot of the American Furniture store, a few blocks from the inn, when three white youths in a white pickup, who later admitted they were trolling for a victim, pulled alongside. They offered to give him a ride if he'd buy them beer with their money.

Blackie agreed, and one of the men, C.L. Carnie, 20, got out of the cab and into the bed of the pickup, leaving Blackie to slide in next to passenger Freddie Brooks, also 20. In the driver's seat was 18-year-old John Winer, 6-foot, 5-inches, a ball cap pulled over his shaved head.

As the truck pulled away from the parking lot it headed the wrong direction, away from town.

Winer announced they weren't buying beer after all. Instead, he said, they were going to a "party" in a secluded area just north of town known as The Glades, a scrubby system of juniper- and sage-lined trails frequented by teenage partiers and mountain bikers.

Blackie sensed trouble. He asked Winer to pull over so he could relieve himself and Winer did, but no sooner had Blackie stepped out than he was clocked hard and fast in the head with a club. He fell to the ground and tried to crawl away as the men stomped and kicked his prone body, shouting, "Die nigger! Just die!"

When Blackie's pockets revealed only crumpled receipts and a bottle of medicine, Winer later told police they decided to "cut their losses," and left their victim bleeding in the desert. The taillights of the truck disappeared into the night.

Blackie didn't need a mirror to know he was in a bad way. He could smell the blood pouring from the gaping wound in his head, and taste it streaming past his lips. Blood coated his neck and arms and quickly saturated his T-shirt.

When he was sure the attackers had gone, Blackie dialed 911. He told the dispatcher he'd just been beat up by three white guys, didn't know where he was, and pleaded for help.

Police were able to track his location through his cell phone and arrived 10 minutes later. Their report characterized Blackie's demeanor upon their arrival as "traumatized, untrusting and intimidated." He repeatedly begged officers not to shoot him.

Pervasive Violence
Anonymous tips led police to Winer, Carnie, and Brooks. All three have been charged with felony assault and kidnapping. They have also been charged with hate crimes, marking the first time prosecutors have ever filed hate crime charges in Farmington, a town with a history of brutal crimes against American Indians that dates back to the 1870s, when white residents reportedly used Navajos for target practice, shooting them on the streets for fun.

In addition to setting a legal precedent, the attack on Blackie added to an alarming litany of violent crimes against American Indians that is not unique to this region of northwestern New Mexico. Violence against American Indians, much of it motivated by racial hatred, is a pervasive yet obscure problem that is especially prevalent in so-called "border towns" -- majority-white cities abutting reservations -- where cultures clash against the historical backdrop of institutionalized racism, cultural subjugation, and genocide.

The Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a government fact-finding agency, said as much in 2003, when it proposed a large-scale investigation of racism and related issues in the border towns of seven states. But funding for the study was not forthcoming under the Bush Administration, according to commission regional director John Dulles.

Barbara Perry, a social science professor at the University of Ontario, has traveled the country in recent years to interview nearly 300 American Indians in the first large-scale study of hate crimes in border towns. She estimates that only around 10% of hate crimes against Native Americans are reported to law enforcement authorities, blaming the low reporting rate in large part on "historical and contemporary experience with the police, and the perception they do not take Native American victimization seriously."

Even the FBI's 2005 statistics on hate crimes that were reported to police show that while American Indians and Alaska Natives comprise only 1% of the U.S. population, they represent 2% of victims of racially motivated hate crimes. In 2004, a U.S. Department of Justice 10-year study entitled "American Indians and Crime" found a "disturbing picture of the victimization of American Indians and Alaska Natives."

According to the Department of Justice study, the overall violent crime rate among American Indians and Alaska Natives is 100 per 1,000 persons, meaning one out of 10 American Indians or Native Americans has been a victim of violence. That rate is twice as high as the rate for blacks, two and a half times higher than whites, and four and a half times higher than Asians.

The study also found that "American Indians are more likely than people of other races to experience violence at the hands of someone of a different race," with 70% of reported violent attacks perpetrated by non-Indians.

Even to seasoned crime statisticians, the results were startling. "We now know that American Indians experience a much greater exposure to violence than other race groups," said co-author Lawrence A. Greenfeld. "The common wisdom was that blacks experience the highest exposure to violence."

But the results didn't come as a surprise to Navajo leaders, who have long referred to Farmington as the "Selma, Ala., of the Southwest."

"Just as some areas of the South remain hotbeds of racism because of the history of slavery and discrimination, the same can be said of areas where there are large Indian populations," said Raymond Foxworth, a scholarship coordinator for the American Indian College Fund who grew up on the Navajo reservation. "The historical treatment of Indians does indeed have contemporary significance. If we are willing to admit this about other groups, why can't the same be said with Indians?"