| Native women and women who live in rural settings face particular difficulties in an abusive situation.Often we live in closed communities or are otherwise cut off from agencies who help battered women by our remote locations and inability to reach reliable law enforcement in a timely manner.Below are links to some text pages on this site. |
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| Much of the information you will find here is reprinted from the Violence Against Women Document Project, Native American Circle, Ltd. (NAC) |
| Native American Circle, Ltd. (NAC) is a non-profit, tax exempt victim advocacy organization. NAC's programs are available to tribes operating batterer intervention and victim services programs to aid survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking crimes, as well as to non-Indian programs desiring to offer culturally competent victim services. Additionally, we provide technical assistance targeted to meet the needs of recipients of Violence Against Women Act funding, including recipients of STOP Violence Against Indian Women Grants, Rural Domestic Violence and Child Victimization Enforcement Grants, and Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies and Enforcement of Protection Orders. Our training materials are based on the conviction that attempting to evaluate another person's culture, beliefs and traditions according to the standards and values of a distinctly different cultural base results in inaccurate perceptions. NAC's programs are designed to foster admiration of indigenous cultures and pride in cultural-connectedness, while fueling interest in recovering non-violent, traditional lifestyles in today's American Indian/Alaska Native communities. Among others, Native American Circle's services include: Training programs and resources that are culturally sensitive to Native American people and their customs and traditions; Development of community-based responses and tribal legal codes that effectively and appropriately address stalking crimes against Native women; Development of a domestic violence fatality review process to generate demographic-specific statistics for the Native American population nationally; Development of links to local service providers and tribal resources which urban Indian women are typically unable to access due to geographic restrictions. NAC's 2001 Targeted Technical Assistance Project is a collaborative effort between Native American Circle, Ltd. (NAC), United Federation of Tribal Nations, Inc. (UFTN), and the Stalking Resource Center, an entity of the National Center for Victims of Crime. This project was supported by Grant No. 2001-WT-BX-K005 awarded by the Violence Against Women Office, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. |
| Reasons Why Indian Women "Stay" and/or Decline to Report Violence Reason stated most often: victim still loves the batterer and she hopes he will change; Knows that batterer will find victim if she leaves; victim fears what batterer will do to her if she attempts escape and is (inevitably) "caught"; May be physically and emotionally isolated by residing in a rural area; Lack of transportation or financial resources to provide food and housing; Lack of employment opportunities, often due to racial prejudice, that will provide sufficient income to support victim and her children; Fear of being coerced into leaving the home or of being removed from the community; Lack of tribal infrastructure or culturally-sensitive infrastructure, including safe shelter, or shelter that is culturally sensitive and appropriate to the victim's specific needs, lack of immediate medical care, lack of facilities to jail or hold perpetrator, and lack of tribal protection code; Lack of secure shelter in a confidential location if residing in a rural area; Lack of affordable housing in a safe area near people of her own tribe, or at least near people whose cultural values and experiences are similar; Tribal programs furnish temporary 'intervention' by providing a hotel room for a short stay, insufficient in duration to allow the victim to access other possible options; Tribal programs furnish temporary housing, but no counseling to help the victim accurately evaluate her options and resources, her feelings, her circumstances, and the potential for the violence in her life to continue; Lack of education or marketable job skills; Inadequate response to victims' needs: lengthy law enforcement response time, lengthy investigations, lack of prosecution or poor prosecution of cases; Non-Indian agencies refuse services, erroneously presuming that victim assistance is the responsibility of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Indian Health Service; Lack of confidence that the criminal complaint will be handled properly; Lack of communication between tribal, state and federal representatives involved in the criminal complaint, leaving the victim bewildered and distrustful of "the system"; Tribal justice systems do not have access to detention or correctional facilities, probation or aftercare programs, diminishing effective sentencing and punishment options; Tribal justice systems are compromised by sentencing limitations imposed by the Indian Civil Rights Act and the victim understands she will not be protected; Fear of losing the respect and approval of cultural or tribal group (conflicts may pit family and clan members against one another); Fear of, and resistance to, alienation from relatives and cultural or tribal group; Fear of, and resistance to, losing the comfort of culturally familiar society; Reluctance to expose one's people, culture or lifeways to the criticism or ridicule of people of other races, who may indulge in victim-blaming, stereotyping or uninformed and racial comments about Indian people and customs; Fear that the batterer will not be arrested or prosecuted, particularly in a rural area, because the batterer's relatives or friends are law enforcement officers or criminal justice professionals; Fear that the children will be taken away by the batterer, the court system, relatives or Indian Child Welfare; Fear that the children will not become properly connected to their historical traditions, customs and culture and will grow up without a sense of identity or family; Fear of relocating to an area where victim and children will become more emotionally isolated than they may already be; Fear of relocating to an area where children will be exposed to greater violence, substance abuse or racial prejudice than they have already experienced; Duty of providing care for an elderly relative that may prevent the victim from relocating; Obligations to tribal or cultural group that may prevent the victim from relocating; Spiritual beliefs or practices and spiritual bonds or ties to a specific locale; Advice and counsel of elders, spiritual counselor, relatives, friends; Heavily invested emotionally in home or locale of family/tribal origin; The batterer has received more support and protection than the victim; Double jeopardy: feelings of isolation and powerlessness experienced as alienation, both as part of the consequences of "acculturation", and as a consequence of circumstances created by the batterer. |