Free Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence by Jerry Gardner Page A

(Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2001), p. 314.
    5   Many Native organizations working to end violence against Native women centralize the belief that women are sacred in their work. Two such organizations working on a national level influencing local work across Indian Country are Sacred Circle, located in South Dakota, and Mending the Sacred Hoop in Minnesota.
    6   The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (Duluth, Minnesota) developed a Power and Control Wheel that represented tactics of power and control. Struggling with having these unnatural beliefs incorporated into a wheel and recognizing additional tactics of power and control used against Native women, Cangleska/Sacred Circle later modified the tactics and placed them in a pyramid (see figure 3.1 ).
    7   Through my experiences in working to end domestic violence over the past twenty years, I have talked with many battered women in many contexts. These contexts include providing advocacy, providing direct services, conducting women’s educating groups, conducting focus groups, or organizing to create social change.
    8   According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993 — 1999 , intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. In 1999, women accounted for 85 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence (671,110 total), and men accounted for 15 percent of the victims (120,100 total).
    9   Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990).
    10   Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 191. Allen continues, “The amount of violence against women, alcoholism and violence, abuse and neglect by women against children and their aged relatives have all increased. These social ills were virtually unheard of among most tribes fifty years ago.”
    11   Other isms may include homophobia (the expression of hatred towards or discrimination against persons of a homosexual orientation) and ageism (the expression of hatred or discrimination against persons of an older or younger age).
    12   In my experience working with battered women, the vast majority of women were low-income or working-class women. I believe that women with more resources have more options available for leaving an abusive situation.
    13   Some of these examples are taken from the training program In Our Best Interest: A Process for Personal and Social Change (Minnesota Program Development, 1987). Other examples are drawn from my experience working as an advocate for battered women.
    14   Chapman, We, The People of the Earth, p. 114.
    15   Vicki Ybanez, “The Evolution of Domestic Violence and Reform Efforts Across Indian Country,” Introductory Manual to Domestic Violence in Indian Country (Mending the Sacred Hoop STOP Violence Against Indian Women, 2002), p. 7. Funding was slow to reach Indian Country. Advocating for change, a vocal group of Native women campaigned for VAWA “set-aside” funds to be designated for tribes and to ensure that resources reached the tribes. As a result, the STOP Violence Against Indian Women Grant Program was created to encourage tribal governments to develop and strengthen the tribal justice systems’ responses (including law enforcement, prosecution, victim services, and courts) to violence against women and to improve services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
    16   Chapman, We, the People of the Earth, p. 201.
    17   Gloria Valencia-Weber and Christine P. Zuni, “Domestic Violence and Tribal Protection of Indigenous Women in the United States,” Saint John’s Law Review 69 (1994): 69.

    Questions
     
Do you agree with Ybanez that respect for a woman because she is sacred is a traditional value and that those values should be used to combat domestic violence? Why does Ybanez