OK, the conventions are over, and Sarah Palin's dicey background and odd views are clear, so I want to re-introduce a Daily Kos pet project, and ask for help on a related one.
Last spring, the Netroots rescued the only women's shelter on the Standing Rock Reservation, Pretty Bird Woman House, which was about to close due to funding cuts.
Why did we do this? First, we were infuriated when the Amnesty International report, Maze of Injustice: the Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Violence, documented appalling rates of sexual assault against Native American women, the fact that most of the perpetrators are non-Native, and, worse, rarely prosecuted. Knowing that, we could hardly let a shelter serving these women close its doors.
Below the fold, I'll re-introduce and update the Pretty Bird Woman House story, ask you to help out a sister shelter, My Sister Friends' House, and then invite you to brainstorm on a more coordinated effort to help these shelters and raise awareness about Native American issues. At the end you'll find a link to Obama's proposals for Indian Country, a great video, and Biden's most recent statement as well.
[UPDATE 2: Yesterday I posted part of an email I received from Andy on fundraising and My Sister Friends' House. Apparently he had some of the information wrong. Georgia called me today to correct it.
Here is the current situation with My Sister Friends' House shelter:
** The shelter still needs your donations desperately, even though its fiscal sponsor, Project Safe, is closing in to use the house for a transitional housing project. The shelter is still waiting to see if it has received a federal Rural Grant. If it hasn't, Project Safe will take over the house for another purpose. If it does receive the grant, it will continue to function, and use your donations to function until the funds actually arrive.
** Whether or not the Rural Grant comes through, though, My Sister Friends' House will NOT close. It will merely adapt. Without the Rural Grant, and with your donations, they will simply look for a cheaper, smaller house to rent, or, in the worst case scenario, use one of the current staff member's extra bedrooms to house battered women, while continuing to pursue new grants and donations. (Since it is in a small city, it does not face the housing shortage problems that the Pretty Bird Woman House had to cope with on the Standing Rock Reservation).
How's that for dedicated? Like the staff of Pretty Bird Woman House, these women are NOT giving up. They are tough and determined.
How can we not help them?
UPDATE 1: given new information on My Sister Friends' House blog, I was worried it was closing, and your donations wouldn't go where you thought they would. Guess what? It kind of is, but the women are fighting on to save it.] Check out this email I got from AndyT on it:
My Sister Friends' House is closing. Project Safe, who controlled the grant
that funded them (that was the grant that ran out) pulled the rug out from
under them yesterday.
However, MSFH is not giving up. They still have an application for a
501(c)(3) in with the IRS. The problem is that until that application goes
through - they are stuck with very limited fundraising capabilities.
Since this all went down yesterday, I don't yet know what the plan is, but
since they are not giving up, the money raised for them will stay with them.
Georgia is on their board of directors and I want to hear what that board
decides before anything happens.
The worst case scenario is that they lose the house. In that case they are
no worse off than was PBWH during the time period that they had no house.
They intend to shelter women in their personal homes during that time.
I know, I know, it's election season, the economy sucks, and here's another cause to tug at your heart and purse strings. But please read the whole story...there are also nonmonetary ways to assist with this project.
Pretty Bird Woman House and the Netroots
At the end of April of last year, this community was collectively infuriated by the findings of the Amnesty International research report that documented the fact that at least one in three Native American women will be the victim of sexual assault in her lifetime. I was personally outraged not only at the situation, but also by the fact that Native American issues are so invisible that I had no idea that it was possible for non-Native men to go onto Indian reservations, rape women, and then escape justice merely by stepping off the reservation (read the Amnesty report and AndyT's diary on that subject for more info).
Well, I wasn't the only one riled up. In early May 2007, Kossack Nbier (who has since retired from here) started a fundraiser that raised $27,000 in three weeks so the shelter could stay open through the summer while the director of Pretty Bird Woman House, Georgia Little Shield, could seek new grants.
We saw immediate results from our efforts. Because the phones stayed connected, the shelter staff rescued a battered woman from her home at a time when it would otherwise have been closed for lack of funds. A few weeks later, a court advocate from the shelter helped a woman who had been raped by a bar owner, whom the mayor of the town would describe under oath as an "upstanding citizen," muster the courage to press her case in court. The man was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, a rare occurrence in that area, unbelievably enough (yes, he was non-native).
So, with these stories in mind, we were all satisfied with our efforts, especially because federal grants soon started coming in. However, in the fall, vandals destroyed the shelter, which had been in an apartment building. So, AndyT and I took over for Nbier and in a little more than three months we had raised over $87,000 for a new house (I set up this blog for the shelter where you can get more background information on that effort.) Many, many other Kossacks also wrote diaries to help raise the money. Just do a stories and diaries search on Pretty Bird Woman House on this site and you'll see the number of people who participated in the effort.
Many of us were brought to tears by the generosity of this community. We cried again when the shelter finally bought a house after overcoming a little NIMBY opposition.
The Pretty Bird Woman House is a now stable, well-functioning shelter that also does community outreach.
Donations Update
The Netroots (btw, we've gotten lots of support from LiveJournal and other bloggers as well, but the epicenter of the effort is here) has continued to support the shelter.
People are continuing to send material donations.
In the spring we did a ChipIn for bunkbeds for the children at the same time that other people were buying housewarming items from a Target wishlist. Then a nearby tribe contributed living room, dining room, and bedroom furniture from a casino hotel refurbishing project. The house also had a major sewer problem in the spring, which your donations helped pay to repair.
Here's some of the donated furniture:
In the summer we did another ChipIn, which raised $1000 to buy paint for the badly-peeling house. A local church youth group then spent a few days painting it, and the house now looks terrific.
OK, so aren't you proud of what we, the Netroots, have accomplished? Not only are we helping elect progressive candidates, but we are also capable of supporting vital community projects. We really are changing the world little by little.
The people who donated to the Pretty Bird Woman House can actually take credit for helping the shelter staff assist hundreds of the poorest women in the country escape domestic abuse or get help if they are sexually assaulted. The women of the Standing Rock Reservation would have nowhere else to turn if it weren't for the Netroots, and that's not an exaggeration.
Pretty Bird Woman House Needs a Furnace
Pretty Bird Woman House only needs one more thing right now, aside from ongoing material donations (see the right side of the blog for a list of what's needed and the address to send things to). When the PBWH board bought the house it wasn't evident that the furnace was almost shot. So, shortly I'll be starting a fall drive for that. There is already a ChipIn up on the blog in case you're interested in helping right now.
My Sister Friends' House (Mita Maske Ti Ki)
The reason we haven't started a furnace fund drive in earnest yet is because Pretty Bird Woman House has a sister shelter in Sioux Falls, SD that is in danger of closing due to State and local funding cuts, and it needs your immediate help. Like the other shelter's director, Jolana Thompson is perfectly capable of procuring new grants. All she needs is a reprieve in the form of $11,000 for September and then $24,000 for the rest of the fall to give her time to line up new funding.
About two months ago, Georgia Little Shield approached me about the possibility of helping the shelter with a blog and ChipIn. To make a long story short, I didn't follow through sufficiently because my mother, who is a cancer patient, suddenly took a turn for the worse and is now in home hospice under my care. So, AndyT stepped in and kicked off a fundraiser with this diary, and then this one.. Nice job Andy. However, I'm now finding that I need a diversion for my own mental health, so here I am back again.
As of Monday morning, we're up to about $3,900, but to stay open through September, the shelter will need a total of $11,000 for this month, and then $24,000 more to get it through the fall grant-seeking cycle.
Given the size of the Netroots, that amount of money is actually feasible even during election season...if you donate...or, if you can't right now, pass the word so others will (and they will).
To donate, see AndyT's diary and appeal for donations here, or the blog he created here.
If you'd prefer to send a check rather than use your credit card at the ChipIn on the blog, here's the address:
Mita Maske Ti Ki
(My Sister Friends' House)
PO Box 2141
Sioux Falls, SD 57101
Based on my own experience, if you help save this shelter, you will have an extremely satisfying experience. You will get a huge bang for your donation buck since these little shelters provide sorely-needed services in under served, impoverished areas. They can't exist without the help of small donors like you when emergencies like this one hit.
A Modest Proposal
Due to the success of the Pretty Bird Woman House project, and the potential for rescuing another shelter, My Sister Friends' House, it occurred to me that if we took a more organized type of collective action, we could make a huge difference in the lives of many more Native American women in this country.
If you had been in on the excitement of buying a new house for Pretty Bird Woman House you would have seen how relatively easy and fun this proposition is, while it also serves the serious purpose of providing a desperately-needed service and raising awareness of Native American issues.
So here's my idea.
Lets form a group of bloggers whose purpose is helping women's shelters who serve Native American populations survive financial crises. We've already got a Yahoo Group set up for the Pretty Bird Woman House. We could do one for a more general purpose. But first, here are my ideas.
Here are a couple of ways we might organize ourselves.
I'm brainstorming here, so please give your ideas and feedback in the comments.
- We might form groups by region to fundraise. In that case, we'd need volunteers by region.
- As bloggers we can raise awareness about the issues faced by Native American women in our own blogs, and put up ChipIns for the shelters.
- Any teachers out there? These shelters would be perfect for a high school class or university service organization to adopt. You can use them to educate your students about Native American history and culture while you involve them in community service.
- Have the shelter staff and Amnesty International staff speak at your school or church as part of a fundraiser. The speakers we had at the Netroots Nation panel made very moving and effective presentations. The women from the Standing Rock Reservation give especially moving presentations.
- Churches are always a good place to raise funds for these kinds of things. For example, Pastor Dan from Street Prophets took up a collection and sent several hundred dollars to Pretty Bird Woman House last winter.
- Organize donation drives and/ or send your own donations(see the Pretty Bird Woman House blog for what's needed). It's also really easy to get donations through freecycle if you don't have your own. In fact, I got so many baby clothes from a neighbor that I ran out of money to send them all.
- Other ideas? Put them in the comments.
Obama and Indian Country
Since we're in campaign season, I thought you might want to know where Obama and Biden stand on these issues.
A while ago I did a diary comparing Obama's and Clinton's proposals to assist First Americans. Frankly, both were excellent, but Obama's came out slightly ahead for their thoroughness and his promise to have an advisor on Native American issues in the White House. I won't go into that detail again, since this diary is already long enough, but if you want more info, you can check out the diary or the Obama campaign's web page and blog on Native American issues.
All I can say is that when Obama is elected, I'm confident that he will do better than his predecessors to address the many outstanding injustices that Native American women and men face every day, since he has promised to prioritize Native American issues.
Check out this video of Obama speaking to the Crow Nation.
Joe Biden's record is GREAT as well. Did you know that Joe Biden wrote the Violence Against Women Act, which, among other things, provides funding for women's shelters? Just Sunday, he made this statement in Montana.
Here's an excerpt:
On Sunday, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden said an Obama-Biden administration would increase federal prosecutions in Indian Country and strengthen tribal court jurisdiction over crimes occurring within reservation borders, regardless of the race of the criminal.
snip...
Native women, in particular, suffer when tribal jurisdictions overlap with state and federal jurisdictions, creating an environment of lawlessness, said Biden, in an interview with the Missoulian, after speaking to a crowd of some 1,200 people at Flathead High School.
*
Tribes cannot prosecute a non-Native if crimes such as sexual assault or domestic abuse happen on tribal lands. Meanwhile, one in three Native women will be raped in her lifetime. More than 80 percent of the time, the rapist is non-Native.
"We use that jurisdiction as rationale not to proceed against abuse against women," said Biden, D-Del., who also wrote the landmark Violence Against Women Act.
Another reason to rally around this ticket. EVERYONE will benefit from this administration.
So, can you help out these shelters in some way?
UPDATE: this diary is scrolling down the list lightening fast, so I just c changed the title....