When I first heard of Pretty Bird Woman House – the only women’s shelter serving over 10,000 Lakotas on Standing Rock Reservation – they had just issued the last paycheck they had money to cover. They were close to having their phone lines disconnected. A small, struggling organization whose services were desperately needed was about to fold for reasons we’ve heard way too much of the last few years. No funding available for social programs. No time for frivolities like helping raped or battered women and their kids. After all, we’ve got a war to pay for!
An NPR report on rape mentioned Pretty Bird Woman House and its losing struggle to survive.
Then something marvelous happened. Some Kossacks began to diary about PBWH, asking for donations. I was new to blogging, and it was my first experience with that kind of outpouring of compassion and support. It really was amazing.
So take a moment to appreciate a purely positive accomplishment of this community. See where it took Pretty Bird Woman House and what may come next.
Jackie Brown Otter, who lives on the Standing Rock Reservation, remembers all too vividly the day six years ago when her younger sister went missing. Her Lakota name was Pretty Bird Woman. Her house was found empty, a window broken, the rooms ransacked, and bloody bedding stuffed in a trash bin. She had been raped in her own home and then kidnapped. It took almost a day for tribal police to arrive. It took several more days for the FBI to show up. Later, Pretty Bird Woman’s body was found, dumped beside a rural road.
Such slow response times are not unusual. The reservation is huge; the tribal police are underfunded and stretched thin, and other law enforcement agencies may not be responsive.
According to an Amnesty International report, the rate of rape and sexual assault against Indian women is about twice that of the general population – 1 in 3. Around 85% of those rapes are by non-Indians, according to Justice Department statistics. And the perpetrators are rarely prosecuted.
Often, the report says, Indian women don't report such crimes, "because of the belief that nothing will be done." Poverty worsens the situation. On Standing Rock Reservation, for instance, the health system is so underfunded that most nurses are not trained in how to prepare a rape kit to preserve evidence of a crime.
I remember hearing Jackie Brown Otter speak about her sister on an NPR report, her voice charged with sorrow. "She smiled, and she was well liked and always laughing. . . . It’s just beyond words for me."
Jackie Brown Otter started Pretty Bird Woman House in her sister’s honor, as a way to help other women facing the impact of sexual assault. Pretty Bird Woman House maintains a 24-hour crisis line, and provides physical and emotional support in the aftermath of assault. It helps women deal with the immediate emotional trauma, and navigate the medical and legal systems.
Then there is the additional problem of domestic violence. In a culture where poverty, despair, and alcoholism are common, its level is hard to measure. Reporting is hampered by lack of transportation which leaves some women simply trapped, by slow response times for law enforcement and emergency personnel, and in some cases by fear of law enforcement agencies.
From January 2005 to August 2006, with Georgia Little Shields as director, PBWH was involved in 125 domestic violence cases - 15 cases per month - that were filed with the Standing Rock Tribal Court. Without the shelter's help, many of those cases would have been ignored or withdrawn. By April of 2006, Pretty Bird Woman House had provided services to 108 women and 102 children, all of whom were victims of domestic or sexual violence.
By then their initial grant had run out, and despite all their efforts no further assistance had been found.
That’s when the DKOS diaries on Pretty Bird Woman House started. A flow of $10 and $20 contributions from strangers on the internet (along with some $100 and $500 gifts) began to flow in to the startled women on Standing Rock Reservation.
They came from people all over the country. Maine, Texas, Oregon, Tennessee. An unemployed man sent part of his tax return. An elderly woman contributed from her social security. People sent messages too – messages of understanding from women who had experienced assault, or messages of simple empathy and support. And here’s the thing: even if this effort had not saved Pretty Bird Woman House, it would have made a difference, simply because those women struggling so hard to keep PBWH alive would no longer have been struggling alone.
Georgia Little Shield, in a thank-you email to DKos, said,
I have worked in this field of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault for over 13 years and have seen some of the most inhuman things done to our women of color, and some time think "Why does the government send money across the seas to other countries when it has so much going on here." You know, we have had as many as13 deaths due to sexual assaults that we get no press or no one cares. And this is just in a small area. I think to myself, how come, Why, no one cares. But that is not true...
Thank you much for giving us hope that we can help many women and their children.
And the donations kept coming. I found it remarkable to watch. We had figured out, in discussion with Georgia Little Shield, that $25,000 was needed to carry PBWH through the summer and into the fall funding cycle. Over the course of only a few days, there it was. A full $25,000 plus some -- a key to the future.
This is the remarkable power of the internet, when it works right. It can make a community of strangers, based on our shared humanity and a vision of a better future. It can’t fix everything. It will take a long long time to cure the sickness of culture and spirit that leads rapists to pray on the vulnerable – in this case, Indian women marginalized by poverty and the bigotry around them. It will take a long time to heal the wounds of domestic violence. But some things can be done right now, bringing a movement toward justice and a crucial gift of hope into situations that have known too much disempowerment and despair. For this, Kossacks should be proud.
As Georgia Little Shield said,
it is so wonderful that we still live in a country that people still have hearts.
There were also some Kossacks who volunteered to help PBWH in longer-term ways: designing a website, helping with grant-writing. And it is great news to hear, via Betson8’s diary yesterday, that PBWH has in fact gotten a federal grant. In fact, they’ve gotten a three-year grant, which is even better news, because it means that they don’t have to be scrambling continually for money. They have some breathing room, time to concentrate on building their program, knowing that for this period at least the resources will be there.
A New Challenge
Pretty Bird Woman House has solid funding now, and a paid staff of three, but they also have a housing crisis. As Betson8 describes it:
the building they were in was broken into so many times by people who smashed through exterior walls to gain entrance that it became unsafe safe for anyone to stay there. So, the Pretty Bird Woman House lost its house. To add insult to injury, somebody torched the building the day after they moved out.
So PBWH has set up a house fund, and is holding a fundraising drive. Contributions from Kossacks would be most welcome. Having a house would give PBWH much more stability and provide a great base for their continued success in helping women in need and their children.
Here is a letter from Georgia Little Shields to Daily Kos, discussing what was done with our dollars, and the housing situation, and also telling us about an encouraging new attitude on the part of at least one district attorney.
Date: October 23, 2007
To: Those of you that donated to the Pretty Bird Woman House
Fr: Georgia Little Shield/Director
Want to thank all of you that have so graciously given from your heart to help the women here on the Standing Rock Reservation. With your helpful dollars we have provided the services for One hundred and eighty eight women (188) and One hundred and thirty two children (132). We answered three hundred and ninety seven (397) CRISIS CALLS. What we did with your dollars was to pay for the three employees that provide these services for the women. We also paid for the phone and crisis lines. It is so great to be able to do the work when you have so much more to give. We had since then received a three year grant from the federal government. This will keep the workers paid but we still have the shelter crisis that we are with out a shelter. We are located on a 2.3 million acre reservation and have yet only one to two officers that cover the whole reservation per shift. With the lack of officers we were unable to prevent vandalism to the shelter that we were in. We had three break-ins to the shelter and a lot of food was taken and the large TV that was donated to us. The second break in they stole our computers. The vandals were coming through the walls. Breaking through the sheet rock, we had to move out to assure the safety of the women and children. We are currently looking for a new shelter home. We are doing a fund raiser to begin a fund for a shelter and a fence that will protect the area with a surveillance system.
Oh must tell you what changes are happening on the front of the Amnesty International report. I recently attended a court sentencing of man that pled guilty to a charge of sexual assault against a Native American Woman and the Mayor of his town testified that he was an up standing community member and that the community would except him back with open arms and to just give him probation. This angered the District Attorney of South Dakota. That men can be upstanding citizens, and do these things to Native women, and be accepted back into the community as if they did nothing wrong. Finally some one is seeing our problem and correcting it. The man did get 33 months incarceration and three years probation.
If you could please post this to the blog and thank you so much for all your support in getting a change started.
Georgia Little Shield/Director
Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O. Box 596
McLaughlin SD 57642
Betson8’s diary also links to earlier diaries on DKos covering Pretty Bird Woman House if you want to delve more into the background.
I hope that Daily Kos will once more respond generously to Pretty Bird Woman House. Standing Rock Reservation is one of the most impoverished regions in this nation. Life is hard, the traditional culture shattered. Yet as on other reservations, there are people of remarkably strong spirit who are patiently, stubbornly, bravely working to make a difference. This is one of the ways that we can help.
But whatever happens now, I will always remember the openhearted generosity of the response last spring, and be glad that I could be a part of it.
If you want to contribute, you can find the ChipIn link here. THere's also an address for those who prefer to send checks:
Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O. Box 596
McLaughlin, SD 57642