This sample proclamation aims to assist Tribal leaders and advocates in their efforts to proclaim October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month across Tribal Nations, Alaska Native villages, and Indian and Native Hawaiian communities. We encourage you to download and customize this template as needed.
This sample proclamation aims to assist Tribal leaders and advocates in their efforts to proclaim April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month across Tribal Nations, Alaska Native villages, and Indian and Native Hawaiian communities. We encourage you to download and customize this template as needed.
The work to end violence against Native women and recreate peaceful, harmonious communities is based on reclaiming our traditional values, belief systems and life ways. As shown in the Nonviolence Equality Wheel, the key values of this life way are: compassion, respect, generosity, mutual sharing, humility, contributing/industriousness, courage, love and being spiritually centered. At the center of this tool is equality. Equality is recognizing that everyone has the right to follow their path. Equality means power-sharing, not holding power over.
Introduction
The social, political, and cultural instability during the colonial era and American Revolution involved ongoing warfare, shifting allegiances among Indigenous and European nations, enslavement, and relocation of Indigenous people. Indigenous women and girls were particularly impacted “…as females during wartime, colonial expansion, and slavery… [are] especially vulnerable to the sexual violence that so often accompanied conquest…” (Miles, 2008).
This project is supported by Grant Number 90EV0409 from the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Family and Youth Services Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
