October 2, 2017 | The Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center (AKNWRC) is honored to announce that we have been awarded a federal grant by the Family and Youth Services Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to serve as the first ever Alaska Native Tribal Resource Center on Domestic Violence (ANTRC). In 2010, the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act was amended to include funding for state resource centers dedicated to reducing tribal disparities in domestic violence in states with high proportions of Indian populations in a culturally relevant manner. The ANTRC is the first ever funding authorized under this specific federal amendment.
“Such historic and long overdue support upholds the federal government’s trust responsibility to assist Indian tribes in safeguarding the lives of Indian women,” said Tami Truett Jerue, Executive Director, AKNWRC. The Indian Law and Order Commission report sent to Congress November 2013 stated that Alaska Native women are over-represented in the domestic violence victim population by 250%, and while Alaska Natives represented 19% of the state population, they are 47% of reported rape victims.
“With such support, we can address domestic violence working closely with Alaska Native tribal governments, and identify and remove barriers to victim safety and abuser accountability, especially in rural, remote Alaska Native villages across the state,” said Shirley Moses, AKNWRC Board Co-Chair and Executive Director, Healing Native Hearts Coalition.
“This funding gives us the opportunity to break the deafening silence surrounding victims and bring healing to our people with laws, policies and local responses rooted in Alaska Native voices, languages and teachings,” said Joann Horn, AKNWRC Board Co-Chair and Executive Director, Emmonak Women’s Shelter.
About the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center
Organized in 2015, the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center is a tribal nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence against women with Alaska’s 229 tribes and allied organizations. AKNWRC board members are Alaska Native women raised in Alaska Native Villages and have 141 years of combined experience in tribal governments, nonprofit management, domestic violence, and sexual assault advocacy (both individual crisis and systems and grassroots social change advocacy at the local, statewide, regional, national and international levels), and other social service experience. AKNWRC’s philosophy is that violence against women is rooted in the colonization of indigenous nations.
