The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law signed by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994. The Act provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress when prosecutors chose to not prosecute cases. The Act also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the U.S. Department of Justice.
The United States Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) was created following the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994. The Act was renewed in 2005, 2013 and again in 2022. The Violence Against Women Act legislation requires the Office on Violence Against Women to work to respond to and reduce violence against women in many different areas, including on college campuses and in people's homes. VAWA requires Office on Violence Against Women to administer justice and strengthen services for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
Native American women encounter a disproportionate level of sexual violence from verbal abuse to physical harm, including but not limited to domestic and sexual assaults. Such violations not only result in lasting detrimental effects on the individuals subjected to them but also reverberate throughout their entire community, exacerbating social challenges.
Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), is violent acts primarily or exclusively committed by men or boys against women or girls. Such violence is often considered a form of hate crime, committed against women or girls specifically because they are female, and can take many forms.
Deer Woman, sometimes known as the Deer Lady, is a spirit in Native American mythology whose associations and qualities vary, depending on situation and relationships. Generally, however, to men who have harmed women and children, she is vengeful and murderous and known to lure these men to their deaths. She appears as either a beautiful young woman with deer feet or as a deer.
The Muscogee Nation, or Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The nation descends from the historic Muscogee Confederacy, a large group of indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Official languages include Muscogee, Yuchi, Natchez, Alabama, and Koasati, with Muscogee retaining the largest number of speakers. They commonly refer to themselves as Este Mvskokvlke. Historically, they were often referred to by European Americans as one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the American Southeast.
Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.
Melissa L. Tatum is research professor of law and former director of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law. She previously served as professor of law and co-director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Tulsa College of Law.
Melissa Farley is an American clinical psychologist, researcher and radical feminist anti-pornography and anti-prostitution activist. Farley is best known for her studies of the effects of prostitution, trafficking and sexual violence. She is the founder and director of the San Francisco-based organization, Prostitution Research and Education.
The Round House is a novel by the American writer Louise Erdrich first published on October 2, 2012 by HarperCollins. The Round House is Erdrich's 14th novel and is part of her "justice trilogy" of novels, which includes The Plague of Doves released in 2008 and LaRose in 2016. The Round House follows the story of Joe Coutts, a 13-year-old boy who is frustrated with the poor investigation into his mother's gruesome attack and sets out to find his mother's attacker with the help of his best friends, Cappy, Angus, and Zack. Like most of Erdrich's other works, The Round House is set on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota.
Native American feminism or Native feminism is, at its root, understanding how gender plays an important role in indigenous communities both historically and in modern-day. As well, Native American feminism deconstructs the racial and broader stereotypes of indigenous peoples, gender, sexuality, while also focusing on decolonization and breaking down the patriarchy and pro-capitalist ideology. As a branch of the broader Indigenous feminism, it similarly prioritizes decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, and the empowerment of indigenous women and girls in the context of Native American and First Nations cultural values and priorities, rather than white, mainstream ones. A central and urgent issue for Native feminists is the Missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) also known as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and more broadly as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) or Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) is a human rights crisis of violence against Indigenous women in Canada and the United States,notably those in the FNIM and Native American communities, but also amongst other Indigenous peoples such as in Australia and New Zealand, and the grassroots movement to raise awareness of MMIW through organizing marches; building databases of the missing; holding local community, city council, and tribal council meetings; and conducting domestic violence trainings and other informational sessions for police.
Angelique EagleWoman is a Dakota law professor and scholar of Indigenous law. She is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation. EagleWoman was the Dean of the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada from 2016 until she stepped down in June 2018, alleging issues of systemic racism leading to constructive dismissal.
Mary Kathryn Nagle is a playwright and an attorney specializing in tribal sovereignty of Native nations and peoples. She was born in Oklahoma City, OK, and is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She previously served as the executive director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP) from 2015 to 2019.
Marjorie Bear Don't Walk is an Ojibwa-Salish health care professional and Native American fashion designer. She is most known as an advocate for reforms in the Indian Health Service, and specifically the care of urban Native Americans. In addition, she is a fashion designer who has targeted career women, designing professional attire which incorporated traditional techniques into her clothing.
Violence against women in the United States is the use of domestic abuse, murder, sex-trafficking, rape and assault against women in the United States. It has been recognized as a public health concern. Culture in the United States has led towards the trivialization of violence towards women, with media in the United States possibly contributing to making women-directed violence appear unimportant to the public.
The prison–industrial complex is the rapid expansion of US inmates and prisons in favor of private prison companies and businesses that profit from the services needed in the construction and maintaining of prisons. The businesses benefit and profit from cheap prison labor, food services, medical services, surveillance technology, and construction. The financial incentive of building prisons encourages incarceration and affects people of color at disproportionately high rates. Native Americans are the largest group per capita in the US prison system and are more likely to be affected by police violence than any other racial group.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Native American country.
Man camps are temporary workforce housing to accommodate a large influx of high-paid workers in the resource extraction industries, especially in Canada and the United States. Twentieth century boom–bust housing cycles related to the oil and gas industry made companies reluctant to invest in permanent housing for temporary workforces.
The National Indigenous Women's Resource Center (NIWRC) is a nonprofit organization that provides health resources to Native American women and also advocates for women's health, housing, and domestic violence support. The organization was founded and is led by Native American women.
