RECLAIMING OUR SACREDNESS

The Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, Reclaiming Our Sacredness, represents the rural, isolated tribes in a six-state area of the northern Great Plains. Active members are Native women who are either staff or volunteers of tribal government operated or community-based service programs offering services in domestic violence or sexual assault.

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The Society evolved from the need for the small individual programs to have support, share promising practices and frustrations, network, obtain culturally and linguistically specific technical assistance, training, consultation, and collaborate to strengthen strategies and responses to violence in their respective tribal communities.

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The geographical area that constitutes the service area of the Society includes tribes in southern Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

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Tribes represented in the organization include the Lower Sioux Tribe in Minnesota, Omaha, Ponca, Santee and Winnebago Tribes in Nebraska; Fort Peck, Crow, Blackfeet, and Northern Cheyenne Tribes in Montana; Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Sisseton-Wahpeton (Lakota Traverse) and Yankton Sioux in South Dakota as well as Fort Berthold, Spirit Lake and urban Native populations of Bismarck in North Dakota.

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Tribal populations are culturally and geographically isolated and have been identified as under served populations for a variety of reasons. The typical profile of a domestic violence and/or sexual assault program in this service area is a one-woman program with a small budget.