As attention turns to relationships
this time of year, for some Native American women, the reality of
their lives is less than loving.
According to U.S. Department of
Justice statistics, Native American women are victims of domestic
violence or physical assault at more than double the rate of other
racial group. An estimated one in three Native American women are
assaulted or raped in their lifetimes and three out of five
experience domestic violence.
The White House proclaimed January
National Stalking Awareness Month and the U.S. Department of
Education declared the same month as National Human Trafficking
Awareness Month. Both issues have an impact on Native women on and
off the reservation. But for one women’s advocate in the Twin Cities,
the goal is to heal the root of the problems through traditional
methods, addressing historical trauma.
Nancy Bordeaux ran away from the
Rosebud Reservation in 1986, escaping an abusive husband who nearly
took her life. She was 27 years-old when she started over in
Minneapolis. There she met other Native people, refugees of
government relocations programs and women like her. There were a lot
of women like her; while Bordeaux’s circumstance was tragic it was,
unfortunately, not uncommon. Nor is it uncommon now.
Bordeaux found work keeping books for
the Mdewakantowan Dakota’s casino operations in Prior Lake, Minn.
She established a peaceful home, but was unhappy in her professional
life, counting money for the tribe. She wanted to help women seeking
to put their lives back together after leaving abusive relationships.
After several attempts Bordeaux
thought she had found a job doing just that when she was hired by the
Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center. They put her to work,
however, on Indian child welfare cases. Bordeaux’s duties included
entering people’s homes, alongside county child protection agents,
to investigate reported maltreatment of Indian children. “That’s
when I started learning about the institutional racism that exists
within the American system of justice,” she said.
The job, she says, started to eat her
alive. “They were opening cases against Indian parents when they
shouldn’t have, removing children from homes, transferring them
into the care of non-Indian people. I no longer wanted to work for a
system that perpetuated genocide – the forced removal and transfer
of children from one ethnic group to another.”
After the realization that she
“couldn’t continue to exist as if I was an assimilated Indian
living in the city,” Bordeaux returned to the Rosebud Reservation
where she sought help and healing among traditional spiritual people.
“Looking back, I realize that the most powerful thing I did to help
my people was return to our ceremonies,” she said.
Today, the 56 year-old Sicangu Lakota
says she is optimistic about the futures of many of the women she’s
helped through her work in women’s advocacy. Bordeaux feels some
satisfaction knowing that the extensive networking she’s done seems
to be having an impact at the national level.
At the urging of Attorney General Eric
Holder, congress passed the 288-page reauthorization of the Violence
Against Women Act last month, which included language proposed by the
Justice Department that for the first time would allow tribal courts
to prosecute non-Indians who assaulted native women on tribal lands.
It would also allow the courts to issue and enforce protective
orders, whether the perpetrator is Indian or non-Indian.
While Bordeaux welcomes the tightening
of laws to aid in the prosecution of abusers, she is focused on
healing the victims. Over the course of her career she has come to
see that no law can mend the flesh, bones and psyche of Native women
who survive assault. There is only one thing that can accomplish
that, she says – a return to traditional spiritual ways, a practice
that will not only heal the present generations, but future
generations as well.
The Circle: You’ve been working
with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault at the
Minneapolis American Indian Center since 2007. How has your approach
to healing changed over those years?
NB: When I first started I was
surprised to learn that many of the women seeking help and healing
did not know their culture. Most could not do something as simple for
themselves as smudge with sage and create a healing space for
themselves. I started looking at how that loss or lack of cultural
knowledge contributed to their hardships.
The Circle: How did you begin
infusing your work with traditional knowledge?
NB: At first, I didn’t. I looked at
all of the programs that were out there for women and emulated some
of the things that were being done. I thought I had to develop all of
these technical skills, organizational strategies, short term and
long term goals, benchmarks, and objectives. None if it came from a
traditional indigenous point-of-view, and most of it did little to
promote healing. Finally, to put it nicely, I realized that it was
all a bit sterile. I began looking for ways to improve my clients’
lives using methods that were true to where I came from, to where
they came from. I began to infuse my approach with traditional
teachings from medicine people, elders, Native doctors and thinkers.
The Circle: As you engage this way
of healing, what were some of your challenges?
NB: The best thing I ever did
professionally was give myself permission to be true to myself, to do
what came naturally. But as I did, I realized that a lot of the
leaders in our Native communities had not yet dealt with their own
historic trauma. They had not done the hard work of looking back at
what our people have been through and sorting it all out. A prominent
female leader here in Minneapolis said to me, “You can’t use
healing in your work because you’re not a therapist.” I said to
her, “But I know my culture.” That’s when it started to click
for me: to heal our women of effects of abuse they have suffered, it
is necessary to address their historic trauma. For Native women, this
can really only be accomplished by restoring traditional culture and
spirituality to the center of their lives.
The Circle: How does addressing
historic trauma heal victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault?
NB: When women understand historic
trauma they can see its effects everywhere in their lives. Once they
understand their place in history they can see how genocide has
contributed to their homelessness, poverty, illnesses, unemployment,
drug and alcohol abuse and lack of self-esteem. When we look into the
past we realize that Native people once lived in harmony with one
another, with the Earth and all living things. When we realize this,
we can look at those practices that kept us healthy, and we see they
can be restored and help us thrive as individuals, families and
communities.
The Circle: When women start to
understand how the experiences of their ancestors are still affecting
them today, what changes do you observe in them?
NB: I see in them the same thing I
experienced when I recognized my own historic trauma – a powerful
awakening. I’ve always wanted to make a difference for my family.
I’ve experienced extreme hardships in my life coming from the
Rosebud Reservation. I had to flee from my reservation, flee from my
life because I used to be married to a man who was terribly abusive.
He went to prison for almost killing me. I blamed him for a lot of
years for doing that to me. I ran up to Minnesota first, then went to
California, then to Washington State. I was looking for something. I
came back and found it in Minneapolis. When I started my own healing
journey I realized that there was something more to domestic abuse.
It was happening in family after family and on reservation after
reservation. This awakening was so powerful that it affected
everything I did in my personal life and my work. This also coincided
with my ability to really help women.
The Circle: As you changed your
professional approach, what were some of the ideas and methods you
incorporated?
NB: The most effective thing I did was
ask for spiritual help in the way our people have been doing for
thousands of years. At first I had trouble believing what I was
seeing, because until then I had not had much success at helping my
clients. But when I asked for spiritual help I received it. I
realized that there are spiritual forces who really want to help. I
started using sage and prayer with all of my clients, and helping
them learn to do these things. One day I was asked to go present at a
local organization that serves battered women. One of the Native
women working there asked me, “How can we practice our culture and
our ceremonies even while we live in the cities?” I said, “For
the most part you can, there are only a few things that you can’t
do, like the sun dance. But always remember you live on ancestral
lands, and that right here is the Bdote, the confluence of the
Minnesota River and the Mississippi Rivers, the origin place of the
Dakota people. Just because we’ve lost some of our ways doesn’t
mean those ways were lost to us. Our ancestral spirits have been here
all along. They’re still here. We know this because when we call
upon them, they come to help.”
The Circle: How is historic trauma
passed from generation to generation?
NB: We have understood for some time
that the conditions of one’s upbringing will dictate much about the
course of their life. What we are now coming to see is that body
memory, or DNA, has gives us inherited traits that also effect who
were become. It is important to note that the trauma that was
inflicted upon our forebears is genetically coded in our bodies. But
what is fascinating is that studies are showing information stored in
our DNA can be changed through positive input as well. When we
practice our culture we pass that on through body memory, and we pass
on the information future generations need for their own healing. I
believe this is the most powerful lesson we can learn about ourselves
as Native American people: how to restore culture to the center of
our lives— not only for ourselves, but for the benefit of future
generations.
