Mending the Sacred Hoop

MENDING THE SCARED HOOP

Mending the Sacred Hoop is a Native owned and operated non-profit 501(c) 3 organization that exists to address violence against Native women and works to end it. We organize on issues surrounding violence against American Indian/Alaska Native women in our home community of Duluth, MN and throughout the State of Minnesota. We also work with Tribes and Native communities nationally that are addressing the issues of domestic and sexual violence, dating violence, sex trafficking and stalking in their communities. We provide training to strengthen Tribal and Native community responses to these crimes, including the advocacy and systems responses, community understanding and awareness, engaging men in the work to end violence against women, and coordinating community responses that provide for women’s safety and uphold offender accountability.

What Frames Our Work

• Native women are the highest victimized population in the United States by perpetrators of all races. (Bureau of Crime Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. American Indians and Crime Report. Washington: 1999).
• Violence against women is a social problem that affects individuals, families, and communities (including schools, medical, and judicial institutions), and as such, requires societal change.
• Domestic and sexual violence is about establishing power and maintaining control.
• Colonization is based in a belief that one group has the right to exert their will over another and use people and resources for their own gain.
• Acculturated values and beliefs have eroded our Indigenous structures and life ways.
• We have to reclaim our own Indigenous teachings on culture and values to create social change in and for our communities.

What would you do if you witnessed verbal abuse?