An Interview with Uniting Three Fires Against Violence (UTFAV): Part 2 of 2

Laura Killingbeck:

What do you wish people understood better about you and your work?

Sandra Pilgrim-Lewis:

I want you to understand…my Lakota word is “Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ.” And that means that we are all related, that we are all connected, that we are all made by the same creator. The two-legged, the four-legged, the winged, the finned, and the crawlers. And even though I have issues with the crawlers, I’ve got to learn to work with that. I’ve got to learn to coexist with them.

I want you to understand that we are connected and that violence is wrong. And if we can learn to honor each other in our connectedness, we would have a better world. And that we don't want harm or violence to come to anyone.

And so, how can we work together in our connectedness, to understand the ways that our humanity is connected, our life is connected, our way of living, creation is connected? If we can do that, then we can go forward in such a good way. And the differences can be put aside.

How are we connected in life, in creation? That would be the one thing that I would want people to hold onto, because if we could hold onto that, then the violence could go away.

Laura Killingbeck:

That’s beautiful and it's powerful. And I think…listening to you talk is really a gift, so thank you.

I feel like there's so much that all of you are holding and moving–the energy that you're moving every day is really powerful.

One of the factors that orsa credit union has identified in abusive relationships is financial abuse. Do you have any examples that speak to how financial abuse and economic control affect people's ability to stay safe in relationships?

Vanessa Owaski-Patzwald:

I don't have the statistics of the number of people when I worked for the ARC [Advocacy Resource Center, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians], but it is prevalent. Almost in every case.

When you think of the power and control wheel…we were actually at a gathering last night, and I mentioned that it’s hard that the general public doesn't understand the whole dynamics of domestic violence. When they hear DV, they think physical abuse, and that's it.

And sometimes you can't sit somebody down to educate them on something if it's not happening to them. So, it's hard to sometimes get awareness out.

But when you think of that power and control wheel, and you think of the manipulation, the coercion–maybe there is no physical abuse, but maybe there's threats of physical abuse–they're all components of that. And financial abuse is one that happens, probably in most cases.

So many clients and survivors were like, “Well, he doesn't let me work,” because he didn’t want them to have money. Or he made them work, but then took their paycheck. That is a huge component of DV. Well, the whole wheel is...

But I love how they are highlighting that [financial abuse], and bringing awareness for that component. I'd love to be able to teach the whole community about the whole wheel.

You don't necessarily have to be getting physically abused. But if you're getting to the point where somebody's won your trust and love, and then they're turning on you, and then they threaten you: that is a form of abuse, and power and control, and that's domestic violence. You know? I love that they're highlighting that component.

Sandra Pilgrim-Lewis:

I think when we don't recognize financial abuse, we leave out a whole lot of people and don't realize that they're being abused. We were in Oklahoma last week, and we were talking to two survivors of trafficking. And one of them had been a military wife. She talked about what happened to her.

I don't think you all ever heard this story before, but I was a military wife. I was abused by my husband, and my husband was a high ranking military officer. He was a Full Bird colonel. And he was very abusive.

I decided to leave, and he cut me off like that. And then I got robbed, and they took my military ID. And my military ID was my health insurance. He had hit me upside the head, and it ruptured my eardrum. I had no way to get health insurance. I had no way to get any money.

And who was I gonna go to? If I went to the military police, they weren’t going to listen to me–I was married to a high ranking officer. If I went off base to get help, they weren't going to help me, because they were going to tell me to go back to the military. I was so far from my tribe. And there was no tribe there. And even if I had gone to my tribe, there was not going to be any jurisdiction–he wasn't native.

Finally, I went to this place and sold all my jewelry to get enough money to get me and my daughter away, and started driving. We were in Louisiana, and ran into the biggest snowstorm in history. and almost ran out of money before I got home.

And when I got home, I had pneumonia and couldn't go to the doctor. Because guess what? I had no health insurance! And I wasn't anywhere near Indian Health Services. I was too sick to work. And I had a master's degree! It was a while before I could substitute teach, to try to get myself together and take care of my two kids.

So, we don't even think about the impact of financial abuse. And when we do think about it, the people who we envision in our head are really poor people who don't have anything. But let me tell you something. Even when you're living in an affluent situation, when that batterer decides to control you, they control you with the money.

And so, I am so happy that this credit union is doing this work and helping women in that situation. Because in my day, it would have been wonderful had they been there.

Because it ended up…my uncle, doing the illegal thing…we had a really close relationship with his doctor, who treated me and billed Blue Cross like he'd been treating him, or I probably would have died.

So, financial abuse is such a huge part of it, and people don't think about that. And we have to remember that.

And we have to remember when we're doing this work, that we're doing it for so many people. And you don't know who you're helping, when you're helping.

Laura Killingbeck:

Thank you Sandra. It goes so deep, because it’s your access to resources, and as you’re saying, your access to healthcare. It goes to the deepest level. Thank you for sharing that.

These are hard spaces to be in sometimes: every day you’re touching trauma. You’re holding it. So what fills you up? What gives you the energy to keep moving forward? What inspires you to keep having these conversations?

Stacey Ettawageshik:

I think of the youth. Something that we say, is to think about the seven generations ahead of us, and also our ancestors, seven generations behind us. Making a difference for our future–for our future youth–is definitely something that I look at.

And of course, going home to my son and thinking of what I want the world for him to look like. Yeah, it's not going to change overnight. But every step we're taking every day, everything we do makes some sort of a difference.

Sandra Pilgrim-Lewis:

Walking in our traditional ways is so important. Because if we didn't have that, I don't know how we’d keep going, how we’d keep doing this. It's for those–Stacy said–the seven generations. Those who came before us and those who are coming after us.

How do we make a better world for them? And knowing that they're all of our children? I don't know that in Western culture, that people look at the children as like, “Well, this is my daughter, or my niece.”But when we look at the children, they're all of our children. They belong to us.

When we do this work, we do it for all of us–they belong to all of us. When I do this work, it's for all of our children. Every last one of them. Carrying that cultural part of me: that's how you keep doing it.

You know, I do a lot of international trainings, and I say, “If I was in the Western world, y’all would have put me in the nursing home by now.” But in my culture, they give me the opportunity to keep on working and talking. And smiling when I talk stupid. (laughs).

Samantha Brown:

I think for me–definitely the youth and the next generation, and all my babies–but something that keeps me going is that I've had some really good role models in my life. Women that took no shit.

When things start feeling really heavy and really impossible, I think about what my grandmother went through. Her children were literally kidnapped and taken to another country by their biological father, and she had no recourse. She had no rights to get them.

She eventually did. But I think to myself: “If ALICE, if my grandma Alice could get up in the morning and live to fight another day to get her children back, then you can do this.”

I feel the presence of these strong women in my past and in my present. Like Sandra, who is like, “No, we're not going to settle for less. We're not going to take the breadcrumbs. We’re not going to be beaten down. We're not going to be talked to like that. We're going to be recognized as equal, valuable humans on this planet.”

We are all worthy of this gift of life and the beauty of this world. I have this handful of women in my life and in my past. They probably don't even know it, but they very specifically changed the trajectory of my life. And they pulled something out of me that I think was always there, but maybe felt unreachable or hidden or intentionally snuffed out.

So, it's women like that, who have accessed their strength and have showed me how to access my own. And then it's just this chain reaction. I think that's why this work is so important, because if one person can do it and show others, then it's like, “Oh, we can do this. We can all do this. If you can do it, I can do it.” It's just this domino.

Vanessa Owaski-Patzwald:

I will echo definitely what Stacy said in regards to the youth. I know in my lifetime, we're not going to see the full fixes that I'd like to see. But I would like to give the people–especially from our communities, working for our tribal communities–I hope they see the work that advocates are doing to help fix it. So they're not just taking it all on themselves.

And I know Sandra has done amazing in the state of Michigan in regards to funding, and tribes getting access to specific funding. When we visited Oklahoma, we found that those tribes–if I heard correctly–did not have access to VOCA funds.

Obviously, this is an issue on a country level, but it's also an issue on a state level. Every state has tribes, and we're all doing the work to get to the spots where we need to be, where we have full jurisdiction back.

And I just hope that the youth see the work we're doing when they come into the fields. And know they're going to take that on when we hand the fire over at some point–that we've done the work, and we've tried. And with people like Sandra, we've gotten to some places. We just need to keep moving forward to get where we really need to be.

Laura Killingbeck:

If you have a message to folks in the tribal community, to survivors in the tribal community, what message would you like to give them?

Samantha Brown:

You're not alone.

That is the strongest weapon that's used against us: that we’re made to feel like we're going through something alone. That people don't understand. Or that there aren't supports, there aren't people that are going to believe you. And that's just not the case.

So many of us have been through this. There's no shame in experiencing these things. And there's also no shame in what you had to do to survive or who you had to be in order to survive.

Because I think it's easy to fall into that.

I said at the beginning, that I came up feeling like domestic violence and sexual assault were always very person-to-person things. When in reality, we all find ourselves living in this system that was intentionally designed to uphold men specifically. But also white Christian men.“Christian” men, not specifically followers of Jesus. That's different.

If there's one message that I could give to anybody, it's that you're not alone. And that there is a community of two-spirit, and women, and men, and everybody that is out there, that's ready to embrace you, and ready to help you heal and help protect you.

You just have to keep looking. You have to keep speaking up and fighting, and eventually you will get to a place where you're safe and you're loved and your babies are happy and you aren't scared of slamming doors.

Vanessa Owaski-Patzwald:

I was just thinking, May 5th is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Day. And after the events all across the country--it's probably my algorithm–but I get pictures and articles from all over the country, and it just makes me feel like, “Okay, we're all working together–we're all working together as a team.”

What happened to, let's say Gabby Petito was horrendous. But what happened with the law enforcement response after her disappearance is what I want for everybody. Because that was the perfect law enforcement response.

And with a lot of women going missing–because of the issues we have with jurisdiction, and the racism and the violence–a lot of that law enforcement response is “Well, they probably just left,” or “They’re runaways.”

Seeing pictures of our communities working together to bring awareness, and work to be heard, that does give me...there's a level of positivity. But it's on such a sad level... this should not be happening, but it is. You know?

But it just gives me a little bit of hope that we're all collectively working together as tribal communities to address the situation that’s going on in so many Native communities.

Samantha Brown:

I think, too, just to add to that, is the… I don't want to say lack of law enforcement response, but the difference in a law enforcement response is definitely a major factor, depending on the race of the person, the occupation, the economic level of the person.

Also, in addition to that is the media. How many stories did we see about the newscaster Savannah’s mom? And again, I don't mean to downplay: that's horrific. It’s not a contest to see what is more horrendous.

Vanessa Owaski-Patzwald:

It’s not a contest. Thank you.

Samantha Brown:

But we don't see that kind of coverage for average, everyday [Native people]. Literally just last night I was scrolling, and we had two Indigenous folks go missing in the state. And I was sharing it, sharing it, sharing it. And then I was scrolling, and I was like, “Surely I will see more news coverage. Surely I will see more.”

Just nothing, just radio silence, just echo. Like crickets.

And it's disheartening, on one hand. But like Vanessa said, it also gives me hope when I see folks banding together, Native and non-Native to say, “Hey, listen, this is not okay. We have to do something about this. We have to amplify these issues.”

So, it’s something I definitely think is getting better. But there's still a very clear divide with the media giving the public what it wants– the public is pretty clear on its priorities, I guess. I don’t know.

So police, law enforcement response and media response, I feel like, are big challenges when we're talking about the MMIR [Missing or Murdered Indigenous Relatives] and MMIP [Missing or Murdered Indigenous People] crisis.

Laura Killingbeck:

And when people want to find more of that information, how do they go about doing that?

Samantha Brown:

It's hard. And one of the biggest barriers is the lack of data, a lack of accurate data.

Because so often we're mislabeled, we're misclassified. There's not even a box. We’re labeled as “something else.”If you're looking at stats, it’s “White, Black, Latino,” and then “Other.” So it's challenging for us to even get accurate numbers on what's happening.

And also, as cases are happening in the media, the media is not asking those questions like, “Do they belong to a tribe? Are they Native?”

People that I know, their races are misclassified. They're listed as Asian. They're listed as Black. They're listed as Mexican. And it's like, “No, no, no, that is a Native person! That is clearly a Native person.”

It's really hard, as you're scanning through the media, to even pick out actual Native people because the media's not asking those questions. Or maybe they are, and they're just not printing it. I don't know.

I spent a lot of time combing through different articles on missing persons and murders and stuff in the state, to compile my own list of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives. And there were a lot of times where I was like, “I know this person is Indigenous, but it is not reported anywhere.”

So I don't have a good, easy answer to that question, other than there's a lot of nuance. And you have to really dig for it in the articles in order to even find that it's there, because typically it's not. Unless it's a Native person committing a crime, and then it's very clearly listed. That is the challenge. That's the headline. That is usually the headline. And I know that that happens for other people of color as well. That it’s always highlighted.

So…I think what's really powerful is what you're doing now.Folks that have platforms and that have visibility are using it to bring less visible, less… I don't want to say “valued” because that's not true…but in the media and in the public sphere, folks that need their stories amplified. It's really lovely and I feel very full and abundant about it.

Folks like you, and even the Gabby Petito Foundation– they saw how the media response was so one-sided. And they've actually put forth a lot of resources and effort to amplify missing and murdered Indigenous voices.

Or...I saw this video of folks that were marching against the immigration detention centers. And somebody put a mic on this elderly white woman,and they were like, “Are you surprised that there's not a lot of Black folks or brown folks here?” And she was like, “No, this is not for them, this is not safe for them. It's safe for us to be here. We can do this. We can raise these concerns and we don't have to fear for our lives. But this is not a safe place for them. They need to stay home and be safe.”

I've been thinking a lot about allyship lately. And what good allies look like and what they do. And it's folks like you that are intentional and listening, and it's not about centering your own experience.

It’s about bringing forward these other stories, and other voices that show we are so connected. And that we all are experiencing very similar things, and that there's a common tie to all of that.

Vanessa Owaski-Patzwald:

It’s the level of collaboration to hopefully bring about positive outcomes. And it’s been wonderful to work with you, and the team from orsa has been amazing. Gosh, they’re so nice.