Navajo advocates take community approach to sexual violence

MONTEZUMA CREEK, Utah (AP) – Amber Kanazbah Crotty, the Navajo Nation Council delegate, wore her grandmother’s delicately patterned yellow, blue and purple scarf as she addressed members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Montezuma Creek on Wednesday.

The colors of the scarf, she said, were chosen to honor the memory of Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old Diné girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered near Shiprock, New Mexico in 2016, the Salt Lake Tribune reported .

Agents from the Salt Lake City FBI office traveled to southern San Juan County to recognize the Utah Navajo Health System (UNHS) for its victim advocacy program, which Crotty and others hope will become a model program in assistance to victims of sexual assault and Domestic violence becomes the Navajo nation. But amid the pageantry and congratulations, Crotty reminded federal and Tribal law enforcement officers present of the importance of the matter.

“It’s very hard work,” she said. “It has a stigma. Nobody wants to talk about it. ”But facing the problems directly opens the space for dealing with the causes and healing, she said.

“When we lost Ashlynne in 2016,” Crotty continued, “we as a community remember how vulnerable we felt as mothers and fathers, knowing that our children here in the communities they love, in the community, in which they grew up should be safe. We began to make a coordinated effort and asked ourselves, “How can we help? How did it happen? How can we prevent that? ‘”

Crotty helped convince Congress to pass a law in 2018 that extended the AMBER Alert System to the Navajo Nation and other tribal nations in the United States, a law known as “Ashlynne’s Law”. Later that year, Crotty wore the scarf when she testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for three hours about the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women, men, children and transgender people, made worse by underfunded Indigenous law enforcement agencies. And a lack of solid data collection makes it difficult to gauge the full extent of the problem.

Recent federal laws like the Savanna’s Act, which went into effect last year, attempt to address these issues, but Crotty admitted Wednesday that local efforts on the ground like the program developed by UNHS are just as important.

UNHS currently employs four victim attorneys who operate a hotline and provide resources in southern San Juan County, including families fleeing domestic violence with temporary shelters.

“I always say, ‘We shouldn’t be so busy,'” said Tonya Grass, a UNHS victim attorney for the Monument Valley area. “We’re busy like we’re living in the city centers.”

Grass and colleagues Lynn Bia, Danialle Whitehat and Jessica Holiday received the FBI’s Community Leadership Award for their work in addressing the challenges lawyers face in a rural area where the fight against crime is made possible by the overlapping responsibilities of circles, States and states can be complicated and tribal legislation.

“Many of these victims get discouraged,” said Grass, who is working on a master’s degree in criminal justice. “You get tossed back and forth from agency to agency and have to find out. That is what we (as victim lawyers) are for. It’s very complex and I’m glad the service is there so we can let everyone know how it works. “

Hired as UNHS ‘first victim attorney in 2014, Bia initially covered the entire southern portion of San Juan County from Aneth to Navajo Mountain and said it took years to build the program into what it is today.

“There weren’t any resources here,” said Bia. “I had to google things. I had to use common sense and slowly began to work on building our resources. “

Many of the proponents noted that law enforcement must play a key role, requiring better coordination between the county sheriff, Navajo Nation police and the FBI. Bia said she was considering becoming a police officer with the Navajo Nation when she realized the local needs but chose to continue her current role instead.

At the ceremony, Navajo Nations Council delegate Nathaniel Brown urged the FBI to send more resources to the Navajo nation.

“We need more transparency from the FBI,” said Brown. “We need more prosecution for those people who commit these heinous crimes.”

Captain Leonard Redhorse III of the Navajo Nation Shiprock Police Department reiterated the call for strengthened federal partnerships but said law enforcement of the tribes must take the lead.

“We have a different idea of ​​the police,” he said. “We have a different vision of delivering services to our employees, and this is in contrast to the Western Eurocentric approach to how we engage in problem solving.” Redhorse talked about looking “upstream” to find the sources of violent crime and look for collaborative, community-based solutions.

Crotty sees the UNHS model as an example of how to approach this issue effectively. “For many generations these systems were not built for the benefit of our employees,” she said. “And that’s what I see (change) here in Utah. (UNHS program) is community-based. The community has a role in the governing body. “

Inspired by the success of the program, Crotty, chairman of the Navajo Nation’s Naabik’íyáti ‘Subcommittee on Sexual Assault Prevention, helped UNHS become an appointee to receive grants for similar programs in northwestern New Mexico and the north -Arizona finance.

“Hopefully we’ll have something similar across the Navajo nation in the next five years,” said Grass, the victims’ lawyer.

Although the UNHS program has become more robust, Bia, who also acts as the domestic violence housing coordinator, noted that there was a blatant lack of adequate housing for domestic violence in the region.

If a family is currently in need of help, Bia or one of her colleagues will need to drive them to an animal shelter in Flagstaff, Arizona, Grand Junction, Colorado, or Price, Utah, hours away.

But that should also change. Vice President of the Navajo Nation, Myron Lizer, oversaw the severing ceremony for the renovated Gentle Ironhawk Shelter in Blanding Wednesday, which is equipped to accommodate up to thirty county residents.

The shelter was purchased by the Navajo Nation in 2018 and is staffed by UNHS with support from other non-profit organizations and organizations.

The UNHS program is “very unique,” said Gary Scheller, director of the Utah Office for Victims of Crime, at the ribbon cutting ceremony.

“Most of our programs,” he said, “are run by law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, or non-profit domestic violence or rape crisis centers. This was the only thing we know of working out of a health system … but it makes a lot more sense because this is about healing. “

Over the past 20 years, UNHS has expanded its services beyond the narrowly defined medical and dental care, expanding the workforce from 20 at the turn of the millennium to more than 400 today. The health system is the largest employer in San Juan County.

Although most of UNHS ‘work is focused on the Navajo Nation, the shelter is off the reserve and open to all residents of the area regardless of their tribe. Last year, San Juan District Attorney Kendall Laws warned the San Juan School District Board of a “developing culture of rape” among students in the area, particularly at the white-majority high schools in Blanding and Monticello. In January, the Salt Lake Tribune reported several cases of sexual abuse in the county and efforts to increase resources available to victims.