If you look up the number of victims of sexual assault, sexual violence and sex trafficked victims in Milwaukee, the numbers are striking. Particularly among Native women, the rates of sexual violence and abduction are high and under reported.
Thresa Stevens, who is Menominee, works with Native women and men in Milwaukee who fall victim to this violence and suffer from trauma. As the Native American Advocate for Women and Children at Healing Intergenerational Roots (HIR) Wellness Institute, she helps people find resources, gets them to a safe space, and if they want, she connects them to counselors at HIR Wellness.
As the name suggests, HIR Wellness focuses on healing trauma that develops through generations of people who have been marginalized and colonized, a part of the mental health field that is overlooked. Many of the people Stevens helps have likely suffered from intergenerational trauma prior to falling victim to violence. Our country’s historical injustices have caused this trauma and led many Indigenous women to fall victim to sexual violence.
Stevens can understand this historical trauma firsthand. “My grandma went to the Indian boarding schools, so she was never loved, and she didn’t show love at all,” she says. “So, it got passed on to my mom. My mom was the same way and for me, I had to realize she’s not able. And that took a lot for me.”
Many Indigenous people like Stevens still know or are related to someone who was forced to go to boarding schools that the U.S. government created to strip Indigenous children of their heritage. Children were subject to violence, and many died due to illness and lack of health care. This is a weight that many Natives carry—and the traumatization continues today as the federal government upholds laws and practices that oppress these communities.
Missing and Murdered
Also a legal advocate, Stevens explains how the laws in place cause more cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The 1978 Supreme Court ruling of Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, for example, made it so tribal nations could not prosecute non-Natives if they commit a crime on tribal land. As a result, it is shockingly common for Native women to be abducted and the offenders to go uncharged for the crime. “We can kill you, we can kidnap you and there’s nothing anyone can do. You can’t charge us,” Stevens explains. “It shows how the system just fails.”
With the support of HIR Wellness, Stevens is doing what she can to right those wrongs and help women get out of violent circles. She is one part of HIR’s Circle of Care, a model for healing that was created by Founder and CEO Lea S. Denny. This Circle of Care allows Stevens to connect these victims with counselors or occupational therapists at the wellness institute depending on their needs. This approach creates a communal support system modeled after the way Indigenous tribes have communal healers with unique specialties.
Thresa Stevens and HIR Wellness Institute have helped so many Indigenous women and men escape from violence and provided them with a path for healing. But if the systems in place and federal laws do not change, the problem will continue. “I can only do so much,” says Stevens.
Learn more about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women at mmiwusa.org or get involved with the Wisconsin Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force.
Learn more about HIR Wellness Institute at hirwellness.org.
Read the article on the Shepherd Express, part of the regular column Hero of the Month.