🙌 October 1st was Tillie Black Bear Women are Sacred Day along with the start of Domestic Violence Awareness Month (#DVAM). The Shawnee Tribe’s Behavioral Health Department wishes to highlight influential Native American women and their contributions to the history and future of Indian Country.
Sharice Davids & Deb Haaland —
The 2018 Congressional midterm elections were notable for several reasons: voter turnout reached its highest level since 1914, campaign spending hit unprecedented levels, and Congress saw a significant transformation as record numbers of individuals from marginalized communities ran for and won office.
Notably, two Native American women were elected to Congress for the first time: Sharice Davids from Kansas' Third Congressional District and Deb Haaland from New Mexico’s First Congressional District.
Sharice Davids, an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, was raised by a single mother who served in the U.S. Army. After earning her Juris Doctorate from Cornell Law School in 2010, Davids pursued her passion for mixed martial arts, competing at the amateur level for seven years before turning professional in 2013. Although her MMA career ended in 2014, she channeled her fighting spirit into politics. Davids spent two years working in mergers and acquisitions at a multinational law firm before feeling called to use her skills in a different way. She lived and worked on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, directing economic and development initiatives in the community.
As the first lesbian Native American Congresswoman, Davids is committed to ensuring that LGBT individuals are represented in decision-making processes and is acutely aware of the challenges faced by queer indigenous people. She currently serves on the Committees on Small Business and Transportation and Infrastructure and is a member of several caucuses, including the Congressional Native American Caucus and the LGBT Equality Caucus. Her legislative priorities include addressing voter suppression, healthcare, and education.
Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, has a background shaped by her mother’s service in the Navy and her father’s Silver Star from the Marines. Haaland earned her bachelor’s degree and JD in Indian Law from the University of New Mexico and later served as the tribal administrator for San Felipe Pueblo. Her political career began as the Native American vote director for President Obama’s reelection campaign.
Haaland is also a strong advocate for Indigenous women, particularly through her support of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. In response to over 2,500 Indigenous women reported missing in the first half of 2018, Haaland has worked to highlight this crisis in Congress, recently speaking at the first House hearing on the issue.
Both Davids and Haaland are remarkable not only for their electoral victories but also for achieving them on their own terms. They proudly embrace their identities—queer, female, and Indigenous—and their activism reflects a deep commitment to public service.
#DVAM2024 #ViolenceIsNotTraditional
Sources:
"First Native Women Elected to Congress in Kansas, New Mexico (TIME)" 👉 time.com/5446593/sharice-davids-deb-haaland-first-native-american-woman-congress/
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🔶 Last month, Chief of the Shawnee Tribe Barnes was interviewed by Native News Online's Levi Rickert about the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Final Report–Vol. II.
Watch here 👉
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