Are you a Native American healthcare provider, recovery counselor, social worker, domestic and sexual abuse advocate or traditional healer working in Native American communities, doctor ruby Gibson, will begin a 7 month advanced immersion in healing historical trauma. This online masterclass looks through the lens of a 7 generational recovery approach to provide powerful proven modalities and is offered tuition free to tribal members. Registration deadline is February 21st info at freedom lodge dot org, who support this show. Thank you for tuning in to native America calling. I'm Sean spruce. Today we're talking about reauthorization of the violence against women act. Once it's reauthorized, some tribes in Alaska will have additional power to hold non native perpetrators accountable. This is part of a pilot project included in the vawa reauthorization. What are your thoughts on vaa? There's still time to share your comments and questions. We're at one 800 9 9 6 two 8 four 8. And before we went to break Michelle, you were talking about some of the opposition to and I'm curious to know where the opposition comes from. You speak highly of senator Murkowski's leadership. So obviously, this issue doesn't get cut right down the middle on party line. So where do you see the opposition coming from specifically? Well, I mean, it's really hard to say. As I said before, to me, it's like a lack of education or understanding that Native American communities are sophisticated. We're confident we understand due process and so it's really about educating those individuals who may not have had any contact with Native American communities or don't understand us. And so I'm a licensed attorney in Washington state and I always joke that when I hear these types of comments about Native American communities that oh, I must have taken their remedial bar exam. I took the same bar exam as everyone else passed at the first time. You know, and I guess there's just that stereotype that maybe we don't learn the same way. I'm not sure. It's just really care ignorance and we just need to change the education on that. Yeah, for sure, really, really, really important. Michelle, can you describe the enforcement process now in Alaska and how can it be enhanced under vaa? So right now, if I am in my family from cloak and actually we do have law enforcement there, but on Prince of Wales island, if I was in a different community where there is not law enforcement, I would call in the state troopers would have to either be flown in or on my island where I'm from. There is a road system, but it's hundreds of miles. So the island is. So it's a huge island. And so in typical rural Alaska, you call and if there's no law enforcement in your community, they come from a hub community. And they might even take a little bit of time to figure out whether or not it's worth their time to come out. So as you know, domestic violence situations can often be a he said she said type of situation. And if they call, instead of actually come to the village, sometimes they'll decide not to come out at all. Because of the resources that is what their explanation is or higher priorities, things like that. But again, every crime should be should be investigated. And the victims should be heard and the perpetrators should be held accountable. So in the best case scenario, if it does happen, they come out and investigate. And then they go back to the hub community and the prosecutor decides whether or not there is a case and whether there's going to be a charge. And meanwhile, you know, it's just not a very perfect system because of all the travel involved, all that evidence that could be lost back and forth. Just these are local issues and that's where we should focus our attention is local responses to local problems so that the community can heal in a timely manner rather than all of this back and forth. And uncertainty. Michelle, you mentioned these local issues limited resources. The rural nature of many of these communities, the long distances that law enforcement has to travel to reach these communities. And obviously wawa is not the perfect solution. So I mean, obviously, it's a great, great chance to move things forward, but there's always going to be other issues as well. So I'm curious, how can we strengthen accountability for violent abusers in Alaska? In addition to wawa yeah, that's a really great question. And the resources really need to be provided. Oftentimes, the resources that are available focus on victims issues and of course that's primary importance, but once we get the victims safe and we are working on healing that individual, we really also need to focus on the perpetrator, a lot of these individuals have trauma in their past and that has gone untreated. And so often there are few resources for him or her and there's certainly very few grant programs that actually address this issue. So we're just sort of addressing the issue on a limited basis more in crisis mode rather than sort of comprehensive plan. Michelle, thank you so much for all this information all this background, all these details and especially with regard to what's going on going on up in Alaska really, really appreciate all of your insights. Folks, we have another guest on our show today joining us from Albuquerque, New Mexico. We have angel Charlie, she's executive director of the coalition to stop violence against native women, and she is laguna Pueblo. Angel, welcome to the show. Hi, good morning. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Angel, what are the provisions for tribes in the latest version of vow we've been mostly talking about up in Alaska. But down here in the lower 48, what can tribes expect with regard to tuva in the future?.