Lori Townsend: The high rates of sexual assault and violence against women in Alaska is a long standing problem and the rates are highest among Native women and girls.

Unknown: Four in five American Indian and Alaskan Native women experienced violence in their lifetime.

Lori Townsend: Advocates for change are working to raise awareness for those who are still seeking justice will talk with community members seeking reforms to help stop the violence tonight on Alaska Insight.

Alaska Native women experience disproportionate levels of violence, but it's difficult to know exactly how bad the problem is.

Mistrust of the legal system means assaults too often go unreported or maybe misclassified for various reasons.

The numbers reflect the lives affected by violence and the data collected is crucial.

Alaska Public Media's Jeff Chen spoke to an Alaska Native researcher who is working for change.

Unknown: Foreign five American Indian and Alaska Native women experience of violence in their lifetime.

And sadly, that's that's true for myself.

You know, I'm a survivor myself.

Charlene Aqpik Apok is Inupiaq.

Her family is from Golovin and White Mountain, Alaska.

She's the executive director of Data for Indigenous Justice, and Alaska Native women-led organization that collects information into a database of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, or MMIWG.

The baseline report released last month documents 229 cases of MMIWG in Alaska, dating back to the 1960s.

149 of those are missing cases and 80 of them are murdered.

And again, that's just what's documented.

The report cites an intersection of racism, sexism and colonial systems that exacerbate high rates of MMIWG Apok says there are likely many more cases beyond what the group was able to collect from the limited digitized data sets available, Freedom of Information Act requests and cross-referenced family accounts.

The data for this work really originated from the grassroots community and from our our loved, our loved ones putting forth names for us to name and to remember.

And the report also documents a need for data consistency, improved oversight of investigations, tribal review boards, interagency cooperation and policy changes.

We're talking about people, we're talking about loved ones that are missing from our families, and who are are important and continue to be, you know, remembered across the state.

Alaska leads the nation in rates of sexual assault and violence against women, according to FBI data.

For many advocates, shining a light on past cases and pushing for resources to establish preventative measures could help change that.

read the full report at our website, alaskapublic.org/alaskainsight.

In Anchorage, I'm Jeff Chen.

Lori Townsend: Good evening.

Thank you for joining us for this important discussion on one of Alaska's biggest problems, the high rates of violence against women.

A word of caution: tonight's program may not be suitable for young viewers.

Joining me to talk about the work being done in Nome to create a safer, healthier community for all residents is Lisa Ilana, Sigvanna Topkok and Darlene Trigg.

All three women are survivors of sexual violence and advocates for change in their region.

Welcome, all of you.

Unknown: Thank you, Lori.

Lori Townsend: Thank you so much for being here.

Darlene, I want to start with you.

There's a long history of abuse against women in Alaska, as we just noted, and especially in the gnome region.

Why do you think the rates of violence against women are so much higher in in Nome, in that area than in other parts of Alaska?

Certainly, it's a problem across the state.

But we know that there's a higher concentration there.

What do you think contributes to that?

Unknown: That's a really difficult question to answer.

Because there's a lot of different reasons why we experienced these things.

Alaska has a really complicated history, and along with that complex history comes a lot of, you know, different challenges that communities face.

And when we think about that history, we really need to acknowledge it.

And think about how that complex history impacts our community today.

Lori Townsend: So it's layers of things, past trauma, racism, a lot of, a lot of layers.

Unknown: Absolutely.

Lori Townsend: Lisa, I want to turn to you now.

How and when, give us a little bit of the backstory about when you started organizing together to push for change in in Nome?

Unknown: Right.

Okay, thank you, Lori.

So, back in 2015, a friend of mine, I told, I confided in her about something that had happened to somebody close to me, and she let me know LaVerne Ashenfelter, my, the late LaVerne Ashenfelter, one of our dear friends, she let me know that this was not surprising to her because she had heard of this story many times.

And that, in fact, there are many people that we both knew that were going through the same thing, that there was a lack of response and lack of investigation by the police department, and our cases probably weren't going to go anywhere.

So we started to meet, just to give each other support and eat dinner together, in around my kitchen table, and over the weeks, we came to find that through telling our stories, that probably none of our cases were investigated, none of the cases.

So we decided to put ourselves in leadership positions and get appointed to different boards and commissions and try to come at the issue from an interagency level.

Try to address improvements to policy try to support the police department and getting training and that kind of thing.

But there was a lot of resistance to that effort on the part of the police department at the time.

So we decided then, three years into our advocacy that we would have to bring this to a more public forum, and we decided to bring it to the city council at that time, 2018.

Lori Townsend: And so you wanted to you first thought it through decided the best way to work maybe to help create change from within and get on to boards and commissions, as you said, but met resistance.

And so you took it public and brought it to the council.

Alright, thank you.

We'll pick that up again, in a bit.

But Sigvanna, as you will know, calls for justice for women, especially Indigenous women, when it comes to ending violence and assault are not new.

This has been going on for a very long time.

Do you feel like the momentum is different now?

Are you seeing more people coming together across racial and social lines to join forces and really push for change?

Unknown: Absolutely, I think the momentum today is, has a different energy to it than it has historically, I think we're starting to see a lot of different issues coming forward, a lot of new voices coming forward.

And we're seeing a convergence of all these different issues coming into the public view.

So our communities are starting to have these really difficult conversations about our shared history about systemic and institutional inequality.

And we're raising our voices about policies, procedures, state statutes that need to be changed and updated.

So I absolutely believe you know, we're having this momentum build up.

That's really exciting.

But obviously, these are really difficult conversations to have.

And it's going to take time to work through all of these things.

Lori Townsend: When you look at the women that are involved, do you find that women, younger women, such as yourself, are really kind of stepping into those leadership roles more than women of my generation that maybe were more hesitant to speak out, or, or more often thought that they had more of a deferential role.

Do you think younger women are sort of leading in a way that maybe their mothers and auntie's didn't feel they could?

Unknown: Yeah, well, I think it's our mothers or grandmothers or auntie's people like ... who have led the way who've really paved the path for people of my generation who are younger, to feel like we can step out and talk about this.

We have the support network in place that that I think, makes it a lot easier to come forward to voice our concerns, and to try to collaborate for meaningful change.

So I, while past generations may have approached the issue differently or not have had the spaces to talk about these issues, because of all that hard work that's been done, and like Lisa was mentioning earlier, as as people were coming together in Nome, I was off in law school.

And so when I came back to Nome it was it was really empowering for me to see what women had had already been doing, so that I could step in, and try to keep that work going forward in any way, shape, or form that I could.

Lori Townsend: Hmm.

Well and it's fantastic to hear you acknowledging the work of women who have come before because of course, there has been a much harder road in the past and, and it's good that that you made note of that because that's important to not lose track of.

KNOM recently produced a five-part series on the problems in Nome called Seeking Protection, Wanting Justice: Disparities in sexual assault crimes in Nome.

Current Nome Police Chief Mike Heintzelman said in the fifth piece of the KNOM report series that they have rehired a victims advocate named Sharon Sparks to help people who are traumatized, better understand what is happening with their case.

Unknown: She would work hand in hand with the investigators provide some support to the victim.

And she was also aware of all the police procedures and and could talk to the victims about what would come next and what happens.

You know, why is there a delay when it, when the investigation goes to the DA?

Things like that.

And she's, she has access to all the confidential records.

Lori Townsend: Sigvanna, you ran for city council to push for reform.

Was this one of the priorities that you and others have been seeking, is getting this person back in place?

Unknown: Yeah I think this is a really vital role.

Unfortunately, oftentimes, we see a lot of turnover and not within not only just with the city of Nome, but other organizations within our community, people who are providers, that Norton Sound Health Corporation, there's there's a lot of overturn.

And so part of that I think, results in miscommunication or lack of communication with people who are trying to seek justice.

So having a position like Sharon's, Ms. Sparks, I think is is really critical, and how we coordinate services among the different entities in our community to support these survivors as best that we can.

So that's absolutely one of the priorities I had coming into city council and just having somebody who looked like me, who had a background similar to me, who shared common values, as me as is really important.

And that was not what I was necessarily seeing in high levels from a top-down approach in our city's government.

Lori Townsend: What are some of the other areas that you've identified of need?

Is it staffing shortages?

Is there a need for more officers?

Or is it as you had discussed earlier, more about training to better document cases for better follow through with them to get prosecutions?

Unknown: Yeah, I would actually defer to Darlene on that one.

Lori Townsend: All right, Darlene.

Unknown: Thank you.

So I think one of the things that we're really trying to make sure that we recognize is through this survivor's group, a lot of different areas for improvement were identified.

Places where things just weren't going right.

And that really focusing in on one area at a time, one or two areas at a time to make sure that you know, we have focused energy towards something that might create improved experiences for survivors is something that we're really focused in on.

But that doesn't mean that you know, when we are engaged in work in an area that we aren't thinking about the other areas where we might be able to strategize or improve experiences for victims in our community.

So to say that training or staffing isn't, is the only issue would be really neglectful of us.

We recognize that there are a lot of places that need to be improved inside the entire criminal justice system, improving outcomes for victims.

Lori Townsend: Well, Darlene, I want to stay with you for a minute as part of, of that broader suite of changes that you'd like to see and a path forward, you've pushed for the city to acknowledge past problems with how cases were and were not handled.

What do you want from them?

And why is this important?

Unknown: Well, their real focus around acknowledgement is to create space for healing.

There's, there's a whole community of people who are all intertwined, and some of us have different experiences here in this community.

And some of us feel very safe in this community, and many of us don't.

And we want to acknowledge, we want acknowledgement of the history, the things that have not been tended to the way that they need to be.

We want acknowledgement because people who have been impacted in the way that they have - their cases not followed up on, their cases ignored, or or what have you - these are people in our community who are traumatized and forever changed.

So their ability to be healthy productive community members is different than someone who hasn't been traumatized in that way.

And without that acknowledgement, without that recognition, you know, it becomes really challenging for people to focus in on how we can heal.

And we need this for our community's healing.

Lori Townsend: How difficult is it in that healing for women to find good support services, good counseling, being able to access medical, and psychological help when they need it, especially when you live in a smaller community where people know each other, it might be difficult in settings like that at times for someone to speak to a counselor that then they're going to see in the store or wonder if they will talk to someone else in the community, even though of course, professionally, they shouldn't.

Is, is there concern about that?

And how do you feel you are equipped for those types of services in Nome?

Unknown: That's a great question.

And I think I'd defer that to Lisa.

Lori Townsend: All right.

All right.

Let's go to Lisa.

Unknown: Hi, Lori.

Thank you.

Thank you, Darlene.

I just like to say that in Nome, currently, we have a Sexual Assault Response Team.

And we have a Child Advocacy Center that addresses child survivors.

But we don't have that social services kind of network of coordinated services to support people, clients that have gone through these different traumas, as adults in our community.

We have the criminal side, we have the forensic side all covered.

But we don't have that coordination of support network services available to adult clients, yet.

We are working on it right now.

People are doing the best they can our services exist in the form of referrals to different agencies for assistance, referrals to behavioral health services and people at the Bering Sea Women's Group, make sure to get a hold of people after some time has passed and check in and see how people are doing.

So informally, it exists in this network.

But it's in the kind of planning stages right now, as far as that coordinated effort and in a formal way.

Lori Townsend: For more professional level type services.

All right, thank you.

One of the things that makes prosecution hard in Alaska is what constitutes force versus consent.

The burden is on the prosecutor to show the offender used force and that the offender was mentally aware that they did not have consent.

Here's what Nome DA John Earthman said about that.

Unknown: What's difficult, though, is when you're dealing with a criminal statute of sexual assault without consent has a very specific definition.

And what that definition is this without consent means with or without resisting.

Basically, the victim was forced, or that this happened because they were threatened.

Lori Townsend: And according to the state statute, the burden of proof is on the DA, in this case Earthmen, to show that the offender used force, implied or otherwise, to have sex with the victim and that the accused was mentally aware they didn't have consent.

Sigvanna, you're an attorney.

How difficult does a statute like this make it to get a conviction?

Unknown: Yeah, I would say this makes it extremely difficult on survivors.

It's essentially placing the bulk of the burden on that survivor on the investigation that happens after report and then places an additional burden on the DA, the district attorney, to even go forward in court with any charge that he might be able to pull from the investigation that evidence that's, that's handed over to him or her.

So I would say that, you know, it's this this, this is the law, our law around consent really needs to be changed and updated.

It hasn't been touched for over 40 plus years, and was probably modeled after other states that had had that in place for who knows how many decades.

So this is not necessarily a law that women or survivors might have had a lot of input on.

And the way that it's written creates a lot of issues for bringing these cases and having them prosecuted.

Lori Townsend: And is that part of the reason why some of these cases aren't brought to court is because he can't, the DA feels that he just can't get to that enough of an evidence, that he has enough evidence collected and and can, actually has a chance of proving the case.

Unknown: Yeah, absolutely.

And it's it's so heartbreaking.

I've been there with survivors.

Sometimes people ask me to go with them when they talk to John Earthman, because they know that I have a law background.

And oftentimes it's, it's heartbreaking for me because I'm sitting there with them after they've gone through this horrid traumatic experience now just to be told that their case isn't going forward.

And so they've been just continually re-traumatizing for me as well.

It's really difficult as a survivor, I want to see justice work for the person that I'm with for myself, for other women.

But because of all these barriers, all these breakdowns in this process, we're not seeing the justice that people deserve.

Lori Townsend: Are there other changes in law that you'd like to see enacted to get more convictions or other things besides changes in law that could help bring more weight to bear for these prosecutions?

Unknown: Absolutely.

And I know, Lisa has a lot of thoughts on this.

I'll defer to her.

Lori Townsend: Okay.

Let's go to Lisa.

Unknown: Quyaana, thank you Sig.

And thank you, Lori.

I just want to say yes, that our current law around sexual assault was created in the early 1980s.

That's a long time ago.

There are desperate, desperately needed changes.

What we see in for example, Representative Geran Tarr's proposed legislation through House Bill 5, it would address several of those much needed changes such as defining consent as the freely given, reversible agreement.

And, and also making more clear what consent is not.

It would make clear that you cannot give consent if you're asleep or incapacitated, and that it would also address rape by fraud.

This bill was created in partnership I want to say with hundreds of people across the state of Alaska over the course of two years.

And it's important to the women of the state that this bill passes, we are watching this bill, the way it's moving through very, very closely.

And we need this bill to pass.

I thought, I'd also like to share a little bit about the other things that we need to address across jurisdictions.

We need better data capture.

And I think Dr. Charlene Apok is going to cover that a little bit more here in this report.

We need data aggregated that specifies race and gender.

We also need to end racial bias in the provision of law enforcement and adjudication.

Why did over 400 cases of rape, specifically Alaska Native women, go uninvestigated in Nome over the course of decades?

Why is this happening in other places in Alaska, we need the state of Alaska to honor tribal sovereignty as well and exercise the full faith and credit to tribal court orders across all those jurisdictions.

Another thing that we need is that the state needs to invest in sexual violence prevention education, and offer more options for treatment for survivors and their families, and offenders as well.

They need treatment options as well.

Finally, what are law enforcement officers learning at the academy about sexual violence?

How are they, are they learning how to be victim centered and trauma informed?

And what are they learning about who we are as Alaska Native people and about, about our cultures?

Lori Townsend: So I want to pick up there, you were talking about tribal authority.

And in the last congressional session, there was a provision included in the Violence Against Women Act, VAWA.

That would have created essentially Indian Country as kind of a pilot project for five communities, tribal communities and in Alaska that would have had legal authority over their communities to see if that would help address some of the high rates of crime that we see in these communities.

It's not clear if that will make it back in into this session or not yet.

I could not get clarity on that today.

But have you heard of that?

Is that what you think are needed?

Are these some of the tools that you would like to see enacted to give tribes more authority in their communities to keep peace in in their communities?

Unknown: Definitely.

And I'll defer to Megan Sigvanna on that one.

Lori Townsend: All right, Sigvanna.

Yeah.

So Unknown: as a tribal attorney, working with 19 tribes, this is something that I see is really vital.

So Alaska has a long, complicated history legal as well.

So our jurisdictional landscape is really tricky, because generally we don't have Indian country.

So the only Indian Country that we have in the state is the Metlakatla reservation, you know that we're certain about Yeah.

And so creating that, that potential to have Indian country where we have territorial jurisdiction over the people within our communities is so vital.

So vital.

Lori Townsend: I'm afraid we're gonna have to leave i, leave it there.

I'm sorry.

We're out of time.

But we'll be coming back to this and we'll watch that legislation to see if that's included.

And we'll have an opportunity to talk again, if it is.

Thank you so much to my guests this evening.

FBI data reveals that Alaska by far has the highest percentage of rape and violence perpetrated against women in the nation, nearly double that of the next closest state.

We must do better.

Violence against Alaska women affects entire families and communities.

Lowering the rates of this horrible problem requires all of us to speak out in support of justice.

We can't have a truly healthy and prosperous future until all Alaskan women are safe.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Be sure to tune in daily to your local public radio station for Alaska Morning News and Alaska News Nightly every week night.

Be part of conversations happening on Talk of Alaska every Tuesday and visit our website alaskapublic.org for breaking news and reports from across the state.

We'll be back next Friday.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.