Pretty Bird Woman House

For the most part, I try to focus on information or goings-on that are Oregon based. I want to share a diary post that is being highlighted by Daily Kos. If you have any doubt that we, as a people, haven't progressed further than our noses in terms of justice and equality, this article will quickly rid you of that notion.

Origins of Pretty Bird Woman House
In October of 2001 a monster in the body of a fifteen-year-old boy stalked the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. Since his tenth birthday he had racked up twenty-five separate criminal charges, included among them was torturing a kitten to death. Another incident involved his shattering a beer bottle over the head of an eight year old. Thirty one year old Ivy Archambault had the misfortune of being home asleep when he broke into her house intent on burglary. Before the night ended he kidnapped, raped and beat her to death. In the six years since this crime was committed, he has never been charged with the murder despite eyewitnesses willing to testify, thanks to a nightmarish maze of confusing tribal, federal, state and local jurisdictions and laws.


Ivy Archambault's murder might well have passed from memory without any impact. But Jackie Brown Otter, her sister, had other ideas; she envisioned a shelter, a place where threatened women could go. A base for the fight to prevent these crimes and when they occur, seek justice on behalf of the victim. She wanted to name this place with her sister's Lakota name: Pretty Bird Woman. Over the course of three years she and a small group of women struggled to make this happen. Then, in late 2004, the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence came through with a grant and hired Georgia Little Shield, a nurse with ten years experience in the domestic violence as Director of Pretty Bird Woman House.

Sounds like progress? Sounds like things are turning around? It is,until some bigoted, hateful dimwits decided to destroy the place. Read the rest of the article and contribute if you can, or even better yet brainstorm some of the ideas that the author is asking for, so that we can insure that there is a permanent and safe place for the victimized women of this reservation to go.