Community Partnerships

VOW’s relationships with community-based organizations and advocacy groups are critical to our goal of centering the marginalized voices and social justice movements reflected in our oral history book series. Our vision is that “voices of witness” become “voices of authority” in mainstream discourse and meaningful reform that leads to material social change.

By connecting both VOW narrators and audiences to direct services, organizing efforts, and advocacy movements, and by training and supporting partner organizations to use personal narrative and oral history storytelling for change, we aim to inform long-term efforts to advance human rights and dignity and dismantle systems of oppression.

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT:

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

Text by: Ela Banerjee, Community Partnership Coordinator at Voice of Witness

Last year we had the privilege of partnering with the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC). NIWRC is a Native-led nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence against Native women and children. NIWRC provides national leadership in ending gender-based violence in tribal communities by lifting up the collective voices of grassroots advocates and offering culturally grounded resources, technical assistance and training, and policy development to strengthen tribal sovereignty.

NIWRC Executive Director Lucy Rain Simpson In October, Voice of Witness cohosted the virtual event “Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls” with NIWRC, bringing together Indigenous grassroots advocates, oral historians, and policy experts (recording available on VOW’s website) to share insights. How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America was also featured in NIWRC’s magazine, Restoration of Native Sovereignty and Safety for Native Women.

Voice of Witness connected with NIWRC executive director Lucy Rain Simpson (Diné) about storytelling, the pandemic’s impact on its work, and how the organization is adapting.

One of the first questions we asked is central to both of our missions: Why is uplifting community voices important in your work and what role does storytelling and first-person testimonies play? Here’s what Lucy had to say:

"The voices of Indigenous people in North America have been silenced by colonizers since first contact. As a Native-led advocacy organization dedicated to ending violence against Native women and children, we recognize the impact of silencing the voices of those in our communities as an attempt at erasing our lived experiences, our cultures, and the rights to safety for Native victims of violence in particular, which are predominantly women and girls in tribal communities. It is a crucial part of our work to lift up the voices of our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and daughters, as their bodies and spirits carry the trauma of the violence that has been inflicted on them. Their stories, the truth they speak, holds value.

Lifting up the stories and experiences of Indigenous women and girls is a key component of our work here at NIWRC, whether it’s gathering testimony from tribes and tribal providers on legislation that directly impacts the safety of Native women, offering a safe space to survivors through StrongHearts Native Helpline, passing the mic to a sister advocate to share knowledge on one of our webinars, or highlighting the voices and work of grassroots women across our social media pages and publications like our Restoration magazine. Native voices deserve to be uplifted, centered and heard—it’s past time that our society normalizes this practice. Indigenous voices have power, and telling our stories is our rallying cry. Speaking our truth is also part of our healing, as the Read our full interview with Lucy Rain Simpson on VOW’s blog. She reflects on silencing of Indigenous peoples has NIWRC’s work to end the crisis of missing been ongoing for generations.” and murdered Indigenous women and girls, along with the toll the pandemic has taken on her community and action steps that you can take today to amplify their work.