Shawn Partridge | 2018 National Crime Victims' Service Awards Tribute Video

SHAWN PARTRIDGE: As Native people, we are a very strong people with a long history of trauma.

In providing services and really trying to impact systemic change, we can't just focus on the crisis response. It has to be a multifaceted approach. 

For us, as a tribe, there wasn't open dialogue about the prevalence of victimization. And so we really have worked to increase the outreach to help remind our people that domestic and sexual violence is not traditional for us. It's not acceptable behavior. We have seen our numbers in terms of victims and survivors reaching out for assistance, and those numbers have just skyrocketed. 

Our jurisdiction is large—almost 5,000 square miles. In three of our counties, we've been the only service provider, so we've played a really significant role in not only serving our citizens and other Native people, but non-Native people as well. 

We have established the tribe's first Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Program. That was a major accomplishment because we've developed a service that, for ourselves and for our citizens and those within our communities that typically they would have to travel, you know, 45 minutes or more to be able to access. 

And so we're working with a lot of multidisciplinary professionals to help ensure safety for our citizens and accountability for offenders, too. And what we're doing differently is we are going out and initiating those relationships and bringing people together. We're more determined than ever now to inspire change within our culture, within our communities, our Nations, doing everything that we can to make sure that no one is suffering in silence.