Stand With Our Sacred Women: Igniting Freedom
Tax deductible
STANDING WITH OUR SACRED WOMEN: IGNITING FREEDOM
FUNDRAISER FOR THE PATHFINDER CENTER
BY ELIZABETH L. ROYAL
The main goal of traffickers is to break the spirit of the victim. To remain silent on this tragedy is to perpetuate breaking the spirit of a human being. Freedom is a birthright to everyone.
The common age for sexual slavery, and human trafficking is 13 years old. This means that every 30 seconds: a child- boy or girl is trafficked. Many of you may be thinking: What does it matter? This will never happen to me. This happens to someone else, and not to me. This will never happen to my family, I pray it will never happen to me: my mother, daughter, sister, friend, cousin, neighbor, co-worker. Furthermore, it will never happen to a future generation. Statistics show that it can happen to you or someone in your life.. The trafficking of women and children is a violence against human rights and gender discrimination. There are 24.9 million people trapped in forced labor, bondage, and slavery every year, and that number is growing. Native women and children are at the highest risk and continue to be the most vulnerable to this epidemic.
Native women are 5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted or raped compared to women of other races. Twenty-two percent of Native children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is equal to PTSD found in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.[1] The Department of Justice has recognized this epidemic and in October 2017, awarded more than $130 million to “Improve Public Safety, Address Violence against Women and Victim Services for American Indian and Alaskan Native People.”[2]
Human trafficking is alive in our daily lives. The sexual exploitation of native women goes back colonization, and the American Indian boarding school era historically. Prostitution, human, and sex trafficking today is the a living force of historical violence against all nations. It is a living reality right now that one in three native women will be raped in an individual lifetime. In the United States, and abroad, Native American and Alaska Native women face powerfully escalating rates of rape and sexual violence, where 6 out of 10 Native women will be physically assaulted. It is clear that Native women are stalked, and murdered over 20 times a national average.
I invite you to reconsider your thinking. When you think of human trafficking, it is easy to conceptualize that someone is kidnapped. Kidnapping does take place. However, when we go deeper into this epidemic, there is something else happening here that must be known. Grooming. Grooming is to prepare or train someone for a purpose or task. There is a seduction of care-taking” and abuse that perpetuates itself. Choice and consent are blurred leaving effects of psychological warfare.
It is time for a paradigm shift. It is time create radical action to transform lives. It is time to break this cycle so that future generations will not endure it. It is time to empower the lives of survivors here now and for the ones out there waiting to be discovered. In order to have a real choice to exit this slavery, bondage, and prostitution there must be a variety of services designed beyond a 30 day period. Many places for recovery stop at 30 days and it simply not enough time for survivors. Survivors need a deep integrative approach to healing that most modalities in mainstream society do not have at this time. Many of the survivors vary in age. It is vital that survivors have continual access to physical and mental healthcare, education, job training and placement, legal services, and specialized services to support them in creating a new empowered life. The PathFinder Center is where survivors can start to heal and begin the journey of a new life. A life of freedom, empowerment, joy, love, and the expression of their fullest potential. Each woman has something inherently beautiful, extraordinary, and special that only she can offer our world. Honor her life. Honor her ancestors, elders, aunties, sisters, nieces, cousins, and the women of her family. Honor her voice. Honor her spirit. Honor her womanhood. When we heal the woman, we heal the land. Let the power of love transform and elevate a new path for our youth.
Every day the waiting list for survivors to receive safety, protection, healing, and recovery is growing. There is an urgent need for additional funds to hire new staff, and expand its resources. The Pathfinder Center is not able to take in survivors on the waiting list without more donations.
To learn more about the story of the creation of the PathFinder Center written by the PathFinder Center's Executive Director, Lisa Heth: Visit - http://www.pathfindercenter.org/our-story
All donations raised are going directly to The Pathfinder Center (Wiconi Wawokiya, Inc) by way of Lisa Heth who serves respectively as the Executive Director.
Read the most recent letter from the Executive Director, Lisa Heth: Examples of how your donations to this campaign make an immediate support to hiring staff and expenses such as the following:
Salary and fringe for two more advocates $78,000
Extra food needed $3,600
Utilities includes, electricity, phone, water, sewer $7,200
Arts and supply crafts $1,800
Gas for transportation to appointments etc. $2,400
Prescriptions for medications, glasses and otc etc. $2,400
Maintenance cost for building $3,000
Building Insurance $3,000
Vehicle Insurance $1,500
New brochures and signs $1,000
Materials for training $1,500
GED and other online classes for survivors $1,250
Clothing and shoes for survivors $1,000
Contract with counselor/former survivor $18,350
Includes travel expenses to pathfinder.
Consultant will stay on-site 5 days and 4 nights
Once a month and will be available by phone
When not at the center.
TOTAL X 2= $250,000
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The list below contains items needed that our grant funds will not cover.
MP3 Player - loaded with inspirational music
clocks, alarm clocks
pictures in frames
small cd stereos
Inspirational books
Clings, stick-on inspirational quotes
towels sets for bathrooms
kitchen pots and pans
journals
puzzle books
slippers
house coats
phone cards for cell or landline
vacuums
brooms and dust pan sets
picture frames
décor to hang in rooms and hallway walls
lamps
rugs
craft supplies
women's flannel pajama sets
gift cards
gas cards
money for prescription medications, prescription glasses otc medicines
THE HISTORY:
Human trafficking is alive in our daily lives. The International Labor Organization defines the reality of forced labor, trafficking, and modern slavery that is imposed on adults and children as the following:
Forced labor is different from sub-standard or exploitative working conditions. Various indicators can be used to ascertain when a situation amounts to forced labor, such as restrictions on workers’ freedom of movement, withholding of wages or identity documents, physical or sexual violence, threats and intimidation or fraudulent debt from which workers cannot escape.
The trafficking of women and children is a violence against human rights and gender discrimination. Out of the 24.9 million people trapped in forced labor, 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million persons in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million persons in forced labor imposed by state authorities. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by forced labor, accounting for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors.
Human trafficking is alive in our daily lives. The sexual exploitation of native women goes back colonization, and the American Indian boarding school era historically. Prostitution, human, and sex trafficking today is the a living force of historical violence against all nations. It is a living reality right now that one in three native women will be raped in an individual lifetime. In the United States, and abroad, Native American and Alaska Native women face powerfully escalating rates of rape and sexual violence, where 6 out of 10 Native women will be physically assaulted. It is clear that Native women are stalked, and murdered over 20 times a national average.
CHANGING THE WAY WE SEE:
These statistics inform us that it is vital to change the way we see and identify a modern slave, a forced laborer, and a forced sex worker. It is clear that human trafficking is more prevalent, complex, and close to home. The images you see here are common identifications of what mainstream society conceptualizes as the idea of what human trafficking looks like.
Move your sight deeper beyond the surface level of these images. These images evoke: Pain, Despair, Cruelty, Slavery, Violence, Loss, Numbness, Fear, Isolation and more. When you go deeper into these images and allow your inner sight to unfold, you touch the silence permeating the atmosphere of these women. A silence that speaks a story. Voices that say:
· All prostitution is rape
· All trafficking is stealing a human life: stealing a childhood, stealing young adulthood, stealing a sense of home with loved ones, stealing dreams, wishes, fullest potential and fullest self-realization that are in the fabric of life a human life. Why does my life not matter in this world?
· My body is not my own.
· I am invincible. No one sees me.
· I have gone for help to authorities and it has failed- again, and again. What hope do I have?
· Incest and trafficking share a common thread- no one wants to talk about it.
· Isolation is obvious aftermath of being trapped in this cycle. Cultivating a self-driven inner courage and inner resilience to fight for my life is something no one knows about. It is something that you must go deeper than just having hope for one more day.
· Forced to function in a broken reality, where tears are unexpressed and if let out would move like rivers.
· My body is in so much pain and I have no relief. No one can see my scars or bruises. Skin heals but the inner wounds remain.
· Imagine being somewhere else, out of body, and out of mind until they were done.
· Blocking memories. Leading a double life.
· In the middle of a conversation with another person, a flashback arises. To stop and think about the reality could open a break down and nothing to hold onto.
THE HEALING:
How does it still continue? This is an important question. In order to answer this question, let us start a new conversation. Let us start a paradigm shift. It is time to break the silence in the atmosphere in mainstream society. It is time to break the silence on the history of native women being bought, sold, and traded since European colonization of the American continent. It is time to break the silence on the historical and violent context of assimilation in the atmosphere of survivors and lives lost to this epidemic.
Survivors and victims’ experience a very real challenge around the storytelling of human trafficking: language, ideology of trafficking, history of its birth in colonization, perception of victim-hood, identification of trafficker, invisibility of victims of trafficking. They are not real because no one sees them. People don’t see them as real people, but as a character, and people look the other way for a long time. Ultimately, and everlasting silence remains.
Healing begins when we honor the resilience, voice, sacredness, beauty, bravery, strength, and empowerment of survivors, lost lives, and precious lives waiting to be discovered. I encourage you to take the abstract idea of human trafficking that is layered, ugly, complex, brutal, horrifying, and fearful. It is time to rise beyond these notions and to move with radical action towards the true splendor of liberation, empowerment and healing for survivors. It is time to dissolve the pathways that force survivors to continue to learn to cope and function with trauma.
Countless survivors and victims alike tried many, many times to get help but were continuously failed because authorities, community and legislation did not recognize signs and effects of human trafficking. People could not identify it. People could not see it. When you cannot see it, you do not know it is there. Part of healing and creating change, is altering the way we are seeing human and sex trafficking.
I encourage you to go beyond the identification of victim-hood of survivors and to honor their stories, honor their resilience, and honor their survival.
· To listen to the voice and stories of survivors.
· To acknowledge the stories of survivors.
· To honor the humanity of survivors. In each of these survivors there are so much that deserves to be celebrated, honored, and protected. To fight for freedom and a new life, requires more than the naked eye and steadfastness of a human spirit.
Recognize within them the courage, resilience, strength, brilliance, compassion, wisdom, determination, beauty, power, bravery.
· Acknowledging the forced learning to cope and function with trauma.
· Dissolving the mentality of mainstream society: “If nobody sees it, then nobody knows.”
· In medicine, there is a fifth vital sign called pain. Despite all of extraordinary advancements in technology, medicine, and diagnostic testing, pain is still unidentifiable. There is no machine, test, medicine, or procedure that can tell decode pain. The following questions are asked: Are you in pain? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would rate your pain? 10 being the most extreme. Where do you experience it? What frequency? What is the characteristic of your pain? How long has it been going on for?”
Every day doctors, surgeons, nurses, and medical teams around the world must ask a person to speak about and describe their pain. Pain is unreachable to the human consciousness and eye- You simply cannot make the determination for someone about their own pain. Similarly, if mainstream society remains silent on the historical contexts of colonization, violence, and survival there is a silencing and perpetuating of pain.
SURVIVING DISAPPEARANCE, RE-IMAGINING LIFE, & STANDING STRONG AS LIVING POWER OF RESILIENCE :
When it comes to traumas of this magnitude to a human being’s soul, it cannot be understood if it cannot be seen. This pain is invisible to the human eye. However it can be felt with your heart. It can be understood now in what you have learned here. Traffickers grow and perpetuate this epidemic because of silence.
The truth you stand under shapes the posture of your feet and how you show up in the world. When you wake up in the morning, and remember the gratitude to be alive, to love, to pursue what brings you joy and deeper meaning to your life, to receive the blessing and splendor of a new day and to explore your birthright- to live your life: Let your love touch another life, touch all creation, and transform our world for all generations to come. It let your love touch the lives of these survivors.
It is time for a paradigm shift. It is time create radical action to transform lives. It is time to break this cycle so that future generations will not endure it. It is time to empower the lives of survivors here now and for the ones out there waiting to be discovered. In order to have a real choice to exit this slavery, bondage, and prostitution there must be a variety of services designed beyond a 30 day period. All survivors MUST have continual access to physical and mental healthcare, education, job training and placement, legal services, and specialized services.
Every day the waiting list for survivors to receive safety, protection, healing, and recovery is growing. There is an urgent need for additional funds to hire new staff, and expand its resources. Until more monetary donations are raise, the Pathfinder Center is not able to take in these survivors. These survivors cannot receive the help that they need without these additional funds.
Please consider giving a monetary donation. All donations raised are going directly to The Pathfinder Center (Wiconi Wawokiya, Inc), by way of Lisa Heth serving respectively as the Executive Director.
Let our love lead, inspire, and transform for past, present, and future generations.
Become a part of history.
Be a powerful force for change.
Thank you.
Organizer
Elizabeth Lila
Organizer
New York, NY
Wiconi Wawokiya Inc
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.
