Independent news from the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance
April 20, 2024
News Media Collaborative

Violence Against Women Act passes U.S. House with tribal court provision intact

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear
by
jodi@imfreedomalliance.org https://twitter.com/JodiRave
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Bev Warne was honored for her contributions to nursing during the SDSU powwow in 2023. (Photo Courtesy of Jim Warne)

Marking an end to a two-year impasse, the U.S. House of Representatives today passed the Violence Against Women Act, leaving intact a controversial provision that authorizes tribal courts on reservation lands to prosecute non-Native offenders.

First passed by Congress in 1994, VAWA authorized funding to help pay for investigations and prosecutions of cases involving violence against women.…

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Posted in News Media Collaborative
Jodi Rave Spotted Bear
jodi@imfreedomalliance.org https://twitter.com/JodiRave

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She's been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in "The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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