Native Women's Society of the Great Plains About Us Native Women's Society of the Great Plains, Restoring Our Sacredness
Annual Meeting
July 21-22, 2009
Spirit Lake, N.D.
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About Us

The Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, Reclaiming Our Sacredness, represents the rural, isolated tribes in a seven state area of the northern Great Plains. Active members are Native women who are either staff or volunteers of tribal government operate or community-based service programs. Sixteen members are from Indian tribes in a seven state area, historically referenced as the Great Sioux Nation, are represented in the Society. The Society projects that an additional 14 members will join the Society in the next two years.

The Society evolved from the need for the small individual programs to have support, share promising practices and frustrations, network, obtain culturally and linguistically specific technical assistance, training, and consultation, and collaborate to strengthen strategies and responses to violence in their respective tribal communities.

The geographical area that constitutes the service area of the Society includes tribes in southern Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, northern Nebraska and Iowa.

Tribes represented in the organization include the Upper and Lower Sioux Tribes in Minnesota, Omaha, Ponca, Santee and Winnebago Tribes in Nebraska, Ft Peck, Crow and Northern Cheyenne Tribes in Montana, Arapaho and Shoshone in Wyoming, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, and Lake Traverse in South Dakota as well as Spirit Lake and urban Native populations of Bismarck in North Dakota.

Tribal populations are culturally and geographically isolated and have been identified as underserved populations for a variety of reasons. The typical profile of a domestic violence and/or sexual assault program in this service area is a one woman program with a small budget.
 

Karen Artichoker, an Oglala Lakota/Ho-Chunk, is the management team director for Cangleska, Inc. and director of Sacred Circle, National Resource Center To End Violence Against Native Women.

She is a graduate of the University of Colorado and was the first Native woman to be qualified as an expert witness in federal court in South Dakota . She is well-known across the nation as a public speaker and advocate for ending violence against Native women.

Ms. Artichoker was a recipient of the 21 Leaders For The 21 st Century Award in 2006. She was on a list of remarkable women from across the country who were honored for successful grassroots organizing and social-change activism.

In 2005, she was the recognized at the 17th Annual Gloria Awards for her efforts to enhance the safety and sovereignty of Native American women.
 

Ms. Artichoker was an Alston/Bannerman fellowin 1995. The Alston / Bannerman Fellowship Program is committed to advancing progressive social change by helping to sustain long-time activists of color. The program honors those who have devoted their lives to helping their communities organize for racial, social, economic and environmental justice.

Ms. Artichoker started her career as a counselor on the Rosebud reservation and worked in a group home. She then worked in detention for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and ended up working in the psychiatric ward at the IHS facility. She worked at Sioux San Hospital, the Indian Health Service, in 1981 as a mental health technician in Rapid City. She later became involved with the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault.

In 1987, she started work with others on Pine Ridge to bring about an end to domestic violence on the reservation. A three-year grant funded the Medicine Wheel project which became a tribal program until it was established as Cangleska, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 1996.

 

Carmen O’Leary is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and serves as a co-coordinator of the Society. She is a graduate of Black Hills State University. Ms. O’Leary has 17 years of advocacy and supervisory experience at Sacred Heart Women’s Shelter in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. She is a licensed legal advocate in the Cheyenne River Sioux Court and a former tribal magistrate. Ms. O'Leary has worked as a social worker for the South Dakota Department of Social Services.

She served on the board of directors for the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and has served in numerous leadership positions in the organization including co-chair of the board of directors.

Prior to coming to the Society, Ms. O’Leary organized and planned grant writing activities for Missouri Breaks Industries Research Inc., an organization conducting medical research.
 

Ms. O'Leary organized the structure in which grant activities could be effectively and efficiently conducted. She served on the faculty for Mending the Sacred Hoop, Sacred Circle, Center for Sex Offenders Management and National State Courts to provide workshops and presentations to native advocacy organizations as well as non-native programs and institutions throughout the United States. She has conducted training with non-native law enforcement officers through the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Indian Country initiative.

 

 Cecelia Fire Thunder has been a co-coordinator of the Society since it was estiblished. She served as the first woman tribal president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is serving her fourth four-year term on Little Wound School Board. Ms. Fire Thunder, a former licensed practical nurse,  is a widely-known advocate for wellness and women’s issues. She has been active in efforts to recover and revive use of the Lakota language. Ms. Fire Thnder was one of the original founders of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS).

She also serves as president of the Board for KILI Radio and hosts the community healing programs. Her skills include excellent translation of English into Lakota, and she is recognized internationally for her traditional doll making. Ms. Fire Thunder, who left the reservation in her youth, spent several years in California as a labor organizer before returning to the Pine Ridge Reservation. She ran a grass roots campaign visiting communities across the reservation.

 

Verlaine Gullickson has been a consultant for Cangleska, Inc. and Wiconi Wawokiya, Inc. since 2004. Ms. Gullickson is a graduate of North Dakota State University and Minnesota State University. She holds a master’s degree in Women’s Studies.

From 1995 to 2004, Ms. Gullickson served as co-director of the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. She worked to develop and implement several projects and programs of the Coalition including a shelter for women of color in Sioux Falls and three satellite programs in remote rural areas of South Dakota. She and Karen Artichoker are the authors of Raising Public Awareness on Domestic Violence in Indian Country.

Ms.Gullickson worked in the offices of the North Dakota Lt. Governor and the North Dakota Attorney General. She was an executive assistant to the Insurance Commissioner for eight years.

©2009 Native Women's Society of the Great Plains