“Intentionally barred.” 

“I don’t hear anything that makes me feel safe. I don’t hear anything that makes me feel comfortable about my daughter being out in the world by herself,” Lambert commented.

Her observation defined why many of the speakers at the third annual Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Reflections of Inspiration conference had come to present there. Each intimately recognized colonization’s insidious facilitation of gender violence. ROI, in turn, offered a collective space to share stories of healing and imaginations of a more just world.  

Reflections of Inspiration was established in 2022 by Demakus Staton, a certified grants management specialist currently serving as its executive director. The program’s vice president is Martha Jackson.

ROI dedicates itself to addressing domestic violence and sexual assault in Indigenous communities, including the Easter Band, throughout its two-day conference. The event featured seven speakers, including Keohana Lambert, who works as a certified prevention specialist and CEO of Resilient Roots Consulting, community advocate Maggie Jackson and Executive Director at Reach of Haywood County Sara Vogel.

Outlining the problem

Lambert’s history lesson brought the audience back to settler contact in 1492 — the beginning of Indigenous annihilation. At that time, Native Americans numbered in the millions; by the 1900s, only 250,000 remained.

Similarly, Indigenous women “were stripped of our dignity, of our voice, and [that problem] is still alive today,” she said.

Fellow presenter Maggie Jackson, who co-leads the Qualla Boundary MMIW group, materially tied settler contact into the disproportionate level of contemporary violence experienced by Indigenous relatives, typically women.

“Experts believe that the root causes of the [Missing, Murdered Indigenous People] crisis are based in colonization, historical trauma, systemic racism and the sexual objectification and dehumanization of Indigenous women and girls. For Indigenous women, harmful and distorted perceptions took shape during early contact with European settlers and have been reinforced for generations through laws, policy and media,” Jackson said.

Regarding the media front, Lambert asked the audience, “Anybody seen the movie ‘Pocahontas?’” 

Some raised their hands.

“[The movie is] romanticizing human trafficking,” she said.

Pocahontas was kidnapped by English colonist Samuel Argall and forced to give up her child — a far cry from the revisionist Disney version.  

Kidnappings of native women and children have occurred routinely since contact, creating a legacy of generational trauma within the Eastern Band of Cherokee today.

Lambert motioned to the screen, “This basket is the basket that our babies were carried in to be given away.” 

Between 1958 and 1967, “Cherokee babies, days old, were placed in this basket and carried down the hill from Cherokee Indian hospital to the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. From there, children were placed in non-Indian homes,” she explained.

But safety wasn’t guaranteed merely by avoiding newborn kidnappings. When the babies grew older, they’d often have to contend with assimilationist boarding schools. The Cherokee Boarding School targeted the EBCI and operated from 1880 until 1954.

Students were mandated to wear non-traditional clothing.

They were also “forced to learn English and conform to societal expectations intended to erase culture,” Jackson told the audience.

Jackson’s grandmother, one of only 130 living Cherokee speakers, chose not to pass the language to future generations as a protective measure, she said.

And while boarding schools might be in the past, epidemics of violence in native communities are intrinsically tied to this moment. The EBCI is battling an upsurge in human trafficking largely facilitated by interstate highways. Human trafficking cases  in the Qualla Boundary increased from four to 101 between fiscal year 2017 and 2022 — a factor of 25. The same period saw a 2.2 factor increase — 172 to 392 — of Indigenous human trafficking cases in North Carolina.

“So, what do we do about this? What do you do about this? Because it’s not just me and it’s not just we — but what do you do about this, as a man in society?” Lambert asked rhetorically.

After a pause, she added, “Educate your people.” 

Storytelling as healing

After her role as a Title XI Coordinator, REACH of Haywood County Executive Director Sara Vogel became a sex educator. She was tired “of the fact that we spend millions of dollars working with survivors but spend hardly anything… working in prevention.” 

Plus, Vogel, a native Hawaiian, didn’t want to simply teach sex education. She wanted to indigenize it.

“Podcasting is the most decolonized way to share information. It is free. It is global. Anyone can do it,” she said.

The current REACH of Haywood director approached her podcast by emphasizing the narratives that aren’t typically heard.

The world of audio streaming, she explained, is “a very male and white space … if you are female identified, queer identified, non-binary, your voice is needed. Indigenous voices are needed.” 

Her podcast opened the doors to a Fulbright research award in Canada, then a TEDx talk — and finally, to the realization that she could do what she set her mind to.

“Most of the time, we are stopping ourselves from getting up on a stage, from speaking … and that shit is a colonized mindset,” she said.

In addition to providing empowerment, Vogel’s channel brought a transformation that felt deeply personal. When she’d experienced sexual assault in college, she “didn’t know what to do” or “who to tell.”

“That shame sits with you and dictates you to be quiet,” she said.

“Podcasting, for me, was a reclamation of voice, mostly for myself, but in doing so, I could bring people with me and hopefully make a better world,” she added.

In this case, a better world looked like Hawaiian culture before Western colonization: it “was not ashamed to be naked” and valued big bodies, instead of forcing them to be smaller.

Vogel’s podcast ran for two years, though she eventually deleted it due to worries about receiving another job.

“When someone is bucking up against a system, whether we’re talking about colonization, white supremacy, homophobia, sexual freedom, reproductive freedom, you are going to get blowback,” she noted of her experience.

But still, “it was all worth it. It was all worth it to me,” Vogel said.

“So, I just want to leave you with this. What stories will you tell?” 

Closing out

Lambert finished her session with a word of wisdom. “We all have a story. That’s how we fight.” 

Her words were echoed by Jackson, who closed with, “Learn the truth, share the truth, listen to indigenous voices and challenges the narratives that cause harm.” 

Indigenous girls, Lambert said, were raised to be quiet.

So, she said, “it’s time that we all look at ourselves with grace, give ourselves grace and permission to have those feelings, permission to be angry and permission to voice it.” 

Trauma informed care, Lambert noted, pivots from the default question of ‘What’s wrong with you’ to ‘What happened to you?’ And it’s important work.

“Our Cherokee ancestors went to the river to wash away pain and restore balance, and we, too are called to restore what has been harmed,” Jackson told the audience.

After years and years of healing, Lambert saw one of her perpetrators at a restaurant.

“I was able to just look them straight in the eyes with no emotion,” she recounted to the audience.

“And I was so proud of myself. Because that person will no longer have power over me, and they’re not going to make me leave.”