ABOUT US

How We Started

Mending the Sacred Hoop began in Duluth, MN in the mid 1980s, growing out of a Native women’s advocacy and support group for survivors of domestic violence. We are a Native American program operating within Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP), with the goal of changing the way systems and service people respond to Indian people. Our first funded project was conducting systems advocacy and intervention, organizing a Coordinated Community Response (CCR) to domestic violence with Carlton County and the Fond du Lac Reservation in northeastern Minnesota.  

As a result of expanded programming within DAIP (previously MPDI) Mending the Sacred Hoop began developing more services and special projects. We established Native men’s re-education classes for men who batter, developed training specifically for Indian people, and hosted community gatherings to address domestic violence against Indian women, in addition to overseeing the intervention project in Carlton County.

How we started

 Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project

Training Topics
 Technical Assistance
 Resource Development
                                                                                                                                                                           The passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 made funding available for tribal programs to address violence against Indian women. The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs created the Violence Against Women Office to create public policy and direct funding efforts to state and tribal grantees. To provide additional support for grantees, funding for technical assistance projects was made available for Native organizations to assist S.T.O.P. Violence Against Indian Women Discretionary Grant Program recipients in addressing domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. With the work Mending the Sacred Hoop and MPDI had already been doing in the area of training and institutional intervention, we entered into a cooperative agreement with the Department of Justice in 1995, thus creating Mending the Sacred Hoop S.T.O.P. Violence Against Indian Women Technical Assistance Project, or MSH-TA for short.

 Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project

Our mission is to restore safety and integrity to Native women by assisting Native Sovereign Nations in strengthening their response domestic violence and sexual assault. We work to improve the safety of Native women who experience battering, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by assisting tribes with training, technical assistance and resource materials that specifically address violence against American Indian/Alaska Native women.

Our approach recognizes that individual Nations are responding to violence against women by creating strategies at the local level distinct to their available resources and cultural perspectives. We  believe progress at the local level increases the opportunity to learn from each other and share effective strategies. The challenge for our Nations is to reclaim traditional views of women, developing a Native justice response that upholds accountability and works to end violence against Native women. It is our responsibility to develop strong, cooperative, formal working relationships with one another. It is within our grasp to dramatically alter our response to women who have been battered and sexually assaulted.

Training Topics

 To achieve our mission, MSH-TA offers trainings on such topics as: Advocacy, Sexual Assault, Creating a Coordinated Community Response, Native Women’s Leadership, Developing Batterer Intervention Programs in Tribal Communities, and Tribal Program Development and Grant Management. Trainings are tailored to meet the needs and resources of individual tribal communities and participants, and range from general information to advanced content. 

Technical Assistance

We provide technical assistance to OVW tribal grantees through our website, referrals, and phone consultations. MSH-TA is available for consultation on a variety of issues, and also offers referrals to trainers, faculty or other grantees working on similar issues. In addition, we offer relevant support information from our resource library.

Resource Development

 MSH-TA is continuously in the process of creating and collecting new material, training manuals, articles and topic papers. We offer a resource library and online resources page for routine dissemination of and access to information as part of our ongoing resource efforts.


This website is supported by Grant No. 2005-WT-AX-K013 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Dept of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.