You are invited to WSCADV's Annual Meeting! Join your peers for:
- A special presentation to honor Yvonne L. Swan (formerly Wanrow), an extraordinary survivor and Washingtonian, who changed history!
- Board of Directors elections!
- Celebrating successes!
WSCADV Member Programs* in good standing each recieve 1 ballot to vote in the elections. Each Member Program can designate 1 person as your "designated voter." That person will recieve a ballot by Thursday morning 1st thing.
*Here's a
recent list of Member Programs. This is subject to change, and programs need to re-up every year, so if you're not sure if your program is a current Member (remember to renew!) please contact us immediately.
Speaker: Professor
SARAH DEER is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. Her award-winning book,
The Beginning and End of Rape, is the culmination of her work with survivors over 25 years. She led an Amnesty International report that re-framed the problem of sexual violence in Indian Country as an international human rights issue. She helped pass landmark legislation: The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, and the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. These began changing federal policies that interfere with the sovereign right of tribes to prosecute non-Native offenders who harm Native women. When she last came to WSCADV’s conference, she was named a MacArthur Foundation “genius” Fellow! Welcome back, Sarah!
Honoree: This year, WSCADV is proud to honor
YVONNE L. SWAN (Sinixt (Arrows Lake) Nation), formerly Yvonne Wanrow, a citizen of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Her 1970’s legal battle brought national attention to sexual violence against Native women, and her landmark victory broadened the rights of all survivors by establishing the
Wanrow or reasonable woman legal standard. “[She] stood five foot four inches tall, weighed 120 pounds, and was wearing a cast on her foot when she shot and killed … an intoxicated 60 year old white man and accused child molester who towered more than six feet tall.” The “self-defense doctrine and the defense strategies that grew from her case would become the underpinning for many self-defense cases that would follow on behalf of battered women.
[1]Convicted in 1973 of second degree murder by an all-white jury in Spokane, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Feminist and American Indian Movement activists and attorneys took up her case. The 1977 State of Washington v. Wanrow decision, overturning her conviction, was a landmark victory for gender equality. Along with the 1970’s self-defense trials of
Joan Little and Inez Garcia, the case brought together activists across movements to end racism and sexism, and shone a spotlight on the epidemic-level sexual violence facing Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women, as well as the harm – not help – they experienced from police, courts, and prisons. Today, we are called to ask, who are the Yvonne Wanrows in our communities today, and how will we bear witness to their lives?
[1] Donna K. Coker and Lindsay C. Harrison,
The Story of Wanrow: The Reasonable Woman and the Law of Self-Defense Criminal Law Stories (2013).
