Mary Annette Pember
ICT
The Trump administration is working to consolidate the federal Office on Violence Against Women with other grant-making offices within the U.S. Department of Justice, while proposing funding cuts of nearly 30 percent.
The office — created in 1994 to implement provisions of the Violence Against Women Act — was given permanent status in 2004 by Congress as an independent office reporting directly to the U.S. Attorney General.
The changes surfaced during the 20th annual tribal consultation meeting held Jan. 21-23 in Prior Lake, Minnesota, a gathering that for years has included tribal leaders, advocates and representatives of the Office on Violence Against Women.
“Beginning next month, all OVW grants to tribes will be managed by the [Department of Justice] tribal affairs division, with the goal of each tribe having a single OVW grant manager,” Ginger Baran Lyons, the OVW deputy director for grants development and management, told participants at the meeting.
“This is a change we are making in response to your calls for more consistency in how we administer these grants.”
Prior to the consultation meeting, the DOJ sent an email notice to tribal leaders and advocates indicating that agency leaders would discuss President Donald Trump’s plan in his proposed 2026 budget to consolidate the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, the Office of Justice Programs and the Office on Violence Against Women.
Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, who oversees the department’s civil rights division and grant-making components, described the change as an effort to simplify the grant process in response to tribal leaders’ calls for more “consistency in how we administer these grants.”
Over two days of testimony at the meeting, however, nearly every tribal leader and advocate expressed opposition to the proposed consolidation plan. ICT attended the meeting virtually and also obtained transcripts of the testimony presented.
Several people testified at the meeting that the Department of Justice has wrongfully used requests from tribes to reduce red tape as an excuse to further restrict tribal access to funding.
“Contrary to what is being communicated to tribes and organizations this [consolidation] is not something tribes are asking for or something that they want,” said Elizabeth Jerue, a citizen of the Anvik Tribe and executive director of the Healing Hearts Coalition in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Glenda Martin, citizen of the Red Lake Nation who sits on the tribal council as the Ponemah District representative, voiced similar concerns.
“Consolidation means years of confusion, delays in funding and interruption in service and collective loss of institutional knowledge among federal authorities,” Martin said during her testimony.
Martin was among several tribal leaders at the meeting who insisted that consolidation of the office would not be allowed under federal law.
“These offices were congressionally established and fought for by advocates who have worked in the field for decades,” she said.
Need for funding
In addition to consolidating the office’s responsibilities, Trump has proposed in the 2026 budget a 29 percent cut to funding for the OVW. Native advocates who attended the gathering underscored the potentially devastating impact of consolidation.
A majority of tribes and victims service organizations depend entirely on federal funding to provide services to victims of domestic violence and assault, and to support tribal policing and the judiciary, they said.
Several people lauded the DOJ for the 20-year partnership that contributed to strengthening legal protections for tribal citizens through the Violence Against Women Act and expanding tribal jurisdiction over non-Native perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence, trafficking, stalking and violence against children in Indian Country.
“The progress we have made demonstrates what is possible when tribes and the federal government work together,” said Tami Treutt Jerue, Elizabeth Jerue’s mother, also of the Anvik Tribe in Alaska. She noted that the success points to the need for continuing the federal funding, commitment and resources.
Several representatives lamented the transient nature of federal funding that they say prevents building sustainable infrastructure for victims and tribal justice services.
“We propose mandatory, non-competitive funding for tribal justice infrastructure including courts, law enforcement and social services,” said Robert Smith, chairman of the Pala Band of Mission Indians in California.
Without reliable funding, tribes are unable to pay officers and court staff competitive salaries or offer benefits, contributing to high staff turnover, Smith said.
Other requests and concerns included calls for an overhaul of federal law to restore tribal jurisdiction over all crimes committed by non-Native perpetrators on their lands and enough federal funding to provide tribal courts and law enforcement with the ability to protect citizens.
Treutt Jerue said meeting those demands would require an annual federal investment of $1 billion for law enforcement, $1 billion for tribal courts and $233 million for detention facilities.
“When the federal government fails to adequately fund tribal courts it doesn’t just create a resource gap, it actively prevents tribes from exercising self-governance,” Jerue said.
She noted that Native American and Alaska Native women face the highest rates of violence in the nation.
“Four out of five have experienced violence in their lifetimes, more than 56 percent have experienced sexual violence, nearly half have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. Native women are three times more likely to experience sexual assault compared to non-Native women and children.” Treutt Jerue said.
“Most alarming,” she added, “is that Alaskan Native women face a murder rate of up to 10 times higher than the national average.”
DEI need not apply
In late May 2025, the OVW included new restrictive “out of scope” activities for grantees that seemed to fly in the face of the missions of most organizations providing victims services.
Grantees were told that they may not frame domestic violence or sexual assault as systemic social justice issues rather than criminal offenses. The restrictions appeared to stem from President Donald Trump’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.
According to consultation attendees and advocates, effective justice programming and victims services in Indian Country require an upstream view of the impacts of systemic racism and violence.
“The spectrum of violence against Native women and communities is intertwined with systemic barriers that are embedded within our complex relationship with the federal government,” said Carmen O’Leary, director of the Native Woman’s Society of the Great Plains.
O’Leary, a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, also called attention to the DOJ’s decision to remove the “Not One More: Findings and Recommendations of the Not Invisible Act Commission,” released in 2023 and authorized as part of Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act signed by Trump in 2020.
The report vanished from the DOJ website in February 2025 shortly after Trump began his second term in office. Language in the report is heavy with terms the administration dismisses as DEI.
“A lot of resources from tribes and the federal government went into producing the ‘Not One More’ report,” O’Leary said.
“What is going to happen to the recommendations made in that report that came from members of communities?” O’Leary asked. “We had families that came from far away to talk about their family members that had been murdered. I would hope that the report could go back up [on the website] and that those recommendations would be funded and followed.”
Treutt Jerue noted that she has been attending the annual OVW consultations for many years in working with various organizations, and continues to push the same concerns.
“Some of the things I am going to say are the same that I said last year and the year before that and maybe even the year before that,” she testified. “I don’t want my granddaughter to be in front of these types of panels when she is my age; it is time to stop this. This needs to stop.”
She continued, “Every role I have carried to these meetings has been shaped for the same purpose, to address generational trauma and a relentless hope for change.”
‘Time to stop this’
The tribal consultation meeting in Minnesota was overshadowed by protests over the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confrontations in the state that have led to sweeping arrests and at least two deaths.
According to those who testified during the consultation, at least 50 percent of attendees chose to cancel their attendance over concerns of being swept up in ICE actions.
Treutt Jerue pointed to the tone-deaf expectation of the federal government in asking tribal leaders and advocates to travel across the country for consultation when people are being racially profiled, stopped and detained by federal agents who may not recognize tribal sovereignty.
“The problem is that many of our tribal members only have tribal identification for their travels,” Treutt Jerue said. “They were very afraid.”
Media representatives for the Department of Justice did not respond to ICT’s emailed questions regarding number of attendees or legal requirements relating to a minimum number of participants required to constitute a valid consultation.
*Correction: Ginger Baran Lyons, deputy director for grants development and management for the Office on Violence Against Women, spoke to a tribal consultation about changes that will start in February for the OVW. In a prior version of the story, the quote was attributed to someone else.