Pine Ridge gets first domestic violence shelter in nearly 20 years

Amelia Schafer
ICT

For roughly 17 years, since the closure of previous shelter Cangleska, domestic violence victims seeking shelter had to drive over 90 miles to Rapid City for shelter or over an hour to the neighboring Rosebud Reservation if its White Buffalo Calf Women’s society had space. 

Across Indian Country, despite disproportionately high rates of domestic violence and violence against women, there are only 55 Indigenous-focused domestic violence shelters compared to 575 federally recognized tribes, according to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. This lack of safe houses and shelters can directly tie into the high rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women nationwide, said Norma Rendon, Oglala Lakota and the founder of Where All Women are Honored. 

Leaving an abusive relationship isn’t easy, it takes a lot of courage to leave, and adding the need for a vehicle for travel to Rapid City or friend to drive there can add to the fear victims may experience when planning their escape, advocates said. 

Over half of American Indian/Alaska Native women have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetimes, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

From 2020-2023, at least three people have been killed as a result of domestic violence on the Pine Ridge Reservation, according to data provided to ICT from the South Dakota Department of Health’s Violent Death Reporting System. The Violent Death Reporting System’s statewide data collection started in 2020. 

“It’s very sad because it’s not our way of life,” Rendon said. 

Three years ago, roughly 2 miles north of the new shelter, 19-year-old pregnant woman Ashton Provost, Oglala Lakota, was shot and killed by her boyfriend McKenzie Big Crow, 20. Big Crow was found guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter, violating the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and Possession of an Unregistered Firearm following a three-day jury trial in Rapid City, South Dakota in 2025.

During the trial, Provost’s family testified that she had been a victim of domestic violence prior to her death. 

Homicide rates for American Indian and Alaska Native women are more than ten times the national average in some counties and overall, 2.8 times higher that of White women, according to a study by the National Congress of American Indians. 

While opening the shelter, Rendon acknowledged the Indigenous people killed as a result of domestic violence, and her hope that this shelter can prevent future deaths. 

“I think it plays a vital role,” Rendon said. “If we can get together to develop a policy and protocols, we can help keep our neighbors safe and our relatives safe.” 

Rendon herself is a survivor of domestic violence. Rendon said she escaped an abusive relationship in 1977 in Minneapolis, after which she began meeting with other survivors in her community and working to create a support network and eventually her organization.

Where All Women Are Honored is the first full-service shelter on the reservation since 2009. The tribe does have its own victim services shelter, however, it’s not currently operational, representatives said. 

The home, in a rural, remote portion of the Pine Ridge Reservation, is guarded by rolling plains, remoteness and security cameras. Rendon said organizers are working to employ a fulltime security guard as well.

It’s equipped with a swimming pool, playground equipment and wooded area home to chokecherries and traditional medicines that residents can gather as needed. With five bedrooms, Rendon said the shelter can accommodate up to five families (one per room) and provides space for overnight emergency shelter if it’s over capacity. 

“The numbers for domestic and sexual and violence that is happening on Pine Ridge can be staggering,” said Amanda Takes War Bonnett, Oglala Lakota and the Public Education Specialist at Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains. “Sexual violence especially is a silent epidemic here that has consequences that affect our family structures, schools and economy.”

And there isn’t accurate data on how present the issue is, Takes War Bonnett said. Not all cases of domestic violence are reported to law enforcement and often, accountability doesn’t happen. 

“There are thousands and thousands of dollars that are being funneled through grants and organizations to Pine Ridge for prevention, awareness and advocacy but one key piece is having a place of safety to go when escaping violence or needing to refocus and heal,” Takes War Bonnett said. “In opening this shelter, Where All Women Are Honored is going to offer women and their children that key piece for safety and to heal.”

The violence directly ties back to the generational trauma experienced during the boarding school era and colonization as a whole, Rendon said. 

“It’s [generational trauma] like a blister, that wound eventually has to open up and seep out,” Rendon said. “And that’s what it’s done now. All those wounds have seeped out and so our sexual assault is a learned behavior and it just increases more and more. And the same with domestic violence.”

Founded in 2018, Where All Women Are Honored has an office space in Rapid City, South Dakota that’s served as their homebase for several years. For a period of time, the organization had a makeshift shelter in the Sioux San Hospital, a former segregated tuberculosis clinic for Native Americans on the west side of Rapid City. After the hospital was torn down in 2022, Rendon said the group was unable to secure a new space for a shelter. 

After that, Rendon said the group shifted gears to operate as an outreach organization, all while working towards the goal of making a shelter in Pine Ridge someday. 

In addition to its new shelter and outreach programs in Rapid City, Where All Women are Honored also provides educational programs for youth to learn what a healthy relationship looks like and how to be a good partner. 

Rendon said the group also works to help get victims on their feet again and able to find housing of their own and a job. From there, Where All Women are Honored will help victims access groceries, hygiene products, counseling and other essentials as they continue on their healing journey.

“It’s up to them what they want to do, where they want to live, because it’s not my program, it’s theirs,” Rendon said. “We help get them reestablished, and we continue to work with them. And we tell them that you’ve got this. Look what you’ve done so far. But we still stay in touch because they’re just getting established.”

All of this is in an effort to help prevent victims from going back to their abusers, Rendon said. 

“There’s a study that says [victims return] seven to eight times,” Rendon said. “In my experience, it’s nine to ten times before they finally leave. Or if the abuser gets help and really wants to change and really wants their family.”

The shelter is open to any victim in need, regardless of gender or whether or not they’re Native, Rendon said. 

“It’s, you know, Where All Women are Honored,” Rendon said. “Mitakuye Oyasin, we are all related. So a non-Native woman can come here and get help just like anybody else.”

Rendon said the outreach program in Rapid City will continue its operations and even is able to transport victims to the shelter in Pine Ridge if needed.