Abstract
Sexual assault rates in Alaska and northern Canada far exceed their respective national rates. Multiple historical and current conditions are thought to contribute to sexual violence in the far north, including a culture of silence that discourages victims from speaking out and inhibits communities from establishing healthier norms. This article examines a number of local initiatives to reduce the incidence of sexual assault. Local leadership, coordinated community response among service providers, and outside funding and programmatic support are key characteristics of these promising programs. Such locally initiated programs offer a model of local self-determination as northern communities face various challenges in the twenty-first century.
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Notes
- 1.
The researcher investigated the tendency toward communitarian versus privatized, or professional, responses within the communities and urged social workers to encourage communitarian responses that retained ownership of the problem of conjugal violence within the community, rather than transferring it to authorities and professionals.
- 2.
The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in Duluth, Minnesota developed the coordinated community response as an intervention strategy to reduce violence against women. The model integrates community resources and services to meet victims’ needs, increase reporting, and reduce the incidence of violence most effectively (The Advocates for Human Rights 2006).
- 3.
A 2001–2002 survey of victimization services in Nunavut found that while numerous services existed, the vast majority were provided by volunteers or poorly paid and trained service providers, especially outside the capital of Iqualuit. The report concluded that lack of funding, leadership and infrastructure, as well as general difficulties in providing services to victimized people hampered effective delivery of services (Levan, vii).
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Ehrlander, M.F. (2018). Local Initiatives to Reduce the Incidence of Sexual Assault in the North. In: O'Donnell, B., Gruenig, M., Riedel, A. (eds) Arctic Summer College Yearbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66459-0_12
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