Shanda Poitra is one of this year's Bush Foundation Fellows. She works to teach Native women and girls that they deserve to be safe and to help them develop tools to protect and advocate for themselves.
It all started with a self-defense course; the journey that has guided Shanda to finally receiving this grant, and allowing her to serve the Indigenous women and girls.
Shanda reflects on the toxic cycle of domestic violence she lived and witnessed growing up in reservation culture. Then, how she broke this generational cycle in her own family, and how she plans to do so for Indigenous women everywhere with the power of knowledge and self-defense skills.
