Written By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/2" target="_blank">Brittany Harlow</a> and <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/87" target="_blank">Rachael Schuit</a>
(TAFT, Okla.) Oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States, with a significant number of women behind bars. This summer, two organizations teamed up to give incarcerated women at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center and Eddie Warrior Correctional Center a platform to share their stories.
<a href="https://www.poeticjustice.org/" target="_blank">Poetic Justice</a> is a nonprofit that empowers women in county jails and prisons through creative arts and restorative writing. 
In 2023, Ellen Stackable, co-founder and executive director of Poetic Justice, met Yukari Kane, CEO of the Prison Journalism Project, a nonprofit that trains incarcerated writers to be journalists and publishes their stories. 
“We believe that in order for a meaningful criminal justice reform to happen, the people who are most impacted should be part of the conversations, should be in the mix, and their experiences should be heard,” Kane said.
The two connected over their shared mission, leading to a joint effort to bring the Prison Journalism Project's curriculum to Oklahoma’s female prisons. 
The goal? Launch a newspaper at each facility.
As part of the project, Kane helped train incarcerated women at Mabel Bassett and Eddie Warrior to write articles, including op-eds and commentaries. This training is part of a larger initiative by the Prison Journalism Project, which published <a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2024/04/17/first-of-its-kind-journalism-handbook-for-incarcerated-writers/" target="_blank">The Prison Writer’s Guide to Media Writing</a> earlier this year.
“We had 11 weeks to go from a group of people who have never done journalism in their [lives] to producing an onsite newspaper,” said Stackable. “They came up with their design, they came up with their mission statement, they chose the articles they were going to do.”
Kane noted that she was initially doubtful they could produce a newspaper in such a short time frame, but was impressed by the women's determination.
“Not even with my university students–I just can't imagine in 11 weeks, going from learning how to do journalism to working on establishing a newspaper, coming up with ideas, writing it, getting it published in newspaper form,” she said. “I just didn't think it was going to happen.”
Poetic Justice plans to keep the initiative going. “This isn't just a one-off newspaper,” said Stackable. “We have funding to do the next three issues, and what's really amazing about this is that we're doing it with the approval of the DOC.”
Kane also says this project is about more than just giving incarcerated women a voice–it’s about ensuring those on the outside hear what they have to say.
“One of the things I've come to learn is that criminal justice and incarceration is closely connected with all of the other problems that we might care about, whether it's urban poverty, public school education, mental illness, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, all of that,” she explained. “If you believe in a strong democracy and everybody should have a voice, this part of our society should be part of the voices.”
And these journalists are already shining a light on stories that have previously gone untold beyond the prison walls. Like the legends of the ghost children that roam the Eddie Warrior facility, guiding readers to the facility’s history as a former Indian Boarding School and then the Deaf, Blind, and Orphan Institute. As well as the old cemetery located on the property where the children are buried. 
The Indian Boarding School, called Haloche Indian Mission School, was opened in 1906, just two years after <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=TA001" target="_blank">Taft </a>was founded. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, the community began as a Creek Freedmen settlement. 
“They have a church, they have education, they have a mayor, they have a city council,” said Stackable. “Now, they have a voice through the newspapers.” 
Stackable added these newspapers also provide women at Mabel Bassett and Eddie Warrior with a sense of ownership. 
“One day in class, we'd been editing down because it was like 700 words and we needed to be at 500,” Stackable said. “And I turned to one of our news staff and said, do you want me to edit? She goes, nope. She goes, I'm gonna do it myself first. And then the metaphor she used, she said, in prison they have shakedowns. And every once in a while they come through and guards will check every single item that a woman has to make sure that it is exactly what's supposed to be there. And she said, I'd rather do my own shakedown than have somebody else do it. And so she edited it and it was perfect.” 
You can read the newly launched “Warrior Standard” and “The Mabel Bassett Balance” <a href="https://www.poeticjustice.org/prison-journalism" target="_blank">online here</a>, where donations can also be made. A $5 donation covers the cost of distributing 10 newspapers.

Oklahoma

Nonprofits team up to empower incarcerated Oklahoma women through journalism

VNN Oklahoma

Written By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/87" target="_blank">Rachael Schuit</a> and <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/2" target="_blank">Brittany Harlow</a>
(OKLAHOMA) After years of work and countless hours put in by numerous criminal justice advocates, the Oklahoma Survivor’s Act (OSA) finally went into effect this past Thursday.
<a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/articles/share/3535">Senate Bill 1835</a>, signed by Governor Kevin Stitt in May, allows courts to issue lower sentences to survivors whose crimes relate to the abuse they endured.
Its retroactivity also allows survivors who are currently behind bars to apply to have their sentences reduced if their crime was related to their abuse. 
Survivors like April Wilkens, the first case to be filed under OSA.
Wilkens has been <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/articles/share/2216">serving a life sentence</a> since 1998 for killing her ex-fiancé during an assault.
<a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/articles/share/1998">Related Story: Two decades later, a woman sentenced to life for killing her abuser still fights for freedom</a>
The day OSA went into effect, the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice filed a 422-page request to apply for resentencing at the Tulsa County District Court on Wilkens’s behalf. 
The court filing states, “Ms. Wilkens presents a strong case for resentencing under the act. She was 28 years old and a victim of extreme physical, sexual, and psychological abuse when she committed the instant offense.”
It also states that under OSA, “Specifically, a sentence of LIFE like Ms. Wilken’s, shall be reduced to twenty five years or less for eligible domestic violence survivors.” 
Wilkens has already served 26 years and counting.
“Even the district attorneys who prosecuted her were forced to concede that she was the victim of domestic violence -- and yet they still sought the harshest sentence possible under the law,” Oklahoma Appleseed posted on social media after the filing. “We are proud to have been a part of advocating for the Oklahoma Survivors' Act so that we could reach this moment right now--a chance at justice and freedom for our client. April is excited at the possibility that she will get to be with her son again, and get to meet her grandchild for the first time.” 
Wilkens has been denied both parole and commutation, but told VNN earlier this year it felt “incredibly validating” that lawmakers and the governor are standing with abuse survivors like her through OSA.
“Thank God for Senator Greg Treat, Representative Jon Echols, all of the lawmakers who voted for the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, and all of our fierce advocates who helped make this much-needed law happen,” Wilkens said. 
<a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/articles/share/2950">Related Story: Support for Oklahoma’s abused women builds at Capitol </a>
“This is the first time in Oklahoma history that violent offenses have been eligible for resentencing, and therefore is the first chance to end the suffering of survivors languishing behind bars,” The Sentencing Project, another force behind Senate Bill 1835’s passage, posted on social media after OSA went into effect.

First “Oklahoma Survivor’s Act” case filed in Tulsa County

This is a VNN Collaboration produced by <a href="https://verifiednews.network/vnn-oklahoma/" target="_blank">VNN Oklahoma</a> in partnership with <a href="https://www.pursuitfilms.com/" target="_blank">Pursuit Films</a>
Written By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/87" target="_blank">Rachael Schuit</a> and <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/2" target="_blank">Brittany Harlow</a>
Narrated By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/253" target="_blank">Trista Vaughn</a>
(CHEROKEE NATION) Genes are the code of life. A continuous pathway of one living being to another, carrying what has been into what will be. 
Joe Ballard is a member of the Cherokee Nation. 
A century after his ancestors were forced to march on the Trail of Tears from their ancestral homelands to what is now Oklahoma, the federal government kicked his grandfather off their family’s land again.
“The little that I do know from my dad, which they didn't talk about it much, was they gave him 50 cents an acre and told him to get the hell out,” Joe said.
Joe’s family was one of 70 Cherokee families whose allotments were taken back when the U.S. Government established Camp Gruber in the 1940s.
Joe’s wife Grace is a licensed clinical social worker, somatic experiencing practitioner and the director and owner of <a href="https://foundationsbehavioralhealth.org/" target="_blank">Foundations Behavioral Health</a>.
“The government came in and took their land on Camp Gruber, Cherokee Wildlife Refuge area, and burned their houses to the ground,” Grace said.
Grace has worked in the mental health field for 15 years, beginning as an alcohol and drug counselor in Claremore. She soon realized traditional methods weren’t getting through to her clients, 70 percent of which were Native American. 
So Grace looked to her father-in-law Larry Ballard for guidance, who had also helped her get that counseling job to begin with. 
“He helped me find the Red Road to Wellbriety,” Grace said. “And they just... It was incredible how much better they got and how much more quickly and they loved it. Bringing in culture and something that spoke to them and spoke to them in their roots, how quickly that helped them change and heal.”
Grace went on to seek out even more decolonized therapy practices, including somatic, or body-focused therapy, to help her clients heal from historic, shock, and complex traumas.
“Trauma is a loss of relationship,” she said. “It's a loss of relationship with yourself and with other people. So you lose that relationship with yourself, and what we find with trauma is you're actually losing relationship as well with your own body.”
She opened Foundations Behavioral Health in 2015 to help people heal from the trauma of a colonized society in nature-themed environments. 
“I've heard some healers call it like, the spirit being scared away from the body, the shamanistic healers, and we have to bring the spirit back.”
“And a lot of times it is hard for people, because we rush around,” Grace said. “That's the other reason why people are so disconnected from how much intergenerational trauma has affected them.”
Grace also draws inspiration from thought leaders such as Dr. Peter Levine, who teaches that to heal trauma, those broken connections must be restored. 
During his time with the Hopi Tribe in Arizona, Levine learned trauma experienced there is shared pain, remedied as a community as opposed to centering on an individual. And if trauma is not dealt with quickly as a community, its consequences will negatively impact the tribe for seven generations. <a href="https://kripalu.org/resources/power-connection-heal-trauma">(Source: The power of connection to heal trauma | Kripalu)</a> 
“In the field of epigenetics, there's research in mice where they take a mother that's pregnant and they give her a shock with, let's say, maybe a strawberry,” Grace said. “And then they measure the offspring with just the strawberry, not the shock, and they have the same reaction their mother did. And that typically happens for five generations, they found in the studies of epigenetics, but we're a lot more complex than a mouse.” 
Somatic therapy requires people to physically work through their trauma, retraining responses or even acting out the completion or a traumatic event.
“If there is not a completion of a response to a threat, this energy that the nervous system produces in the body has nowhere to go,” Grace said. “It just gets stuck. And can become what we kind of call a lay term, a holding pattern in the body.”
Holding patterns such as strong fight or flight responses that live on in those who have experienced relatively trauma-free lives. And other behaviors Joe has observed over the last two decades teaching at Tulsa Public Schools. 
“As far as the Native kids, yeah, they're not as talkative,” Joe said. “They're not gonna give you as much stuff. And they're really particular about their stuff too, which is kind of how I've always been. My stuff's my stuff, stay out of my area. Don't take my stuff. So it kinda makes sense a little bit to me.”
But along with the negative consequences of trauma are some positives. 
“The past shapes our present and it shapes our future,” Grace said. 
Grace said the strength and resilience of her Native American community members and her family are unlike any she’s ever seen.
Connecting pathways to improved health.
And completing long-awaited responses for healing.
This story is the first in the new VNN Oklahoma project "Tulsa's Indigenous Truth", supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project and the Commemoration Fund. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill. "Tulsa's Indigenous Truth" addresses the underreported history of Allotment swindling and miscarriages of justice against Indigenous people in Eastern Oklahoma during the early 1900s. This story was created to demonstrate the deep connection between past injustice and contemporary issues.  <a href="https://verifiednews.network/donation-page/ " target="_blank">Donate here to support this much-needed work.</a>

Indigenous Roots: Natural pathways between history and today

Written By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/87">Rachael Schuit</a> 
Produced By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/2">Brittany Harlow</a> 
(TULSA, Okla.) “When you leave your service or branch, you tend to find out real quick that you’re gonna miss that. And I felt like it was just pulled from me.”
More than a hobby, more than an art, and definitely more than a job, a sense of purpose is what Jiu Jitsu offers Steven Matias, the owner of <a href="https://www.cohesiontrainingacademy.com/" target="_blank">Cohesion Training Academy</a>. 
A former Marine Corps Infantryman who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, Matias is a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as well as a 4th Degree black belt in Judo under the United States Judo Association.  
He’s been practicing both since he was a child, not realizing then how much they would later save his life after his time in the military.
“I missed it very much, that waking up every morning and having a purpose,” Matias said. “And I felt like I didn't have a purpose and that was one of the reasons why I kinda was lost.”
<a href="https://afsp.org/story/2023-national-veteran-suicide-prevention-report-intensifies-the-call-for-continue" target="_blank">Like thousands of other veterans each year</a>, Matias struggled with suicide. But through martial arts, he was able to find his saving grace and a new purpose in life: to teach.
He credits Jiu Jitsu with teaching him patience and how to work well with others. 
As a professor, Matias passes those skills along to his students, including the Elliot sisters. 12-year-old Violet started training first. 
“It's like my family here,” Violet told VNN. 
13-year-old Jazmine told us watching her 12-year-old sister Violet learn the art of Jiu Jitsu inspired her to do the same.
“It just kind of became fun to me, like watching her,” Jazmine said. “And so I kind of wanted to do it cause she’s just really good at it.”
Even though the sisters are learning side-by-side with adults, the self defense skills are helping both of them learn more confidence.
“If I get kidnapped, that will really really help me,” Violet said. “And I feel safe here with the other adults.”
Matias said offering classes for children is important because it shows the importance of having to struggle and overcoming struggle, as well as discipline, mental toughness, and physical activity.
And that’s not all Matias has set out to accomplish.
As the Fire Chief of the Frontier Shore Fire Department In Osage County, Matias has a well-rounded understanding of the needs of service people from all avenues, and a desire to help them.
“A lot of service members are lost,” Matias said. “They just don’t know how to ask for help. So what we try to do is decrease the burden of them having to pay for a uniform.”
This June 15th, Cohesion Training Academy is sponsoring their second Gis 4 the Brave fundraising seminar to raise money for uniforms to give to service members wanting to learn martial arts.
“We raise awareness on veteran suicide and first responder suicide,” Matias said. “We talk about the signs, the flags to look for and how to remedy that or how to help remedy that situation, along with providing a gi or a uniform that’s donated free or at no cost.”
Those interested can sign up through their<a href="https://www.facebook.com/gis4thebraveproject/"> event page on Facebook.</a>

Veteran-owned facility strengthening communities with training - and gis

Written By: <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/87" target="_blank">Rachael Schuit</a> and <a href="https://app.verifiednews.network/users/2" target="_blank">Brittany Harlow</a>
(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) It is a dark history that still impacts many families across Oklahoma and the rest of the United States. Between <a href="https://www.doi.gov/priorities/strengthening-indian-country/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative">1819 and the 1970’s,</a> tens of thousands of Native American children were removed from their families and cultures and forced to attend boarding schools.
According to the <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/#:~:text=The%20truth%20about%20the%20U.S.,the%2019th%20and%2020th%20centuries.">National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition</a> (NABS), more than 523 Boarding Schools for Native American children were government funded. Abuse and efforts to abolish Native American cultures led to lifelong and generational trauma for Native communities.
NABS Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Acting Director of the Oral History Project Dr. Samuel Torres (Mexica/Nahua) has been with the organization since 2019. 
“The Healing Coalition was formed in 2011 as a grassroots organization for the purposes of making sure that the United States is working towards truth, justice and healing for Indian Boarding School survivors,” Torres said. 
Torres said shortly after their formation, NABS sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the federal government asking how many institutions there were in the United States, how many students attended them, how many students never came home, and how many institutional cemeteries there were. 
That data was not made available to NABS at the time, or simply did not exist. 
“Over the past couple of years we have seen a dramatic shift, a transformation from avoiding the question of what happened to our relatives at boarding school to the US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland initiating the <a href="https://www.doi.gov/priorities/strengthening-indian-country/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative" target="_blank">Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative</a>," Torres said. "And we have worked with the Interior Department for several years now to coordinate, share our research, work on different methodological processes which created the first volume of the Indian Boarding School report.” 
Torres said they are now working on the second report as well as their own <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/oral-history-project/" target="_blank">Oral History Project</a>. 
NABS will travel across the country as part of the two-year project, which will not only collect oral interviews with boarding school survivors, but also heal and honor their experiences. 
“This historic project is a lifeline to preserving the voices and memories of Indian boarding school survivors,” NABS CEO Deborah Parker (Tulalip) said.  
The interviews are conducted on video by oral historians thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). Support by trauma-informed mental health providers is also available. 
“We’re losing elders every day, due to old age and other issues and instances,” Torres said. “And time is truly of the essence.” 
NABS selected Oklahoma as its first stop to interview boarding school survivors due to the state topping the nation with the most locations at 95. 
The work began Monday with an opening ceremony and community dinner at the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City. Interviews were then held in private rooms over the course of the week. 
Torres said there were few words he could pin to their first week of interviews, but powerful was definitely one of them. 
"Just an amazing week to spend time with relatives, to hold space with them," Torres said. "Hard conversations were had, absolutely, but to be able to have these visits together in such a mindful, meaningful way. We’re not just here to seek trauma. We’re here to open pathways toward healing and to connect relatives with resources.” 
Torres said NABS will continue to follow up with the connections they’ve made weeks and months into the future. 
“This is about building relationships ultimately; it’s not just about building a collection,” Torres said.  
A community lunch and thank you ceremony were held on Friday in lieu of a "closing" ceremony, as organizers said the work has just begun. 
NABS Elder-in-Residence Sandy White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) said they are honored by those who were brave enough to share their stories with them thus far.
“You are the reason we’re still here,” White Hawk said. “I want you to leave with that and remember that. I don’t care what you did in your younger years when you didn’t know any better. And you were working out pain. I lived like that many years myself.” 
White Hawk said Native ways, songs and medicines are what heal Native people and bring them back, such as what was experienced in Oklahoma City. 
“And who would have thought that when we release that hard stuff, that negative stuff, that the good will be in there,” White Hawk said. “We’re going to feel light, more love. We don’t even realize how much we’re carrying because it became normal to us. And so this is all the joy and lightness that you feel after having shared whatever you shared.” 
Boarding school survivors who take part in the project are given an honorarium, a care package made by Native Artisans, and a copy of their interview, in addition to ongoing support from the NABS team. 
NABS is also partnering with tribes, Indigenous organizations, and community leaders to ensure that the project is culturally sensitive and respectful.
Survivors who would like to schedule an interview can email <a href="mailto:OralHistoryProject@nabshc.org">OralHistoryProject@nabshc.org</a> or call (651)-650-4445.
This story has been updated to include additional information following Friday's community lunch and thank you ceremony.

VNN Oklahoma

Nonprofits team up to empower incarcerated Oklahoma women through journalism

First “Oklahoma Survivor’s Act” case filed in Tulsa County

Indigenous Roots: Natural pathways between history and today

Veteran-owned facility strengthening communities with training - and gis

Oral History Project preserving voices of Native boarding school survivors