The White House celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act last week and representatives from the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women attended.

Tiffany Jiron and Ryder Jiron, representing the CSVANW, attended the White House celebration to commemorate the passage of the legislation. President Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, sponsored the bill in 1994. It was the first piece of federal legislation that acknowledged domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes and provided federal resources to help communities to combat the violence, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

The act requires reauthorization every five years. U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, during a press call from the Democratic Women’s Caucus last week, pointed to the 2013 expansions of VAWA as being particularly important for New Mexico with its 23 federally recognized tribes and pueblos and her congressional district. 

“In 2013, then Vice President Biden fought to make sure our tribal nations had the jurisdiction to prosecute gender-based violence in their communities, whether the perpetrator was native or nonnative,” she said. “That was a huge sea change in the ability to hold perpetrators accountable and address the generational violence pervasive in those communities.”

Stansbury said the U.S. Congress reauthorized those provisions in 2022 and increased funding for programs to help survivors. 

Stansbury also noted the 30^th anniversary of the act during her weekly press call last week. She said she was a cosponsor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force in New Mexico. That task force issued a report with recommendations a few years ago but was disbanded last year by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office.

Stansbury said that despite all of the efforts made, domestic violence programs remain underfunded. 

“All communities experience violence and lack access to safe places to go,” she said. 

Tiffany Jiron, who is executive director of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, said in a statement that VAWA is “a lifeline.”

“The reauthorization of VAWA [in 2022] represented a significant step forward, yet we must continue to advocate for increased funding for Tribal Nations and a complete Oliphant fix,” she said through a statement.