Dedra White wept as she described the collapse of the nonprofit her sister founded to help Native American victims of domestic violence.
The Department of Justice recently slammed the Our Sister’s Keeper Coalition, questioning the handling and use of nearly $210,000 of taxpayers’ money during the last seven years.
“I did the best that I could with what I had and what I knew at the time,” said White, former acting director. “I think of all the ladies, everything that we did, and it just doesn’t seem fair. A lot of American Indians won’t go to non-native domestic-violence coalitions.”
The group shut its door in September 2013 after the DOJ Office on Violence Against Women stopped funding the enterprise in 2012. The DOJ Office of Inspector General audit prominently criticizes Diane Millich, former executive director and White’s sister, who founded the organization in 2006.
The findings claim family members held leadership positions, withdrew grant money in cash from ATMs and had slipshod accounting procedures. The audit also said Millich signed many of her own paychecks, employees were overpaid and inaccurate financial reports were submitted late.
DOJ spokesman Jeff Dorschner said it’s department policy not to confirm or deny the existence of any criminal investigation.
Millich supervised the spending of three federal grants totaling $570,000 until she resigned because of illness around May 2012. White took over as acting director and the Justice’s OIG began its audit in August 2012. In a phone interview with the Herald last week, Millich said she was aware of the audit but not the details. Several follow-up calls for comment to Millich received no response.
The government officials and the nonprofit disagree on the audit’s findings, with White saying she didn’t have the background and knowledge of the internal operations to give the answers the auditors were looking for. The group’s goal was to train women to become empowered and to learn to love themselves.
“We were serving a lot of women,” White said. “A lot.”
Native American/Alaska Native women were significantly more likely than white, African-American or mixed-race women to report they were raped, according to a 2000 DOJ report. Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault crimes compared with all other races, and 1 in 3 reports having been raped during her lifetime.
However, the new OIG audit said the group couldn’t support its claims of achievement and overstated its performance. The Office on Violence Against Women agreed with the findings and recommendations of the audit. White said they’ll continue to work with the office to supply documentation to prove the use of the money was justified. The government has a variety of options to resolve the questions raised, including allowing the use of the grant money, issuing a waiver or demanding repayment.
Native Americans and non-Indians see things differently because of their cultural backgrounds, White said. In the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, a lot of the leaders are related to each other.
But when the government told the nonprofit no, they changed its policies.
“We didn’t see that we had done anything wrong,” she said. “What non-Indians would call nepotism or conflicts of interest, we don’t see it that way because we feel we have an accounting.”
smueller@durangoherald.com
An earlier version of this story had incorrect information on who founded the nonprofit.
