Transcript: Katherine Gottlieb

The Family Wellness Warriors Initiative addresses issues of domestic violence, child abuse, and child neglect

[Lindberg:]: You’ve taken an interest in bringing out in the open faults in Alaskan social life, which I think as you pointed out is not limited to Alaska at all, and is not limited to Native populations at all, but it’s a problem that isn’t as well discussed there or anywhere else as you’d like it to be. I wonder if you’d say something about this project?
[Gottlieb:]: Yes. It’s called the Family Wellness Warriors Initiative, and we started it in the early ‘90s, and the reason is to address domestic violence and child abuse and child neglect in the state of Alaska. All of us got together and decided that it’s time to end it in this generation, and so what I think we’re doing for the nation on this issue is to be ice-breakers, and part of that ice-breaking is breaking the silence, and saying there is a problem around child sexual abuse and domestic violence and child neglect among our people.