1. Biography

2. Publications

3. References
     Citations    Sources  

4. External links

Biography

Asetoyer was born in San Jose, California on March 24, 1951.^[3] She helped her father at her printing company and at age 16, started a dress-design company, called Charon of California.^[3] In high school, she led a successful sit-in to encourage the school, which had no cafeteria, to find a way to serve lunch to students.^[1] Asetoyer later dropped out of school and from 1968 to 1971, she ran a boutique in San Francisco until she decided to attend San Francisco City College.^[3] In 1972, she married Dennis Duncan and dropped out of college, and eventually worked at the Urban Indian Health Clinic as a Nutritional Counselor and WIC program specialist.^[3] Her marriage was abusive,^[3] and in order to escape, she moved to South Dakota in 1979.^[4] She went back to school and received a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice from the University of South Dakota in 1981.^[3] Asetoyer started using her mother's name, Asetoyer, after her divorce.^[3]

She met and married Clarence Rockboy, a Yankton Sioux tribe elder in the early 1980s.^[4] They moved to Brattleboro, Vermont and her son, Charles, was born there in 1982, and the couple adopted Rockboy's nephew, Reynolds James Bruguier.^[3] She also earned a double master's degree in 1983 from the School for International Training.^[3] When Rockboy's father died in 1982, they moved to the Yankton Sioux Reservation and stayed there.^[3]

In 1982, Asetoyer's best friend was "beaten to death by her drunken husband," and Asetoyer began to advocate for Native women's rights and justice more actively.^[4] She briefly worked as a director for Women of All Red Nations (WARN), but left because of her disagreement with the administration of the organization's program.^[3] She and her husband created the Native American Community Board (NACB) in 1985 and first established the organization in the basement of their house.{{Sfn|Morgan|2002|p=60}} NACB worked with the issues of whoever stopped by to ask for help.{{Sfn|Morgan|2002|p=60-61}} One of the first issues NACB worked on was dealing with fetal alcohol syndrome.{{Sfn|Morgan|2002|p=61}} They also had Native women seeking shelter from domestic violence at NACB.^[4] Asetoyer was inspired to create a facility for women's health after a visit to the National Black Women's Health Project in Atlanta, Georgia.^[3] NACB was able to purchase a house in 1988 and they established the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center (NAWHERC).^[3] Asetoyer became the executive director.^[5]

During the 1990s, she was an AIDS outreach worker on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.^[6] In 1997, Asetoyer was on the Indigenous Women's Network board of directors.^[7]

Asetoyer was the facilitator of a working group at the United Nations in 2001, where she worked with the Current Status of Health of the World's Indigenous Peoples.^[4] She also earned the Jessie Bernard Wise Women's Award from the Center for Women's Studies in 2001.^[8] In 2002, she was awarded the Bread and Roses Award from the National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit for her work on environmental justice for Native communities.^[9]

In 2006, when South Dakota approved the United States' most restrictive abortion ban, Asetoyer announced she would run for State Senate.^[10] Her platform, pro-choice and stressing women's reproductive rights, had the effect of opening up dialogue about the issue that year.^[11]

In December 2006, Rockboy died.^[4]

In 2016, Asetoyer was diagnosed with cancer, but because of Indian Health Services (IHS) bureaucracy, waited two months to get surgery that was meant to be done immediately.^[12] The cancer moved from stage 1 to stage 2 during that time.^[12]

Publications

Asetoyer has edited books and informational pamphlets relating to Native American women's health. A chapter of Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (2001) was written by Asetoyer and titled "From the Ground Up."^[13] She edited the indigenous Women's Health Book, Within the Sacred Circle: Reproductive Rights, Environmental Health, Traditional Herbs and Remedies (2003), which is the first reproductive health book for Indigenous women.^[14] The book was considered by NWSA Journal to be an excellent overview which "provides understanding of unique cultural contexts among what remains a hidden minority."^[15] She was a contributing editor for the manual What to Do When You're Raped, published by NAWHERC in 2016.^[16]

References

Citations

Sources

• {{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f8mxEGQ5bu0C&lpg=PA60&dq=%22native%20american%20women's%20health%20education%20resource%20center%22&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q=%22native%20american%20women's%20health%20education%20resource%20center%22&f=false|title=Into Our Own Hands: The Women's Health Movement in the United States, 1969-1990|last=Morgen|first=Sandra|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2002|isbn=0813530709|location=|pages=|via=}}

External links

• The Charon Asetoyer Papers, 1985-2008
• Profile on SheSource
• Interview (NBC news)
• [https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/vof/transcripts/Asetoyer.pdf Oral history interview] (Smith College, 2005)

• Charon Asetoyer papers, [https://www.smith.edu/libraries/special-collections/research-collections/resources-lists/personal-family-papers/a Sophia Smith Collection] at Smith College.

• Linne Fharair
• Linnei Station
• Linnei, Yunlin
• Linnell (surname)
• Linneman
• Linnemann
• Linne Mooney
• Linnen
• Linnenbrink
• Lin Neng-pai
• Linn Enslow
• Linnepe (Röhr)
• Linne R. Mooney
• Linne two-toed sloth
• Linngithigh
• Linn High School
• Linn Htut
• Linnie, CA
• Linning, Michael
• Linn, Michael
• Linno Cave bent-toed gecko
• L'Innocente (novel)
• L'Innocente (The Victim)
• Linnonmaa
• Linnorm (Dungeons and Dragons)