Thank you.
It's Ka Ni Kanichihk. It's a Cree word that means “those who lead” or “those who go forward”.
I want to welcome all of our members from out of town to Treaty 1 territory this morning and to our beautiful but cold Winnipeg winter. And of course, to the members of Parliament from Manitoba, welcome home. It's the birthplace of our Métis nation as well, and we really need to recognize that.
Ka Ni Kanichihk is a multi-human-service organization located in one of our neighbourhoods, called Central and West Alexander, which has one of the highest populations demographically of indigenous peoples. I believe we are an expression of our right to self-determination and our own sovereignty in addressing both the root causes plus the manifestation of those root causes in a holistic, culturally appropriate, and extremely creative way. It is primarily women-led, but not exclusively, because we acknowledge that we need everyone in our circle to continue on this journey.
We talked about the fact that the committee wants to hear about the root causes of violence and the predominance of the root causes of violence in terms of indigenous peoples in general, and in particular, indigenous women. I believe firmly, and with every fibre of my being, that those are within the colonial history and relationships that continue to exist in our broader culture. The adage that everyone else knows best about what we need to do to proceed in the right direction has been both dehumanizing in terms of our cultural collective, but also has had a profoundly damaging impact on each individual's agency.
We've learned, by the systems we've been engaged in, to be dependent. My sister talked about being medicated when that's not really working out too well. We find our women are experiencing profound and continuous levels of extreme violence. This is not only partner violence, although that certainly is a part of it. It's also a violence of strangers and it's a violence of systems. We try to do our part in some small way to have a correct analysis and then to proceed forward on that basis.
I am not going to use up all of my time. I'm going to ask one of the women who is involved in one of the programs that's being funded by Status of Women Canada through Ka Ni Kanichihk. Her name is Suzanne Chartrand.
Often one doesn't hear from the voices of those people who have lived these experiences. I think it's really important. Moon Voices is all about giving women back their voices and reverse the trend where everybody has believed that they can and do often speak for our women and our collective.
With that, I'll turn it over to Suzanne.