Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Marilyn George. I am the outreach service coordinator in Smithers, B.C., which is almost the midway point on the Highway of Tears between Prince Rupert and Prince George, where, thus far, upwards of 19 women have either been killed or gone missing.
I'm also here today as an aboriginal women's representative to EVA BC, a provincial organization in B.C. that works on behalf of 240 programs located throughout the province that respond to violence against women.
Like the work of my provincial organization, EVA BC, my work is solely related to responding to violence against women, which includes domestic and sexual violence, child sexual abuse, and criminal harassment. I have been doing this kind of work for 14 years.
I am from Sik-e-dakh, or Glen Vowell, B.C., in the Hazelton area. I have travelled here from the north to speak with you about the shocking levels of violence being perpetrated against aboriginal women and girls here in B.C.
I don't think I need to speak about the kinds of violence or the extent of the violence experienced by aboriginal women. By now, through the many hearings you have attended already, you will have heard that over 90% of aboriginal women have either been sexually abused as girls, gang-raped as adolescents, or raped and/or beaten as adults. According to Statistics Canada's 2004 general social survey, rates of physical and sexual assault against aboriginal women are more than three times higher than against non-aboriginal women. Aboriginal women report experiencing more severe and potentially life-threatening forms of physical and sexual violence. Aboriginal women are almost seven times more likely to be murdered than non-aboriginal women. It's like walking around with an X on your back.
In B.C., as you know, our province has more missing and murdered women than anywhere else in Canada--160, according to the Sisters in Spirit report. This is a shocking and shameful reality that must be addressed without delay. I wish to thank you for caring enough to hold these hearings.
I wish to focus my talk with you today on what to do and where we should go from here. I wish first, though, to caution you very strongly against concluding these hearings with recommendations for more reports and more studies. Aboriginal people have been studied perhaps more than almost any other group, and the time for study on the subject has passed. The time for action is now.
Throughout the first decade of 2000, EVA BC, working in partnership with the Pacific Association of First Nations Women and BC Women's Hospital, held a number of meetings, bringing together aboriginal women from across the province to discuss the violence perpetrated against us and what needs to be done. During that time, numerous aboriginal women across B.C. came together for many meetings. We studied the issue very carefully. We looked at all the other studies and wrote two reports ourselves, the second of which I will share with you today. It is entitled “Researched to Death”, and I think the title alone speaks to what many aboriginal women feel today.
The three organizations that were involved concluded that the findings in previous reports were especially alarming given that the violence experienced by aboriginal women is believed to exceed that of any other group of women in Canada. As said by the late Patricia Monture-Angus, “For Aboriginal women, violence frequently begins in childhood and continues throughout adolescence into adulthood.”
That is the same for me and for most other aboriginal women I know. Violence in aboriginal women's lives is pervasive, and is compounded by violence and systemic and institutionalized racism as well as the effects of historical violence, such as residential schools, the Indian Act, and other legacies of colonization. In school, I grew up feeling looked down upon and punished for who I was. I experienced people feeling sorry for me and my sister, and punishing us for being “dirty little Indian girls”.
Violence in many aboriginal women's lives is a daily occurrence, for too many women have died either by murder or by their own hand.
Many governments have been willing to fund studies and reports, but very few have been willing to step up and fund the long-term solutions to the problem of violence against our women and girls. How many more women have to die before any concrete, long-term action is taken?
We need programs designed by us and for us. Anything short of that will not do. We need the kind of big action that will support an ongoing network of anti-violence services run by aboriginal women and for aboriginal women. All across B.C. and, in fact, in every province and territory in Canada, there are networks of services to respond to violence against women. Not all jurisdictions have enough of these services, but they exist, and they have been making a difference.
As I mentioned, I work at one of these services in Smithers and Hazelton. These anti-violence services are mostly what I would call “mainstream” services, that is, services set up by mainstream non-aboriginal social service agencies, women's agencies, and governments.
In looking at these services across the north of B.C., I can say that while many of these programs have aboriginal women on staff and are doing excellent work, and while many reach out to women on reserves, there are many women on reserve who either have no way of getting to town and who are not allowed to engage in these services because of the control their abusive partners have over them, or who don't trust the mainstream services, no matter how good they are.
Without getting into the history of colonialization, which I'm sure you are all familiar with, the issue of violence against aboriginal women on and off reserve is very complex. Many women want the security of confidentiality that comes with going to town for help; therefore, the existing mainstream services must have cross-cultural competencies and training and have aboriginal women on staff. This could be a funding stream you put in place that is for existing anti-violence services. You provide funding for an aboriginal counsellor-advocate position, but in addition, and most importantly, there should be anti-violence services run by aboriginal women and for aboriginal women in communities all across the nation.
I believe that this one-to-one support work, the advocacy, and the community education these programs would also do that will make the difference immediately and in the long term. The solutions that will work will come only from our women, and we need to empower them to act and to help others to speak out.