I think one of the things we need to tackle is the elephant in the room, which is corrupt governments, corrupt organizations that come into our communities and threaten the safety and well-being of our people. We need to implement free, prior and informed consent.
I've always said that a traditional warrior society in our communities needs to be not policing but just people like us. We had an ERU that was protecting us during the pandemic, keeping people who are not from the community from entering into the community. I don't want it to be that severe, but there needs to be an understanding that we are human beings and that, as the most marginalized group in society, we need extra protection. What that means is that we need to sit down and discuss that and change the mentality of society in its attitude towards indigenous women so that we can be safe when we walk in our communities and we can be safe on our homelands, even if it's in parks.
It's 2022. I've been doing this for 32 years. I feel more vulnerable than I did 32 years ago during the crisis in my community—and that says a lot—simply because of the organized crime that has been allowed to proliferate and infiltrate our community because of the Indian Act and the lack of awareness and the lack of political will to actually fix the over 300-year-old land dispute we have in my community. It's a complicated question and a complicated answer.