Status of Women committee  I can begin. Yes, I think we need to put measures in place any time that we're going into any resource development or extraction. Somebody mentioned incentivizing. We can incentivize these industries by making them put 10% up front, and they get it back if they clean up the environment and don't abuse any indigenous women and girls.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  I'm happy to speak to that. I grew up in northern B.C. and even as a young girl going to elementary school and starting high school, if I were walking in my little town, I was being cruised by older men trying to pick me up. Physically, indigenous women are always targeted in this way and that hasn't changed in those small northern towns.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  I agree. I want to say that indigenous women have long been targeted, and that has been acceptable in Canadian society as a whole. Government has some responsibility in addressing this and ensuring that Canadians understand that we are also human beings and that we should have the same rights as every other Canadian.

Status of Women committee  I can go first. I think it's still there because we still allow it to be there. We still allow the resource industry to use indigenous women and girls without full accountability. I think that's the only reason it's still there, because we haven't mandated and we haven't required any changes.

Status of Women committee  We've had many project-based funds to develop some capacity. We've worked with indigenous youth, for example, to teach them about their body and their agency over their own body and how they get to decide if and when somebody gets to touch them and how. We've spent some time doing that, but that was through project-based funding and that's over.

Status of Women committee  I suppose I would start in that room by reminding everyone that indigenous women are also human beings. They are subject to human rights, the same as every other Canadian in this country, and all the laws of violence against women and girls apply. I would ask the police to work with us to make sure that they are complying with those laws to make it safer for indigenous women to report violence.

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry, do you mean the history of the indigenous group, the land, the people or the history of the company? I'm not sure what your question is.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, yes, I do. Of course, protecting indigenous women and protecting all women and girls is going to benefit all of society. It's not going to harm anybody to add further protection for us. It's going to enhance and improve society.

Status of Women committee  What I see among many indigenous women impacted by violence, here in B.C., is that their spirits, souls and bodies are traumatized, and they pass down that trauma if they're not able to heal it or provided with the resources and supports needed to adequately culturally heal themselves.

Status of Women committee  No, I have nothing specific. I'm not a data expert, but what I see and what I know is that if we don't have data, then we don't get the funding to address the problem. Without data we can't prove that we have a problem, and so around it goes, yet the data is that indigenous women don't report violence because it's not safe for them to report it to the police.

Status of Women committee  One of the go-to books that I look at is called The Beginning and End of Rape by Sarah Deer. There are lots of indigenous female academics who have written these kinds of books, which talk about the direct connection between colonization and the rape and abuse of women's bodies, and the idea that indigenous women, prior to colonization, had far more agency over their bodies than female European settlers who came here.

Status of Women committee  Can I clarify the question? Is it how we see the intersection?

Status of Women committee  To answer very quickly, they're very strong. We often see indigenous women with mental health issues or who have been born with disabilities in crisis and seeking support services. They're being exploited, generally, by older men. Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth, a children's advocate here in British Columbia, is about to start researching and putting a report together on that very issue, so stay tuned.