That's why I talk a little bit about documenting. Consultations are pretty fruitless, from my experience, unless people are able to document what's happening in a community. That removes it from the garbage talk that goes on at the upper level. I don't know whether that's the proper way of saying it, but the fact is that women in the communities and on the reserves don't feel protected. They feel shortchanged; they feel at risk, and people who are talking for them find it really challenging, because there's no way for those women to document what's going on so that they can go to a meeting.
I've been at consultation meetings, I've been at tribal council meetings where the leaders are saying one thing and what is happening in the community is totally different. It's no different from our politics, actually. When I went to the United Nations, the Canadian government put forward evidence that just wasn't true. Our own territories produced evidence that said they had changed the policy around housing, but it really isn't true. They just played with words.
But on the ground the story is different. How do we as people in the communities document what's happening, and how are we able to put it forward to decision-makers, telling them not to play with words, that this is what's going on?
That's why I think consulting more is pretty fruitless work, I would imagine. And if you get into a fight among all those jurisdictions, you have a huge problem, in my experience. But it's really hard to ignore what women are saying on the ground, that they're experiencing this around housing on reserves. I had family on reserve as well—on reserve and off reserve.
I don't think it's sufficient to go to the leadership group. They're important; they need to be consulted. But they have been. Now I think women need to be consulted.