I want to give my greetings and thanks to the Creator for this wonderful day today, and I want to acknowledge the peoples whose traditional lands I am privileged to be a guest in today.
Mr. Chair, I recognize the valuable work that you and the committee have done, and I am grateful for the opportunity to bring a message from the National Association of Friendship Centres. We're working on what we believe to be very important work; work that's been very much a part of the being of the friendship centres for the past 50 years. We know there's a difference between an elder, a senior, and a nice old lady. I have presented before about seniors and inclusion and exclusion, and on having accessible programs and services. I'm going to talk about some of the the things that we brought forward before.
We still have a great population of seniors. They are very much the biggest component of our communities across the nation, in all of 117 communities where there are friendship centres. We know we're matched in size by the young people, and that we have real work to do in terms of how we make that match work. How do we ensure that the young people are going to be able to look after their grandparents?
We know that in the world in which we live today...housing, access to water, having food, and the quality of life that is, I guess, all-Canadian. There have been great gaps in our society and in our history, and in the development of our friendship centres to address those gaps. We hear and understand all of the words from our colleagues, but most certainly, in the community that I come from, and the ones I have worked in, and that I participate in now as a senior, they're very vocal. They're very confident in being able to say what it is they want, what strategy they would like to design that's going to be community-based and able to address their needs, because it's not all the same. From my community to Sonya's community or any other community.... We must know the importance of having to work together to ensure that there is a quality of life that is most acceptable to the indigenous people and the friendship centre movement.
I wanted to share those words so you know that it's important to have an understanding of the work that we do in the friendship centres, that the programming and services are culturally appropriate and designed by seniors, and that they have a say in what they want. It's not something that I think is good for me; it's something that we collectively agree on. I know that's going to be a hard task, but I think as an organization and as community-based friendship centres, we need the capacity to bring people together as we do now in a social setting—weekly, monthly, and daily.
Some programs are designed to be in-house, in the friendship centres, and some of them are outreach. I think we can be a little more collaborative in terms of how we work on addressing the isolation, the disability, and the social well-being of indigenous communities. We know for sure that we have success. We know we can help in terms of culturally sensitizing people who are going to work in the programs and deliver the services, whether it's an institution, another program, or a collaboration and partnership in looking at these issues. We understand that we're very diverse. Across the country, we know there are many that.... When I first started this work, the average life expectancy of an indigenous person was 47 years, so we've come a long way. That's a recognition of our resilience, and being able to live a good life and understand what that good life is.
We want to be able to ensure that our young people understand what that good life is...that we can overcome all of that, like the low-income population and the food insecurity, and that we will thrive. In doing that, we're asking that there be continued support for friendship centres, the programs that are run by friendship centres, and of course, always collaboration in how we can do that.
As diverse and as wonderful as we've gotten to be, there are still seniors who look after seniors. There are grandparents who look after and are raising their grandchildren. It's a whole different spectrum from maybe what I thought I was being brought up to be. It was more than just kindness and understanding the role of grandparents in our communities. Some of us are fortunate to have grandparents. Some of us are fortunate, today, to have grandparents.
I still bring that forward. We do need those kinds of programs. We do need to continue to look at the housing, water, food, and the culturally appropriate programming that's designed and delivered by indigenous people in the indigenous communities. There still has to be accessibility. We still have to be able to hold people's hands and be human beings, so that this loneliness that kills us all...it doesn't matter our colour or stripe, that loneliness is there at the end of everybody's day. If we don't learn how to co-operate, collaborate, and build partnerships, it doesn't matter....
It's not a cellphone that's going to keep me company, but it is. I can attest today that I can call home tonight and see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren in their Halloween costumes. It certainly isn't going to be the human touch. That would be different because then you're there to hear them say “trick or treat”.
Thank you for listening. I wish you well on all of the work. Meegwetch.