Good afternoon. My name is Yvonne Rigsby-Jones. I'm Snuneymuxw First Nation. My mother was from the white family and my father was first generation born in this country. My other grandparents came from England on a ship, a mixed blessing. I've had lots of gifts from walking in both worlds. I've worked in the addiction field. I retired from a treatment centre after almost 30 years. I'm currently working as the addiction specialist for the health authority.
However I'm here today as a wife, a mother, a grandmother. Following up on what I've heard today, I have three comments. One is Shannon McDonald commented on the trauma-informed schools, and I think so often over the years, people have worked in silos at whatever organization they're from. The trauma-informed schools are making a great difference for our children. Kuujjuaq has 14 trauma-informed schools and their completion rates have gone up immensely. Three states in the U.S. work with trauma-informed schools from kindergarten right through.
My daughter is a teacher in our school system and for the children who are living in violence or are hungry at school, they're living a lot of the residential school behaviours and issues in their homes. The majority of the staff do not know or understand their struggles. I'm an advocate for looking for solutions. I think that could be a part of one.
The other one that I want to bring forward is not very popular but we need to also figure out how to help and work with our sex offenders in communities because so many times one of the root causes of suicide is sexual abuse. To date no programs are running. I think if somebody is federally sentenced, the provincial justice system has excellent forensic programs in the individual towns but our nation doesn't have a safe way or a forum for people to receive help. We're going to continue to have victims of sexual abuse if we can't figure out how to help the offenders. I don't know if that's been brought up to you very often in this tour but I think it's a really important piece that is difficult to bring up and difficult for people to hear or scary to try to start to address. I'm just putting it forward.
The other piece that I heard Elder Sam George address is the lack of pride and identity. It's a huge piece of healing at the centre that I worked at for so many years. It was very common that people didn't know who they were as an aboriginal person. So many had no pride in being who they were. That part of the healing is always very beneficial. When your parents have grown up or you've grown up being called a stupid Indian, it is so inbred and stuck in your whole being.
My husband is a survivor of Alberni Indian Residential School. He was one of the pioneers and leaders in going forward with a court case. Where I worked, he did trauma healing for survivors of residential schools. Change is happening but not fast enough sometimes. We're still losing too many of our youths, and I echo what I heard just recently, one loss is one too many.
I thank you for your time and for listening to me.
I wish you a safe journey.
[Witness speaks in an aboriginal language]