Thank you for your question.
As I understand it, you are talking about indigenous families who live outside major urban centres and how we can foster relationships and provide services.
That is kind of it. Friendship centres like the Native Friendship Centre in Val-d'Or, a city with a small population compared to Toronto or Winnipeg, are a crossroads and meeting place for indigenous communities, which brings the presence of indigenous people to the fore.
It is often in small communities like Val-d'Or that the native friendship centre becomes an outreach hub. We are not in the business of political representation. We are organizations providing front-line community services. That helps us to establish community contacts and foster a community, cultural and identity connection between families. With a pandemic like COVID-19, those families turn to a native friendship centre because the centre has already established a relationship of trust and communication with them.