Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Lorraine Whitman, Grandmother White Sea Turtle, and I'm president of the Native Women's Association of Canada.
I am also here to represent the rights of first nations, Métis and Inuit women across Canada and internationally.
You have asked me here today to talk to you about the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting indigenous women. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share NWAC's findings and also our concerns.
We have been working on our horrific problem of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people for decades, and we are the organization whose calls for action led to the inquiry that submitted its final report and recommendations in June of last year. I am here today to talk about the pandemic but I am also here to talk about the violence in our communities, and these two issues are fundamentally linked.
Canadians across the country are fearful about the health effects that the disease is having on their loved ones, and the financial and social toll it is taking on them and their communities. For indigenous women those fears are amplified many times over. I don't need to tell you that before COVID-19 hit our shores, indigenous women and their children were among the most vulnerable population in Canada, but I am going to say it anyway: We are vulnerable. We need help. We are worried, with all the other problems being created by this disease, that we will be overlooked by governments, that promises of help made months ago will be abandoned, and that many of us will die as a result of this virus and as a result of its incubation in this social poverty in which many indigenous women now live.
As the pandemic grew, NWAC conducted a needs assessment with its provincial and territorial member associations, all but two via phone, and it has resulted in painting a frightening picture. The federal government's own statistics show that spousal abuse of indigenous women is more than three times higher than that of non-indigenous women. Imagine being forced during a pandemic to self-isolate in a small house on a reserve with many family members and a spouse who is already prone to being abusive, a spouse who no longer has his usual outlet for letting off steam.
Statistics also say that before the pandemic struck, 53% of abused indigenous women feared for their lives. Imagine the depth of their fear now as they are confined in their homes day after day, dealing in some cases with a lack of clean water for basic hygiene.
In response to our needs assessment, our affiliate, the Nunavut Inuit Women's Association, said it is extremely concerned that levels of violence have been on the increase since the country went into lockdown. Self-isolation isn't possible in overcrowded housing or shelters, and the shelters in Nunavut were already full most of the time anyway. In the stress of the disease the Nunavut Inuit Women's Association is extremely concerned that many who were not already suffering abuse or mental illness may be subject to attacks or may resort to self-harm or even suicide.
You have probably heard the good news that so far there are no cases of COVID-19 in Nunavut, but we all know that we are on the downside of the first wave. What happens when the second wave strikes, and the disease makes its way to the Far North? The single Nunavut hospital base in Iqaluit, with its 35 beds and seven ventilators serving a population of 38,000, is not equipped to deal with it.
Elsewhere in Canada, there are no medical resources on some first nations to test people who appear to be symptomatic. Support systems like community counselling and other programs have been withdrawn, and the mechanisms established to help other people cope with their special needs have disappeared. When our women try to reach out to each other with video or phone conferencing as other Canadians do, there is a lack of privacy, but of course the poorest among them do not have access to that kind of technology.
Our women are also resilient. In some communities, they are using donations to stock food banks and to ensure that the people who are most in need of help are getting it. In other—