I will be presenting on behalf of both of us this morning.
Thank you, first of all, to my sisters in our sister agencies for being here this morning and giving that perspective of the challenges and opportunities within our community with regard to organized crime and gangs.
I'd like to begin my presentation by acknowledging a report that I use quite often in the fundraising for the work that I do, and that is by the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. It's a 2003 report on “Urban Aboriginal Youth: An Action Plan for Change”. Through this document there was a very similar process to what I understand you're going through here across Canada, with consultations with experts and witnesses on what at that point would have been urban aboriginal youth.
I just want to quote a component on page 75 of that report:
Marginalized and powerless, many Aboriginal youth are left searching for a sense of belonging, community and identity. Gang affiliation and membership can provide Aboriginal youth with a feeling of empowerment, purpose and acceptance.
The key words that really jump out on the page are empowerment, purpose, and acceptance, and I'll talk a little bit more about that when you get to know us a little bit better.
A recommended action in this part of the report—the title is “Exiting Gang Life: The Need for a Safe Place to Go”—acknowledges some collaboration between the province and the federal government and the municipal government:
...in consultation with Aboriginal organizations, support the establishment of Safe Houses to assist urban Aboriginal youth exit gang life. Initiatives should be targeted to “high-risk” cities.
I'd like to share with you another paragraph that jumped out at me:
We wish to emphasize that the underlying factors contributing to the presence of gangs and criminal behaviour has much to do with the wide-ranging limitations in the lives of Aboriginal youth. Cultural isolation, racial segregation and the anomie of social structures and supports in many inner-city neighbourhoods must be addressed. Governments must adopt community-development models, providing for safe and secure housing and economic revitalization measures in urban neighbourhoods most at risk for social disintegration.
So this report, again, has been helpful and really is the key message for this panel around services to communities and working with community-based agencies, but with an emphasis on aboriginal community-based agencies doing the work and working in collaboration.
With that introduction, I'd like to share with you that Jackie and I work for an organization called the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre. We are an aboriginal-directed and -controlled community-based agency that provides resource support services for aboriginal families living in Winnipeg. That involves the whole spectrum, from services for women and teens who are pregnant to our seniors and our elders. We provide resource support services for the four stages of life, focusing in a holistic way in which people heal, making sure it is a balanced approach.
We are quite busy in the work we do, being in the aboriginal capital of Canada. While that is very much celebrated by the aboriginal community, we still have our challenges and opportunities as a community to do the healing we need to do and to be involved in our communities in meaningful ways.
I wanted to acknowledge where we are at in terms of our aboriginal community and our aboriginal youth and our young people who are joining gangs. As an organization, quite a few years ago we developed a youth cultural development strategy that involved a lot of youth in its development.
As Melissa from the Ndinawe mentioned, aboriginal youth are a dynamic component of the city of Winnipeg. They are the future leaders and educators, professionals, and role models of their neighbourhoods and community at large. They are the links to the history and tradition of the past, but they also hold the knowledge and vision for the future. That's our foundation and our value base for supporting our young people in our communities.
In these consultations we learned four key things, which are the core foundation of our youth cultural development strategy. A sense of belonging to either a group, family, culture, or organization needs to be firmly established and maintained. A sense of belonging brings about positive change in confidence and self-esteem levels and helps support positive lifestyle choices. Positive resources support positive life experiences. These include such things as tangible recognition of jobs well done, opportunities for outings and events, and quality training in skill development. Opportunities to experience and understand one's responsibility within the broader community provide for personal growth and understanding.
Developing personal responsibilities through exposure to different parts of the community and one's role within it are seen to facilitate the steps that are involved in making positive lifestyle choices. Being identified as somebody special builds self-esteem. Increased self-esteem provides opportunities to act more independently and somewhat less subjectively to peer pressure. So as an organization we have made a commitment to building resources and services around supporting our young people.
Before I conclude my section, I want to bring to your attention the fact that there's an organized crime factor outside of the aboriginal community, and because of that we serve a different purpose. That is the organized crime that exploits and harms our women and children across Canada. While we have many issues around our young people joining gangs, they're not getting rich, for sure. The gang lifestyle is filling a void, and it's really basic to survival.
Then we have an organized crime component that is very organized and very wealthy and is making lots of money through the exploitation of our women and children. That happens in Manitoba, from north to south, and it happens across Canada, where our young women and children, from northern Manitoba to southern Manitoba, are trafficked from coast to coast. I think one of the presentations you had was very focused on exploitation, but next to drugs and weapons, human trafficking is the third most profitable industry to get into.
You need a heck of a lot of organization from coast to coast in order to maintain that. As community-based agencies, we are totally underresourced and just can't keep up with how organized and creative they are, how they're really going under the radar, and how a lot of this is allowed to happen. Our aboriginal women are the targets of this organized crime of sexual exploitation.
It's been our experience in Winnipeg and in the rest of Manitoba that with regard to much of the exploitation, the ones involved in the organized crime are immigrants or new Canadians in immigrant and refugee communities who have formed based on their culture or their country of origin. They are the ones who are opening up these drug houses and brothels and places where our young children are exploited.
There have been some things going on in the province of Manitoba. We do have a government that has really worked with the community and the aboriginal community towards creating a strategy to end sexual exploitation of our children.
There is a Manitoba strategy called Tracia's Trust that has helped a lot of community-based organizations with delivering service and being able to gear service around the victims of sexual exploitation.
We have been working with a greater community coalition on exploitation as well. So lots of work has been done, but we still have so much more to do.
Our recommendation is to look at our young people and the prevention and intervention of young aboriginal people going into gangs, and help us protect our women and children from organized crime that really does a lot of harm to women. Victimization requires a long-term healing process. We need the resources to walk with them in their healing, but we also need to address the demand part of it. Until we do that, the victimization and trafficking of aboriginal women and children across this country will continue.
Thank you.