I just wanted to say Anin and Tansi, in our languages, the languages of this territory. I welcome all the committee members to Winnipeg and Manitoba.
In our work, we call Winnipeg the largest reservation in Canada, because the greatest number of indigenous or aboriginal people in all territories, even the eastern, southern, and northern territories, now reside in Winnipeg. Officially we think that probably about 15% of Winnipeg's population is aboriginal, but it's really much larger than that. We think it's probably anywhere up to the low 20% range of the population. So we represent a significant population.
The organization I represent is called Ka Ni Kanichihk. It's a Cree word that means “those who go forward” or “those who lead”. We are very much about doing work in our community that is culturally congruent with our value systems and our cultural paradigms.
One of the things I'd like to start with is a quote from a young aboriginal man who was a gang member. I think he represented Indian Posse, one of the larger native gangs in Winnipeg. He was being interviewed by a professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba. That research, by the way, is online under the CCPA, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He said, “If you want to change the violence in the 'hood, you have to change the 'hood.” To me, that means that if we're going to have any success with prevention and intervention, we really need to make some structural and systemic changes that give people an opportunity to participate in a way that they feel values them and that will stop young people from joining gangs.
I've worked in this community since about 1977 or 1978, and I have worked with many gang members. I work with aboriginal gang members, not with the gangs you heard about earlier, the Zig Zag Crew and the Asian gangs, although there is some connection, and we will get to that as well.
We really need to understand this. I use an analogy like mould, which grows in certain conditions, those being damp and dark conditions, etc. It's a natural process. Similarly, gangs grow in the same kinds of structural conditions. When people find there are no alternatives, gangs are the natural outcome of those conditions. So we need to change the conditions.
In our communities we talk about a human rights approach to service delivery. In my mind, a human rights approach to service delivery demands that indigenous people be given the opportunity to take care of indigenous people. If you talk about all of the indicators—who's in jail, who's in gangs, whose children are engaged in the criminal justice system, whose children are prostituting themselves right now on the streets of Winnipeg—you will find that the vast majority of those children are indigenous children. We really have to understand the conditions those families and children emerged out of.
For the last 20 years, the indigenous community in Winnipeg has really been defining our own agendas. We've really been actively trying to engage resources that permit us to do this work based on our own knowledge and practices.
I would submit in a very humble way that those people and those organizations that have long done this work for us have very poor outcomes, very poor levels of success. I think if they were evaluated independently, it would show that.
I want to just talk a little bit about research that was done in British Columbia. This is accessible by Googling Michael Chandler and another professor of sociology from the University of British Columbia by the last name of Lalonde. Those two sociologists were puzzled by the youth suicide rates in British Columbia among first nations communities. They looked at that because in some communities the youth suicide rate was 800 times the national average--which is profoundly significant--and in some communities in British Columbia the youth suicide rate was virtually unknown. So they were really puzzled by what made the difference.
The difference they found was that the community that had the most control over its own self, self-determination, was the community that had lower youth suicide rates. They called it cultural continuity, those elements of self-government.
To me, that's really big. We need to look at that research and then act on that research in a policy-driven way, including justice and human rights. I'll restate that it's absolutely a human right of indigenous people to look after indigenous people's issues, because it has all been taken away from us. It has been systematically eroded and taken away from us: our language, our culture, our political, social, and educational institutions. Every institution that we knew that held us together as peoples has been distorted, eliminated, or destroyed through the process of colonialism.
That is what we need to begin to change around, to make a difference in our indigenous people's community. And we are doing that. We are doing that in a major way in this community, in a significant way. But one of the things we really lack is a real solid understanding and analysis of that. Gangs come out of those places where mould grows, in those places where people don't feel good about themselves, who have no access to material or social power or status. They will take matters into their own hands to be able to change their own social condition.
It really broke my heart this morning to hear one of the presenters talking about a young guy who masterminded three murders. I can assure you, I know our children are in places of desperation. They're not masterminding criminals. They just aren't. They're 17-year-olds. He was just a baby; he was a young boy. He did a really bad thing, but he's not a mastermind criminal. I don't know one of our youth who would fit into that level of criminality.
Writing people off and labelling them in such a decisive way.... He did a terrible thing, there's no doubt about that, but in my mind, he is our child. He is the child of all of us, and we do have to find ways to support, because there are many who are like this young man.
I just wanted to begin those comments to the committee and thank you for your attention. When our presenters are finished, I'd be very happy to respond to any questions.