Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. I want to start today by acknowledging the Algonquin nation on whose traditional territory we are gathered here today.
Thank you all for being here and for inviting us, the Native Women's Association of Canada, to speak to this committee on an issue that is important to our aboriginal women, our children, and their families and communities. I am Dr. Dawn Harvard from the Wikwemikong First Nation on Manitoulin Island here in Ontario. I'm accompanied by Ms. Edwards, who will be able to help answer any questions afterwards.
We have 12 provincial and territorial member associations across this country. We have been supporting, empowering, and working with indigenous women for the last 40 years hoping to help them build a better life.
Historically, our women were caretakers of our land, caretakers of this nation. We were respected, valued, and honoured. We held influential positions and we were actively involved in our communities socially, economically, and politically. Our women were central to maintaining our culture, our language, our traditions, and our knowledge systems. Today aboriginal women continue to play a central role in our communities as the knowledge holders and we are integral to the well-being of our families and communities. However, as I'm sure many of you are well aware and have heard, we face devastating rates of abuse, violence, and death, much more so than any other population in this country.
Aboriginal peoples in general are twice as likely as non-aboriginals to be victims of violent crime, and our women are even more vulnerable. Even according to Statistics Canada's own research, we are three-and-a-half times more likely to be victimized and five times more likely to die of violence, in which case the families left behind are the real victims. Over 80% of the missing and murdered aboriginal women in this country were mothers, which means children are other victims in these situations. According to this StatsCan research, eight out of ten aboriginal women experienced abuse in the two to three years prior to their study—eight out of ten. Since an estimated 76% of non-spousal violence is not even reported to the police, what we are talking about here is just the tip of the iceberg. This is a much, much larger problem than you and I can even imagine.
So although we are very supportive of this bill of rights for victims of crime, we know that aboriginal victims must have a role within the justice system. We have continually expressed our dissatisfaction with our lack of rights. Our victims are often found both inside and outside the prison walls. All of our people need enforceable rights. We must have not only the legal rights but the supports throughout the process so the system can achieve justice for the crimes that our people have suffered, that our women have suffered.
There are inadequate safeguards built into the legislation to ensure our participation and involvement in a manner consistent with the proper administration of justice, in a manner consistent so that we will be heard. After a long history of being unseen and unheard, aboriginal victims need to have a real voice in our justice system, and that means supports to be able to access the services that are out there. We need only look to the B.C. Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, when numerous complaints of missing victims were ignored because they were made by aboriginal women. They were misinterpreted and set aside. No supports were allocated to parties such as the Native Women's Association of Canada, who may have had the ability to communicate. We had the knowledge of these issues but we didn't have the support to be able to participate.
Generations of our communities have seen our lives, our families, our lands, and our culture exploited, appropriated, disrespected, and harmed. We have seen generations of abuse in the residential school system and the impacts continue to plague our people today, resulting in the high rates of violence, the high rates of the victimization of our people and our communities.
Unfortunately, in Canadian society aboriginal women in particular are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. We continue to suffer from marginalization, poverty, inequity, and ongoing discrimination within the laws, programs, and policies that govern our nation.
Poverty, a lack of access to adequate, affordable, safe housing, and high rates of violence, whether our women live in a first nations community or in an urban or rural setting, is the reality. We often think that aboriginal people are only in first nations, and we don't think about the ones who are down the streets, who are living in shelters, who are living day to day trying to escape the violence. Often, making the decision to leave our home community and move to an urban centre is not an easy consideration. Contrary to what people believe, most of our women do not leave the communities to seek education or employment. They're fleeing violence. They're hoping to find somewhere where they can be safe, and coming to the urban centres, we often find the reality is much worse. We face additional discrimination. We are made victims by predators. We are in the cities with no supports.
Many of our women struggle on a daily basis with homelessness. How can you be safe if you're living in your car or in a shelter from day to day? More than 40% of our aboriginal families had to leave homes because of domestic violence. In these instances, our women do not have the same protections and the same rights as other women in Canada. I know this is not the particular forum to discuss the matrimonial property rights, but this is exactly the same situation where we have seen legislation go through without adequate forethought into the consequences of putting in place legislation and not enough supports. We have actually seen violence levels increase as women try to assert their rights where they have not previously had them in communities that are not necessarily willing to support or grant these rights.
Almost half of aboriginal women in Canada live in poverty. This poverty exacerbates the situations of violence, abuse, and addictions, and often, sadly, leads to incarceration. We have heard talk of the missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada, and many people say that these women go missing, that they are murdered because they lead high-risk lifestyles. I say to you that our women do not choose to lead high-risk lifestyles. They're born at risk. They're born into communities where they do not have clean water, adequate education, chances for employment, or opportunities to live a positive lifestyle.
It's been reported that over 80% of aboriginal households are headed by single female parents, and our women are raising these families, most often in poverty. They often come into contact with the child welfare authorities because they don't have enough money to provide lunches in that last week of every month. When those children are taken away, that is often the first step in a vicious cycle that leads to those children potentially being victimized within the system, but also very often ending up out on the streets and in the sex trade.
Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices, it's a denial of opportunity, and it's a violation of our human dignity. When you live in poverty, you're forced to make choices that you would otherwise never have made. Many of our women live in situations where they are forced to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table. Many of our women end up in the prison systems for petty, small crimes of theft and end up with indeterminate sentences where again the children become victims in our communities.
No one in a country as wealthy as Canada should be in this situation. When we look at the growing gap between the funding for first nations child welfare, we see that as a prime example of how the discrimination and the lack of equity in Canada results in situations where our women and children are vulnerable.
Even though we represent less than 4% of the total Canadian population, our children make up a staggering 30% of children in care, and in some regions it's as high as 70% and 80% of the children in care. Like the children in residential schools, these children are being raised without their language, their culture, or their families, and are often re-victimized while they're in care. The latest case of Tina Fontaine is something that should make us all aware of this.
If these negative outcomes continue, aboriginal children will continue to be removed from their homes and become wards of the child welfare system. NWAC regards this situation as urgent and one that must be addressed.
If upstream investments were made to support families through culturally appropriate services, and if investments were made so that we could access things such as victims services in a language that we understood and we had the opportunity to access our rights, our children and women would be protected.
In theory this bill seems like a good proposition, one that would address the situations that put aboriginal women and children into vulnerable situations involving violence. However, the reality is that this plan does not provide for the many additional resources or supports that will be required by aboriginal women. It does not account for the many services that are required to implement the rights that are proposed on paper.
In order for our women to benefit from this legislation, we will need supports: funding for legal and other culturally appropriate services and investments so that our women can benefit. This bill only demonstrates further the need to address the issue of violence in a comprehensive manner from our victims' perspective.
Bureaucratic wrangling between the provinces and the federal government as to who is responsible for providing for aboriginal families has often resulted in tragedy as people argue back and forth over whose responsibility it is, and nobody is responsible. In particular, aboriginal women who live off reserve and who have had to flee their communities because of violence are often left in limbo feeling that nobody is responsible. These distinctions between being on reserve and off reserve result in increased victimization and increased lack of supports.
As we've mentioned, the deplorable conditions that have resulted in almost 1,200 missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls are alarming, shocking, and truly a crime. Our women routinely face human rights violations. Our women are targeted by predators, by those who traffic in human flesh and who approach our girls as young as eight years old while they are in the park. These are the victims in our communities, and these are the young people who will need supports if this bill is to be anything other than yet another empty promise in a long trail of promises.
As affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we as indigenous peoples have the right, without discrimination, to the improvement of our economic and social conditions and to live lives free of violence. We have to have these protections not only written within legislation but to have these principles actually implemented in our day-to-day lives if we're going to make a difference for anybody.