My name is Colleen Cardinal. My adopted name is Colleen Hele. I'm Plains Cree from Edmonton, Alberta. I was adopted and raised in Ontario. My family has been tremendously affected by historical colonial violence. I'm the daughter of a residential school survivor who is now deceased. She went to Blue Quills Indian Residential School in Alberta. She spent four years of her childhood there. I'm also a “sixties scoop” survivor.
I have lost two women in my family. My eldest sister, Charmaine Desa, was killed in Edmonton in 1990. She was a mother of two. She was married. I also lost Lynn Jackson, who was my sister-in-law who was married to my brother. She was the auntie of my boys. Her murder is unresolved and she is one of 35 women over 10 years who were killed outside of Edmonton in surrounding areas and left in ditches, in fields. These murders are still mostly unsolved. That's alarming.
My biggest concern is how media portrays indigenous women as deserving to die. By deserving to die I mean they dehumanize us by perpetuating racism and stereotypes in the media that somehow we are high-risk people and it's our fault that these things have happened to us. I want to know what's going to be done to challenge that. Why isn't the media being challenged on how they're perpetuating racism towards indigenous people?
Also, I'd like to talk about why our funding is being taken away from addictions, healing, and treatment centres when our people are just starting to realize the damage of the colonial violence that's been happening to them. We are just starting to heal and we're just starting to learn about what happened to us. That funding is now being taken away when it's so greatly needed. I am just learning of what happened to my family and having insight, and being able to express myself and my story.
We need that. We need more funding. We need more health-care services. We need more addiction centres, and we need more healing centres.
Thank you.