Status of Women Committee on June 4th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Sarah wants to say something, but before we do that I wanted to note that the Supreme Court of Canada had very clearly said that whether an aboriginal person lives on reserve or if they go out of reserve, they're still aboriginal people and still entitled to the support of the federal government, which has a fiduciary responsibility for aboriginal people across this country--at least still.

I know that the Kelowna accord was going to hand over certain health, housing, and education responsibilities into the hands of aboriginal people. Would that have helped you in any way? Is that a mechanism that would work, or is it another terrible mechanism that's just going to put forward a fourth level of somebody doing diddly squat?

To me it sounds like we're caught between a lack of a mechanism and a lack of some kind of process in which aboriginal people can have access to the things they need. The role of the federal government, as far as I'm concerned, is that the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility for aboriginal people. So to have to dump aboriginal people in cities, right in the middle, and look at the province and say you are supposed to look after that and you are supposed to look after that, I don't get that.

Nunavut was a totally different issue because they had responsibility for themselves, but in Labrador City we heard that there was this jurisdictional thing getting out of hand. The only people falling between the cracks at this point in time are the aboriginal people, and their needs.

So give me a mechanism here that we can sink our teeth into.

[Gail Nicholas]

The federal government now has taken child welfare issues and dumped them onto the province, which they can't support either.

[Tanna Pirie-Wilson]

There were several reports that were actually done in conjunction through the Native Women's Association with Amnesty International. There were actually five key recommendations that do address developing a mechanism to address this kind of discrimination, or address that issue of responsibility. Instead of pitting provincial or federal dollars against each other, restoration of funding to fulfill the commitments of the Kelowna accord would end the inequalities in our health, housing, education, and other services for our people. There are those five recommendations that are key.

Also, there was another report I believe from the UN--they call them CEDAW, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. They reviewed the compliance of Canada with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

So there have been recommendations put forward. I'm not sure where they end up, but they don't end up trickling back down. That's one of the things I've always been vocal about. There's been policy paper after policy paper.

We've shown mechanisms, maybe minus the budgetary point, because maybe we're not quite there yet, but we have been speaking our voice. I know that there are a lot of national aboriginal organizations, national, provincial, and even community level organizations, that have forwarded mechanisms, recommendations, up to the government. But when we're doing budget cuts to such an important program as the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which was doing such wonderful work with our survivors and attacking that cycle of violence at the root, when we're removing those funding sources and removing access to those projects for our community members, we lose out at the local level, we lose out at the community level.

The recommendations have gone up. I believe there are mechanisms that are out there that have been successful. I hope through your study that you're going to be able to pick up on those recommendations that are already out there that have actually been proven to work in our communities. Maybe sometimes they're not published as much as we need them to be published. That's another issue we might want to take a look at, publishing the good. For too long we've always focused on what colonialism did to us.

As Tamara said, we already know the definition of violence. We already know what it looks like in our communities. I think that is what this committee is asking: how do we move forward together as sisters, as mothers, as wives, as daughters, as friends? How do we move forward as brothers? We know what violence is. Taking it back to our traditional teaching, we've forgotten our traditional wisdom, we've forgotten our traditional ways. So even in our own traditional teachings and those wisdoms is a root of the mechanism that you probably seek. With discussion with beautiful sisters like this, I think you will find your answers.

[Natalie McBride]

Just from my reporting stats for the transition house, I know we have to report on-reserve, off-reserve, status, non-status. As an aboriginal person, I wonder why we have to differentiate. I think if we get rid of that old-school thinking, we might be further ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We have another group coming to speak to us. I think we're going to have to end this. This is the kind of stuff we can send to you to talk about forever.

I think, Tanna, you make the point on what we're talking about. Remember the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples? Funding was attached there. So we're really talking about political will, and political will sometimes hides behind jurisdictions and says don't at look at me, it's not my business. But I think at the end of the day, if we're going to do something about it, we have to discuss political will.

I want to thank you all for coming and for sharing with us.

[Gail Nicholas]

Will you have a chance to read our presentation, since we didn't have an opportunity to do that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

To read your presentations? We don't have time now, because we have—

[Natalie McBride]

She asks if she could leave it with you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, absolutely. Oh yes, for us to read it. I thought for you to read it.

[Sarah Rose]

I just want to ensure that when you're having people leave their communities because of violence, you need to understand that when they come to an urban setting, they're losing culture, and culture is important.

I work with young families who are living in an urban setting, and they're off reserve, and they're looking for culture for their children. So we do have an organization here, but we only have one, and it's aboriginal head start. We provide culture to those children aged two to five. Then we also provide a community setting for the parents, where we teach the parents culture as well, where we're teaching the language, we're teaching basketry, we're teaching our beadwork. We're teaching them how to cook traditional food, because they have been removed from that. So you need to understand, we need to bring their culture back too.

We're losing our culture, and no one seems to be fighting to bring that culture back. It is imperative. You want to end violence, educate the population about who we are, and bring us our culture back, and we won't have to discuss violence, because there's an understanding of who aboriginal people are, and what we bring to the society of this country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you so much, Sarah.

I'd like to suspend, and if you could leave with the clerk all the data you brought with you, we'll be able to distribute it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Good morning, and thank you for coming.

We really appreciate your being able to tell us some of the things we're seeking to find out. This is a committee that's looking at violence against aboriginal women. While we know all of these things, I think we're finding that with the reiteration of how all the issues are impacting on the real lives of people in a practical sense, it's getting worse.

We're looking at the nature, scope, and extent of violence against aboriginal women in Canada. We're going to every region to see how it differs. We're also looking at the root causes. Many of us have been told that we know the root causes, but the problems that we face in getting some kind of shift in what seems to be an increasing amount of violence against aboriginal women in this country are what we're hoping to get to grips with here. We're looking for what you can tell us to make a practical difference, how you see our looking at this from a national or a local scope, and what the things are that you think need to be done.

Normally in a meeting like this we'd give you ten minutes to present, and then everyone would have a short timeframe in which they could ask you questions. However, we've found that as we go into communities, it's been working better to have a discussion that allows everyone an opportunity to talk to each other. What I would like to do, then, is ask each of you to present a three- or four-minute synopsis of what you want to bring to the table, and then we can open it up to be interactive. What do you think about that?

[A voice]

That sounds good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay, that sounds good. All right.

We're going to start with Melissa Cooke from Lennox Island First Nation.

[Melissa Cooke, Women's Shelter Coordinator, Lennox Island First Nation]

Good morning, Chair and committee members.

I work at the women's shelter at Lennox Island. The name of the shelter is Chief Mary Bernard Memorial Women's Shelter. We have five rooms and approximately 12 beds.

Basically, we help women do budgeting skills and life skills so that they can move forward on their own. Aboriginal women can apply to stay for up to a year; if they want to work on parenting skills and things like that, that gives them the time, and it also gives them time to look at housing.

One of the initiatives--I know it's a continuation--is to look at education. Some of the women who come into the shelter might not know the effects of harm in terms of emotional and verbal abuse. They often say, “Well, he doesn't hit me”, so education is an ongoing thing.

People from the community talk about some of the root causes as alcoholism, financial strain, and seeing violence as normal--the abuser as a victim of violence.

I spoke to an elder, and her words were around going back to the grassroots and having more healing for people. If I can quote her a little bit, she said:

We need to educate our families on healthy living and have the supports for all the community to see a safe community. Aboriginal women help each other, and we're the life-givers and nurturers. We understand each other. Right now the need is there, but we are so limited in programs, services, and funding that we cannot get our women to the next step of life, and they fall back.

Hearing the women's voices and seeing what they need means that one of the things in the community is having the solutions come from the community, and then members can hold one another accountable.

I know from working at the shelter that one of the services that could probably be enhanced on Lennox Island is counselling. There's one psychologist who comes in once a week, and there could be a lot more services and support for women.

In a nutshell, that's what I have to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Ms. Roseanne Sark, director of the health program for the Mi'kmaq Confederacy of Prince Edward Island.

[Roseanne Sark, Director of Health Program, Mi'kmaq Confederacy of Prince Edward Island]

Thank you for the invitation to speak today. I have prepared a brief summary of some of the points I want to bring up today. I would like to speak a little about the work I do and the involvement I have with the Aboriginal Women's Association.

I am an active member of the Aboriginal Women's Association of P.E.I. I have presented workshops on family violence to the women in the community on a number of occasions.

My background is in family violence prevention. I worked in the program in Lennox Island First Nation, more so about prevention and basically promoting zero tolerance for family violence.

I worked closely with the community in implementing different activities that help to promote prevention. It was back in the early 1990s, when we didn't talk about it within the community. It was my role to bring light to the issue of family violence and to help people feel more comfortable in speaking about it.

Some of the things we implemented were activities that promoted culture and healthy families, as well as some parenting courses.

I've been working in the health program for about five years now, and it has been a lot of work in terms of developing the program, but we've always been working in all aspects of health. One of those areas is empowering women and working on different programs, and also partnering.

For me, partnering with the Aboriginal Women's Association is important, because they've come a long way. They were at a point at one time where the association wasn't as active and as proactive as they are today. Today they're doing some great things in the community that need to be recognized not just by governments but by the community itself. There's a lot of participation happening in the communities, which is a great thing, because that way the women and young girls can see the progress, even being together and standing together, especially with the Sisters in Spirit campaign. That's a positive thing they can unite on. That's where it stands; it's the unity of women who can stand up for their rights, who can stand up for who they are as women—aboriginal women, at that. That's a great thing.

Being an aboriginal woman myself, I'm proud to say that I am a Mi'kmaq woman from P.E.I. Those are some of the things that we need to encourage other women to be proud of, of who they are as an aboriginal woman. It speaks to our identity, and our identity is being aboriginal in this country.

It's great to see good things happening, and if I can help the Aboriginal Women's Association in my role as the director of health, I will do so, and I have been.

Another point I would like to make is about the work we are doing right now in our program with respect to the impacts of the residential school survivor settlements. It's great that they're going to be getting settlements, but there are going to be a number of impacts once those settlements start coming in. With the common experience payments that went out, some of the impacts were not so good. The stories are not even worth commenting on.

I like to be a positive person in the work that I do and I try not to dwell on the negative, but they are our realities today. Those are the things we have to take a look at in terms of ensuring that the survivors are safeguarded. They all have different needs, and so do women in their lives. So addressing the needs of a woman, where she's at in life, is something I would like to see happening, because everyone has different needs.

We all have different needs here. Some may need help in getting a job, some may need help in getting out of a violent situation, some may want to improve themselves in terms of their career, and some might just want to find out who they are as aboriginal women. I think that's important for us to take a look at. What is it that we can do in a practical sense?

Those practical differences are not just based on funding but based on the will to work together, the will to make a difference in working together.

I really am proud to say that I'm from Lennox Island, which has been proactive in working towards the betterment of women. The women's shelter that is in place there now is a great thing. It's great, and it's not just servicing aboriginal women; it's servicing other women as well, and I am proud of that.

With that, I'll let some other person speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now, from the Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network, we have Sheila Robinson, president. Sheila, would you begin?

[Sheila Robinson, President, Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network]

First of all, I thank you as well for the opportunity to speak here today. I'm here to tell you about the good work the Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network has been doing on our violence prevention initiative over the past few years.

We are a relatively young organization; we were incorporated in 2005. The majority of our membership is non-status aboriginal women. We also have status on-reserve and status off-reserve aboriginal women in our membership. Our work in violence prevention began in 2007, when we went out into our communities and held talking circles because we wanted to ask the women about the issues in the communities. They told us they felt isolated and that they wanted to be part of issues that were impacting their lives and they needed to participate in cultural teachings. Many women are afraid of reporting abuse. There is abuse and racism going on in our communities on a regular basis. They feel the need to educate both women and men that violence is never the answer.

So we took that very strong message and we implemented a three-phase project called “Aboriginal Women on the Verge of Rising: Breaking Barriers, Building Strong Minds”, and we sought to empower women in their own communities. We looked at a couple of toolkits and we purchased a toolkit from the Native Women's Association of Canada and we got, free of charge, a toolkit that was developed here in Fredericton, “The Healing Journey: Family Violence Prevention in Aboriginal Communities”.

We brought women together who were willing to participate in a train-the-trainer workshop. So for 14 months we had 53 women from 18 communities travel, sometimes in the winter--some of them were pregnant, and then they brought their infants--to take this train-the-trainer, violence, and violence prevention issues, things like sexual assault, date violence, bullying, emotional and psychological abuse, domestic violence, and teen suicide awareness and prevention. From there we sent the women back into their communities to give these workshops. We've had 36 workshops in violence prevention and 18 workshops in teen suicide take place to date, with more than 800 participants.

Because of the work we were doing, the women in a couple of the communities mentioned there was elder abuse taking place and they needed information on elder abuse. What we've done with those workshops is we've combined a cultural component and have traditional teachings with the classroom teachings. So in addition to the information on teen suicide or emotional and psychological abuse, the women learned about healing circles, sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, smudge ceremonies. Because of Newfoundland's unique situation under the terms of union in 1949, Joey Smallwood with a stroke of the pen said there were no Indians on the island.

Then we dealt with the whole massacre myth, that the Mi'kmaq were brought in to kill the Beothuks, which was taught in our schools. We've had a tremendous loss of culture, language, and identity as aboriginal people. So the cultural component tied with the classroom teachings, for lack of a better word, has been very effective in our communities.

Then, as I said, some women asked for elder abuse to be included using the same type of cultural model we've been using. So then we got some more funding and implemented elder abuse workshops in our communities. We initially targeted 72 participants, and so far we've had 94 participants, with one workshop left to take place.

It has really evolved. We are going to continue this work in our communities over the next two years. We're going to continue to offer those workshops in our communities for the next year and we're also going to look at how to increase participation with the men. We've had some young men attend our workshops in our communities even though they were targeted toward women. Those young men have been very open about the abuse they've experienced and about the cultural healing that's taken place for them as a result of attending the workshops and reconnecting with their culture.

If I could sum up the work we're doing in one sentence, it would be that for this to be successful, to heal, and end the cycle of violence it has to be at the grassroots level in the communities, and both men and women have to be involved and the reclaiming of culture has to be a significant part of the healing.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I would like to very quickly have the committee tell you who they are and then we can start going back and forth in terms of discussing this issue.

Kelly, would you start, please?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Yes.

Good morning, I'm Kelly Block. I'm a member of the Conservative government, representing Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar.

It's a real privilege to be here with you this morning. I don't typically sit on this committee, but I have appreciated all I've been able to learn. Thank you.

[Sandra Gruescu]

Good morning. My name is Sandra Gruescu. I work for the Library of Parliament and am responsible for writing the final report and recommendations, and I serve this committee.

[Julie Cool]

I'm Julie Cool, and I'm also an analyst serving this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm Hedy Fry. I'm the chair of the committee. I'm a Liberal from Vancouver Centre, all the way from British Columbia, the other part of the country.

I was status of women minister for six and a half years with Mr. Chrétien's government. These issues seem to be recurring. Nothing seems to be changing. It all seems to be the same, in fact getting worse. So I have a deep sense of frustration.

I think you said it, that grassroots activism seems to be the only way to go and the best way to go, doing it in a culturally sensitive manner.

[Angela Crandall]

I'm Angela Crandall. I'm the clerk of the committee, and I provide it with procedural advice and administrative support.