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.