I come from a rural first nation community. Our nearest transition house is a non-native transition house in Woodstock, which is an hour away from my community. The next one is in Edmundston, which is two hours north. They basically deliver to the francophone community in northern New Brunswick. So there is a big issue with access to a transition house, even for our rural sisters.
Gignoo does awesome work, but we have to travel two hours outside of our community to access the wonderful work they do with those women. I came here to give a rural perspective, because we have less than adequate access to these services. We even have less than adequate knowledge of services available in our communities. Gail does wonderful work in our communities, but a lot of people don't know about the work being done there. So there is an awareness issue, and we as communities are working on it with our people.
But there's a lack of resources and funding. Just by sitting here today we're garnering the support we need to move forward. As Natalie said, we want to walk hand-in-hand. We want to be treated as equals now. A lot of times, when governments hand out money, it's almost like, “Do we have to choose between rural or urban?” We're still given a very little amount to address the issue, but then we still have to pick and choose who we can help because of the limited resources. Tamara does a great job working with air.
Some of those best practices need to be shared. I hope that when the study you're doing comes back we'll be able to share on a national level, if not international, the issues of our rural communities--pitting them against our urban aboriginal sisters.