Evidence of meeting #24 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was communities.
2:35 p.m.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
And thank you, ladies, for being here today.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
2:35 p.m.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Lois Brown, member of Parliament for Newmarket—Aurora, which is a riding about 30 kilometres north of Toronto. I'm a first-time MP and a member of the Conservative Party.
We've heard some very interesting discussions today. One of the things we heard this morning was the issue of education. Madame Bousquet, you've spoken about that as well. You talked about aboriginal staff and non-aboriginal staff and there not being enough of the aboriginal staff to be culturally sensitive to the issues being faced.
My question this morning to one of our witnesses was, how do we encourage young people to stay in school to get the education they need to become the qualified staff that is required? One of the things they said this morning was that sometimes aboriginal people are given certificates they can use on reserve, but they're not qualified off reserve. I wonder if you could comment about that level of education. Are we helping the situation by creating this other level, or do we need to encourage young people to stay in school so the qualifications they're getting are ones they can use in both places, and they're recognized as being qualified in all areas? Do you have any comments on that?
2:35 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Anthropology, University of Montreal, As an Individual
I think young people who choose this kind of occupation should have the same certificates as others, if only because growing numbers of aboriginal people are entering urban areas in Quebec. They have to be able to speak with other caseworkers. They're already attending meetings, seminars and conferences.
I also think that non-aboriginals should also have minimum training on work in aboriginal environments. That's being done in a lot of provinces, but very little in Quebec. It's possible to earn diplomas in social work and in other fields without ever taking a course on aboriginal people. That's particularly surprising because there are aboriginals everywhere in Quebec. I think it would be desirable for everyone to receive training on that subject.
We have to find a way for aboriginal people to stay at school. Personally, if I knew of one, I would try to apply it right away. I don't know one. School is definitely a very charged issue. Young people don't necessarily want to stay there because they don't necessarily feel very comfortable there. School is not a very appropriate place for taking in aboriginal students. In addition, the aboriginal schools have to teach the provincial curriculum. That curriculum is at times very difficult to implement. Since the schools are very isolated, they have to adjust to the fact that the students live in a violent environment at home. When they come to school, they aren't necessarily focused or able to follow well.
It must nevertheless be understood that most of the aboriginal peoples in Quebec became sedentary starting in the 1950s. The history of relations with schools is necessarily very negative; I'm thinking in particular of the Indian residential schools. That had a very impact on an entire generation of people here in Quebec. As a result, schools is still perceived as a place that's part of the colonial machinery. Even though immense effort have been made by people who want to develop education and aboriginals who want to develop education, you don't change that image in a few years. It takes time and information. We have to dress wounds and address trauma that have been transmitted by that history of Indian residential schools.
I don't know whether that completely answers your question. My colleague may have something to add. There is a tendency to want to tell aboriginal young people what they have to do in life. Personally, I've had the great luck in my life of doing what I wanted. No one told me that I had to become an anthropologist. My parents didn't even know what that occupation was. I told them that I wanted to become an anthropologist. I was enormously lucky to be able to decide completely on my own what I wanted to do.
My wish is for aboriginal young people to have as much good fortune as I did and for them to be able to choose, for them to be able to have access to a large bank of occupations and for them to know more about what they are capable of doing. I've often heard young people tell me that they aren't sure they are capable because they're aboriginal. I'm enraged by that. I've been working with them for years and they're as capable as anyone else. This is part of those accumulated injuries. I would like them to choose to do what they want.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
I have a very good friend who spent some time teaching in northern Manitoba on a reserve, and I know she was not prepared, when she arrived, for first of all the poverty she encountered.... There were a number of social situations for which her training had not prepared her.
My question would be, do we see young people who are receiving training going back and teaching on the reserves? Are we beginning to see that migration of a generation that is prepared to go back and assist? An aboriginal teacher would have some ideas, some knowledge, of culturally sensitive issues that could be addressed. Is that a way of helping our aboriginal children to stay in school?
2:40 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Anthropology, University of Montreal, As an Individual
That might be one way. However, I've been working in communities for a long time, and I would say that, in any case, fundamentally, of all the young people and less young people I've known—the young people I knew long ago are no longer young today—there isn't one who didn't tell me they wanted to return to his community one day. They all wanted to return to their community. They all felt a duty and responsibility to their community.
When they go get a diploma, they go back and put it in the service of their community. This is a minority for the moment, but we are very gradually seeing the graduation rate improve and the number of school dropout declining going forward—although it's quite a slow movement. All of those who earn diplomas return, at one point, to their community.
These are small communities. Here too, I would say that this isn't necessarily easy to live with because, when they go to do their studies, they leave with the idea that they are going to be models. That's a heavy burden. That's part of a weight they have to bear that many others don't. In any case, I didn't have that weight. They are aware of it and that makes it possible to have model individuals who will show that they are aboriginal and that they are capable.
After all, one of the presidents of the Quebec Medical Association—I was president in the early 2000s—Stanley Vollant, is an Innu. He has done a great deal to make it possible for people to think that it's not because you're Innu and your first language is Innu that you can't become a doctor. Yes, he is one. He even holds an extremely high-profile position. That's extremely positive.
2:45 p.m.
Conservative
2:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
No, I think we're going to move on. We'll try to give everyone at least one round.
Ms. Simson is next.
2:45 p.m.
Liberal
Michelle Simson Liberal Scarborough Southwest, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's been fascinating hearing from people who have done some research into it. Primarily our witnesses have been from groups and organizations that are providing assistance to women who find themselves in situations like this, and I believe it's probably the first time....
My sense, through all the hearings we've had, is that we're somehow spinning our wheels. It was saddening to hear that that really isn't the case, that violence against aboriginal women is in fact on the rise.
I'll come to my question. It was touched upon that we can't use the cookie cutter approach and we can't necessarily take non-aboriginal solutions and transplant them into aboriginal situations. If a lot of these organizations are specialized in dealing with violence against aboriginal women, for instance, and shelters and counselling, where do you see the disconnect?
We're obviously losing ground. I don't necessarily believe that these organizations are trying to take non-aboriginal approaches and use them to solve the situation in the aboriginal community, but somewhere along the line there's a disconnect. Additional funding--just throwing money at this--maybe isn't the answer, because it's patchwork. These organizations aren't in sync. There isn't a national strategy, and they're just stopgap measures.
Can I have your comments on that?
2:45 p.m.
Full Professor, School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
Thank you for your very relevant and interesting question.
It's true that this is very complicated. When I emphasize that there is no ideal solution, that's really what I have observed. Let's consider the example of safe houses. I'm not saying that safe houses are useless, but this is a type of measure that doesn't really address the causes of violence. In our research, we've realized that once again it's the woman who bears the burden of having to leave the home. The aggressor often stays in the community. Once again, the burden is on the woman to take action, to leave, and all that. If the safe house is located outside the community, sometimes there's this burden.
However, it's difficult to respond unilaterally. In all my research, I've met women who said that it was important for them to leave; others said they would prefer to stay. Still others said they felt more comfortable on the outside, that a safe house, with non-aboriginals, because their anonymity was good for them, whereas others said they needed cultural proximity to their own people, that they felt better in their communities. That's why I very much emphasize that you have to be creative, but you especially have to be close to the people.
I know that you work in politics. I know you start from above and put in place structures and initiatives at the bottom level. Instead, I think you have to develop inductive approaches and sometimes go from one community to another to get a clear idea of the local realities and to deploy a number of services so as to respond to the diversity of people's needs. If a woman needs to stay in her community, there should be a structure that permits that. If a woman wants to leave her community, there should be a structure that permits that, and not say that we're going to establish safe houses in all communities.
What is more, sometimes there's a problem with the operation of those safe houses, which resemble prisons. It's incredible that an aboriginal woman who is a victim of violence... I won't name the place because there would be no point. It's nevertheless incredible to see aboriginal women feeling doubly victimized because they have schedules they have to follow: they can't leave when they want to. In a way they feel shut in. That's absolutely unacceptable.
The major difficulty, in my view, is understanding that, as a result of the proximity and cultural differences Marie-Pierre referred to, we have to innovate and find completely different things. That requires a lot of creativity in the communities. I find there's often a lack of imagination.
I don't know whether I'm doing a good job of answering your question. I don't think we need to focus our efforts solely on the idea of safe houses. The safe house is one solution, but it's very temporary.
I don't know whether I answered your question.
2:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Are you happy with that? Shall I move on, then, to Monsieur Desnoyers?
Okay.
2:50 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desnoyers Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
As my colleague mentioned, we have experts. Your studies have enabled you to reach important conclusions. Will those studies and recommendations be submitted to the committee?
2:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
We already have the pieces here, but they're only in French, so we have to translate before we give it to you.
2:50 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desnoyers Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
So you already have the whole series of recommendations. Excellent.
You talked about causes. We have to go back a long way if we want to solve the problem. It's not by adding touches here and there that we're going to solve the problem.
You also talked about colonization. That fascinates me because I heard about that this morning. I would like you to say more on that subject and what that's ultimately done to the aboriginal community.
2:50 p.m.
Full Professor, School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
It will take a long time to describe, but colonization has definitely resulted, among other things, in the placing under trusteeship of societies that were functioning very well and that were creating their own economies, even though they were subsistence economies. There was a social regulation. That doesn't mean, as Marie-Pierre said, that there wasn't any violence or problems. I've studied, in particular, traditional Inuit societies, that had their own social regulation mechanism. Colonization caused extremely rapid changes within those societies. Structures that absolutely did not suit them were imposed, which caused cultural alienation. That very much destabilized family dynamics and the division of responsibilities, which is related to family violence.
One of the hypotheses made by certain specialists is, surprisingly in a way, that women have emerged from this in better condition than men, economically speaking. And when you go into the communities, you see that some Inuit women hold jobs. The loss of their traditional role as providers appears to have greatly affected men, who have found themselves in a situation of isolation, loss of meaning and of a function in their communities. This probably contributes to a much greater understanding of the fact that they want to forget by drinking and using drugs. Alcohol and drugs are definitely an extremely important precipitating factor. My anthropologist colleague would be in a much better position than I to talk about the destructing effects of colonization.
2:55 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desnoyers Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Ultimately, we've taken away everything that belonged to them. In today's reality, if we established a national plan to begin to remedy the situation, what would be your first two recommendations?
2:55 p.m.
Full Professor, School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
I'd like to make what will be a somewhat paradoxical comment. I believe that the weight of colonization absolutely should not be denied. It must not be forgotten. We are all responsible. There's really something that has to be denounced. I think it has to be officially recognized that Canada was a colonial state. It still is. We still have a long way to go.
Here's the paradoxical part of my comment. Every time we establish initiatives and say that colonization is responsible, from a pragmatic point of view, that doesn't produce a lot of courses of action. I think this historical fact has to be acknowledged, but that, once it's said, we have to move on to action. We have to stop making the causes of colonization the driver of action.
As for recommendations, I think we really have to start supporting aboriginal people in order to develop governance. That's a fashionable word, I know, and we don't always like it. I'm going to give you an example. I'm conducting a study on the Inuit community of Kuujjuaq for the Department of Justice. Knowing the problem involved in imposing methods of regulation that absolutely do not suit those communities, I'm still going to place considerable emphasis on the fact that the punitive and repressive approach, which includes the police and justice systems, does not work. On the day we've understood that a social problem cannot be resolved by means of a justice system, we'll have taken a major step. However, we aren't stuck with that. We're still attaching importance, above all, to the fact that this is an offence. When a man beats a woman, its an offence, of course, but the legal answer isn't the right answer. They have the courage to go beyond that and to do something else.
I'm suggesting an approach for the community of Kuujjuaq. In my mind, the central course of action is to rebuild social regulation in the communities. How do we do that? By grouping together all existing resources and supporting all existing forms of regulation; by creating joint action; by having an orchestra conductor who makes the actions consistent and who is like a link in a chain; by no longer excluding people because they have committed an offence; by adopting inclusive approaches; by reinforcing all the initiatives so that people can take charge of their lives. So, yes, that's governance.
We have to rebuild this social regulation. I believe in this. In particular, we can do it through initiatives like circles, committees and local organizations. We have to reinforce leadership, target the few families in which things are going well and which can become very high-profile models. Lastly, it has to be understood that aboriginal people have abilities. It's simply that the aboriginal communities have lost confidence in them. The fact remains that those abilities exist. We have to go and find them.
2:55 p.m.
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I don't know where to begin. I clearly heard what you said, and I believe you're right all down the line. Ultimately, I wonder whether we're not the ones who need cultural education, because I realized that, all too often, the decisions are made for someone's good; they aren't made based on that person's needs. We always believe we know better, can do better, than the people directly involved in the community.
I heard Mr. Desnoyers talking about colonization and I drew the parallel with apartheid in South Africa, a country where there is a lot of violence against women as well, where that has increasingly developed and where women have adjusted to violence. It's true, women adjust to violence, because it's easier to adjust and to continue to suffer it than to do something to counter it.
There's one term that I've always detested, and that's the term “reserve”. I'm tired of hearing that word. Reserves are in Africa for animals, not for human beings. Shouldn't we be teaching young people in our schools, in our entire society so they know about history, so they know with whom they share the land, that that land initially wasn't theirs? Shouldn't we do something to ensure that the real history is known and to re-establish the facts?
For a very long time, I thought we were engaged in charity with aboriginal people, with the First Nations—because that's what we were taught—until I met Ellen Gabriel and she told me the history and I understood that we weren't being charitable with anyone. These are things that we owe them, and we're still not giving them enough again, in return for what we've taken from them.
It very much concerns me to see that there is a very large gap between what we say and what we do. You also mentioned harmony between the various levels of government. Let's simply take the example of the new provincial policy on children. If there are problems, the Youth Court can remove the child from the aboriginal mother, in an aboriginal community and take the child kilometers away from there where she won't have an opportunity to see the child as frequently. These are things that make no sense. We're reproducing the history of the residential schools. I wonder who will establish the link between the various levels of government so this has some kind of consistency.
That may be a complicated thought and question because there are so many ideas in my head.
3 p.m.
Full Professor, School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
It's not complicated, if I can take the liberty of answering you.
I do a lot of work in the mediation field. I think there are really some bridges that should be built between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. I'm fascinated by the ignorance of history. The first thought that comes to the mind of some people is that aboriginal people don't pay any taxes, that they're alcoholics, etc. Why don't they pay taxes? Do you know aboriginal history?
I would add a minor clarification: Ms. Bousquet and I are of European origin, which isn't by chance. There is a terrible discomfort among Quebeckers—for example, since that's the province where we are—over the study of this issue. There's really some discomfort, and I believe it's not by chance that we are both European.
You talked about children. This is a typical example of the kind of intervention that is reproduced, because the DPJ operates like that; it's the child's welfare that takes precedence, etc. That's the way things are seen and done. My research on the marginalization of aboriginal women was done through life stories. We asked the women to talk about themselves, from birth until the time of the interview. It was very interesting. We saw rises and falls in terms of integration. We plotted marginalization curves. Do you know what was very interesting? Every fall in the life paths of these women coincided with a moment when their children were taken away from them.
Contrary to what we think, even if the environment wasn't appropriate, it was much better, much more positive for the child to stay with his or her mother, perhaps with protection measures, we agree.
You talked about reserves. I can't help but tell you that the Indian Act inspired the apartheid regime in South Africa, since you mentioned that. That was the source of inspiration for the apartheid regime in South Africa.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
3:05 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Anthropology, University of Montreal, As an Individual
I'd simply like to add that I entirely agree with my colleague. In response to Mr. Desnoyers, regarding possible solutions—I also agree with Ms. Demers—I would say that there are two important aspects, in my view: education and governance.
The aboriginal communities, whether it be on reserve, in institutions, in villages or in northern and other municipalities, don't have enough governance, that is to say that they have quite little flexibility within the system. They receive programs and budgets that they have to implement, but that leave very little room for initiative. That's obviously very harmful because we can't withdraw everything from someone and hope for that person to remain independent. That makes no sense.
In fact, since I offer two full courses of three hours a week on colonization every semester, I often wonder—and every time, I'm dumb-founded—how much worse it could have been. Aboriginal people are much more resilient than we think. I say to myself that they lost their economy, their social system, we prohibited them their belief system, they were prohibited from even wearing their traditional costumes. They were prohibited a lot of things. Things should be worse, but they managed not to come out of it as badly as that. They have a lot of will. The communities in which I work are extremely dynamic. There are a lot of young people who want to pull through. So they have to be given more governance. It's more than a fashionable word, as my colleague said.
There's also education. I'm a university professor. My students appear before me in the first class, and I ask them what the 11 aboriginal nations of Quebec are. They live in Quebec, and most of them are Quebeckers. They know a few names here and there. They don't know where the communities are. They don't know how many there are. They don't even know that there are 11. They know nothing, and I mean “nothing”. They have vaguely heard about those communities. They have images of either fantastic people in harmony with nature or of very violent drunkards. There's nothing between the two.
I've been working with aboriginal people for more than 15 years. If it was that horrible, I would have changed occupations a long time ago. So education is fundamentally important. We often talk about the education of aboriginal people and say they have to be better trained and so on, but young Allochtones also have to be trained so they know a minimum. For example, I do a lot of work in regions. Most of the people don't know that the villages where they live have Indian names. That should be posted at the entrance to the village. We should have access to the toponyms so they are more visible. We live in a province where aboriginal people are quite invisible.
I've been to other provinces. Proportionally, of course, there are more aboriginal people. In Vancouver, for example, there is a certain aboriginal presence, if only in art, which is omnipresent, which is everywhere. In Quebec, where do we see the aboriginal presence? You walk around in Montreal and you could very well not know that the lookout on top of Mount Royal is called “Kondiaronk”, after the name of a great Indian chief. Where is that presence? What marks that presence? There's nothing.
So we have to take part in the visibility of aboriginal people, a positive visibility, and show that these are people who are part of society and that there are all kinds of people and occupations among them: workers, secretaries, designers, doctors, lawyers and so on. We have to start by showing that they also live in that society, that they are part of it and that they have a history that's worth the trouble of getting to know, an absolutely marvellous history. I would like that learning to start in primary school in fact. I would be pleased about that.