When an aboriginal girl comes into the Native Women's Transition Centre, we have a lot of programs. We also have our culture. I'm the elder for the Native Women's Transition Centre. I teach them who they are, to find themselves as an aboriginal person, and to be proud of who they are.
I also teach the little kids to respect themselves, to respect their mothers. We had lost that when the residential schools came about because of the impact of the residential schools. We had lost that.
You have to re-teach to love. You have to re-teach to respect. You have to bring back the seven sacred teachings, as they do come in.
Also, I was sitting here listening about child care. When the women come to the Native Women's Transition Centre, they come there to heal themselves, the educational part of themselves, who they are. We give them back who they are. Also, there is no child care during their education. A lot of them give up. They want to go back to do their grade 5. They want to go back to do their grade 3, grade 10, but there's no child care. They apply for work and they apply for school. They are accepted, but they cannot go because there is no child care. We need more money in child care for aboriginal women.
We need more help in funding the cultural part to find who we are as aboriginal people. Once we find ourselves, once we take back what was taken from us, our language, our culture—that was taken, robbed from us—you will see aboriginal women walking with their heads up.
My children do walk with their heads up as aboriginal people, as I do myself. I walk with my head up. I will never let anyone walk in front of me or push me to the side, as was done to me in the convent. I was told, “Shut up, you're just an aboriginal person.” But I was a person, and I claimed that person, who I am, and that is what I brought to the Native Women's Transition Centre, my cultural part.
Listening and crying with them, laughing with them, and playing with them is an important key for that healing.