I'll give you a short answer.
When you asked about some of the solutions, I'm going to tell you to put the funding into education. For those of us who do get educated.... I came here 20 years ago with 16 garbage bags and two children, and because of strong warrior women who helped me through my journey, I'm here to be able to take another sister along with me, chain-linking. When funding is asked for, make sure it's put into education. If you want us to be sustainable and healthy and taxpayers, we must be able to get that education.
Being invited to other places is another open door so that we can continue to say the same thing over and over till the message is delivered by women like you sisters, who can help us. For those of us who are not yet at that level, like I said, with Ka Ni Kanichihk, Moon Voices, we need to bring more women there so that when we are able to sit down and never relax but be in the back, we could encourage others to carry on.
I want my grandchildren to have a healthy lifestyle. My daughter is a third generation and I'm a second generation of residential impact. It affects me, yes it does. Most of all, it's difficult because it is Caucasian people who bring those stereotypes. With my dad being French and my mom being aboriginal, first nations, Métis, it has affected me.
I look more like an aboriginal person, but then my father is a Frenchman from Quebec, Saint-Théophile. Yet I know if he were alive today he would be here to support.
I think we need to be able to understand that for aboriginal people--our children who are going to school, our grandchildren, my grandchildren--the schools will give us back our language and teach. We should not be segregated to one school system. If they allow the French to parler français, we should allow the other cultures in this country. I know we have a lot of different cultures, but for those that are first nations and Métis, I would say look at the funding part.
When Ka Ni Kanichihk is doing Moon Voices and you remember us women, remember that behind that we have to have that funding to become successful, and that there are many of us who don't even have a voice, many women and children.
If the message could be taken back that we look at the Native Women's Transition Centre, where my journey began, and Ikwe, where another part of my life is, those places for women are important, and there are not enough of them.
They built a brand-new humane society for animals, for crying out loud, and yet we are second-class citizens, even to that, because there is not enough. What happens is children come into care, things happen, and then the mothers end up on the streets. We're tired of the people being murdered and killed.
Thank you.