Coming here 20 years ago, the number one thing that I look at is that there was a place to come and transition into. The Native Women's Transition Centre has always opened the door. What I think needs to happen is we need to emphasize that we support these places, that we see there's a place for women to come when they're trying to get away from domestic violence.
Sometimes we leave everything and we take what we can. What we need to do, though, is encourage these young women. We need to build up warrior women who will come to speak and bring these changes. When that happens, poverty affects us. Either you're going to go down.... What I chose is not to fall through the cracks of society or to bow down to ignorance.
Like I said, if we can find that, when we hear there are no transition homes and places for women from those communities to live, we have the right, if we don't want to live on a reserve--because I didn't, I lived in a community--to go anywhere in this country we would like to go and reside, and to teach our women to be a voice against domestic violence.
When these bills are being talked about, we will know the right time to be there, and when it's election time we will teach our women to vote, and allow politicians to be accountable for why we voted for them. That's where the change will happen.