Your first question, about the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, was my second priority, about healing resources for men and women to end violence. Part of the healing foundation was to address the cycle of violence as a result of residential schools. I do believe those resources need to be reinstated. It was a really good process, because it was at the community level where those resources were being used. It provided those counselling services and elder services. It even provided language programs, self-esteem, whatever kinds of things went along with it.
One of the things I want to also respond to is that we still live in a very racist society. We live in a society in which Indians are still thought of as inferior. We're still thought of as we were historically, as being primitive. So part of this whole process is not only about what's needed for aboriginal communities, but it's also what's needed for white mainstream communities to educate themselves about the role they play as the descendants of treaties, as descendants of colonizers, because they also need to end the violence of racism.
I have been teaching for a long time, and many times I talk about these things in our classes and it's the first time at a university level that they've ever heard these things. So the whole mainstream education system needs to change the way history is taught. The whole residential school system needs to be implemented in that historical context within the schools, and who we are as a people and that we still exist.
Chair, you had talked about how things have been lost. Well, they haven't been lost. We're still here. I'm still here, as a Mohawk woman, to tell you what occurred in my community. We still have the elders in our community who speak the language. We still have the resilience of our people because of our spirituality. Despite everything that's happened, our spirit is still strong, despite 500-plus years of the impact of colonization.
So I can sit here and talk to you in a respectful way about those impacts on our people, and on women especially. I always have had to give thanks to my ancestors and to those who have taught me about that honour and respect about being a woman, but also about the respect that we have in carrying that forward, and the responsibilities that we continue to have.
We've carried out our responsibilities. Now it has to be on the other side. I always think about our Two Row Wampum Treaty belt. We've done what we've done in our canoe. We've maintained our sovereignty in our canoe. But non-aboriginal colonizers and the descendants of colonizers haven't. They've violated that treaty because they've never taken on that responsibility of taking on their own responsibilities.