First of all, what I'd like to say is that I haven't gotten over it yet because it's continuing on from government to government. What I'd like to see is some attitudinal change from people who tell me to just get over it. It's not over. There has not been change. People are not getting what they need in order to heal, and that's why we're here today. We're here to talk about what it is that we as aboriginal women need.
We need a government.... There have been many governments before you and before your government. We need a government that is willing to stand up and say enough is enough. We need a government to stand up and say it's not all right to sell aboriginal women and to see them missing and murdered. It's not all right for us to take their children away from them. It's not all right for us to continue running our government on the backs of their resources and not help. This is what we're here to do today.
We're not saying that we're blaming your government. We are blaming the governments in general of this country for not standing up before 2011 to take notice of a 500-year-old problem, for women who have been murdered and missing for over two decades, for families who are in the middle of a breakdown, for ministries who do not support women to live in a position where they're not forced into poverty, for the children of these women in rural communities. We have reserves in this country that don't have schools for children, that don't have clean drinking water for their children to drink, for nursing mothers to drink.
These are the issues we're talking about. This is what's important for this committee to understand. It is not okay to say get over it, because we're not over it.