I'm the executive director of the Ending Violence Association of B.C. and I'm here as an ally to Marilyn and other aboriginal women from across the province and the nation.
I just want to share with you a little bit about the second report that Marilyn was speaking about, which is called “Researched To Death”. A number of times over a period of three years, we brought together aboriginal women from across the province, and we consulted quite extensively about what aboriginal women were saying they wanted and needed in order to increase safety in their lives.
Aboriginal women have said to us over and over that one of the overarching issues is the extent to which racism is alive and in action in communities across our nation. I can attest to that, being a front-line worker for many years, and taking to the hospital women who had just been sexually assaulted, or intervening as an advocate in some way. Whenever I had for myself the privilege of working with an aboriginal woman, I can attest that they are treated differently by the system.... I think it is unconscionable that this still exists.
Therefore, we need to take action in addition to what Marilyn has said, in terms of anti-racism and anti-oppression training for police, for crowns, for all the systems in place, because I think in this day and age, in 2011, that isn't at all acceptable. In addition, we believe that training needs to be provided to aboriginal women before they have...let me just back up. Many anti-violence programs are searching for aboriginal women to hire, but all of the anti-violence programs in B.C. provide post-employment training, and there is no pre-employment training in the area of violence against women.
We've had discussions with Northern Lights College in Terrace. They're interested in providing courses on how to become an advocate or counsellor in anti-violence programs for women; it would be similar to the George Brown College program in Ontario. We believe it would really move things forward if we were able to support colleges and universities to provide courses so that aboriginal women are supported and prepared in order to be able to apply for some of these jobs that exist.