Evidence of meeting #50 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
We're going to go to a five-minute round now. I would like to ask everyone to try very hard to stay within the timelines. We've actually sometimes gone two minutes over. We need to be able to fit everybody in so that everyone gets a chance.
I'm going to start with Ms. Neville again, for the Liberals.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Thank you.
I have a lot of questions, and I think I'm going to start with you, Sandra. If I have time, I have a question for Therese as well.
You talk about traditional healing and the importance of it. I guess there's a recognition of it among those of us who are sitting here, but how does one explain the importance of it and the nature of it to non-aboriginal people who are making the decisions and who are developing criteria for programming? Whether it's right or wrong that they're doing it, they're doing it.
How do you explain that? I have found myself a number of times in the situation of trying to explain, and I don't know that I do it very well, the relationship of aboriginal people to the land. How do you do that?
Chair, PSAC, Aboriginal Peoples Committee, As an Individual
I'm going to reframe it, first of all.
Chair, PSAC, Aboriginal Peoples Committee, As an Individual
There's a whole bunch of me that wants to cry right now. And never do I apologize for my crying, because it's really sacred. I mean, pain is sacred, because that's when you're closest to your maker, who's sort of sharing that relationship.
I don't think it's the explaining. I think people can understand very well. I think it's the acceptance of what we're explaining. That's the problem, okay?
Chair, PSAC, Aboriginal Peoples Committee, As an Individual
When we talk about acknowledgement of our traditional healers, what we are starting to talk about now is power and privilege to whoever we're talking to, because the health care system has been taken over by the Canadian government. We're getting into corporations. We're getting into international trade and we're getting into the economy.
Chair, PSAC, Aboriginal Peoples Committee, As an Individual
So maybe we're doing it backwards. Maybe we should be talking about how we're going to share those dollars and how that land produces the medicine, and we should go back to treaty. Maybe we have to start talking about sharing the benefits of those treaties with aboriginal peoples and how we wanted it done, how we negotiated it to begin with, because we negotiated our education system. We negotiated the medicine chest. We negotiated our sustenance of food and all this. That was already done, and I think the thing that irritates me the most is that we're redoing it, but we're asking people to give up some of the power and privilege so there's all this resistance.
Again, Anita, I don't think it's explaining it. I think it's getting people to accept it and to share power and privilege.
We'll see.
Liberal
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Therese, I don't know if in a minute and a half you can answer my question or explain what I'm going to ask you. You talked about young women in a residential school getting up one morning and being told that they're going to be married and that their job is to produce children. Can you talk about the experience--I don't want you to go to your own experience or whatever--of some of those young women who found themselves in that position and what life brought for them?
President, Native Women's Association of the Northwest Territories
Okay. This happened, I know, during my lifetime in the residential school. I saw my friends being woken up in the morning and told that they were getting married at six o'clock in the morning. I've since spoken to some of them, and 50 or 60 years later they're still in the same relationship, a lot of them, and mainly because it was implanted in our head that once you marry, you stay married forever. That's life. You're in there for life--through bad, through good, through sickness, through health, whatever, and we took that literally. I'm still with my husband, and thank God I didn't experience any violence, but I know that some of my friends did, and they stayed in the relationship, and they're still in the relationship.
So it's all these other things that were taught to us in residential school. The nuns pounded into our heads that if you leave your husband for any reason, you're going straight to hell, and this message scared us, and it continues to scare me today. For instance, I'm still scared to miss church on a Sunday. I think I'm going to go to hell if I do. Everything we did in the residential school was a sin. We went to confession every week not knowing what we were supposed to confess about, but we were told we had to go to confession and tell the priest. And some of these priests wound up to be sexual abusers.
In the residential school, we were not taught the good things. We were taught everything that was bad, not the way we were taught at home. I remember the elder always telling me, if I took good care of myself, life would be good to me. That's all they told me. They never said everything we did is a sin. They never said that. So the teachings of the elders and the teaching that we received in residential school were very contradictory. So many of us left residential school very confused, and some of that confusion stays with us today.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
Thank you for that.
Do the young learn the old ways from the elders? We hear about elder abuse, and this seems to be a lack of respect for the elders and a lack of respect for the abuser himself. He has no self-esteem.
So I'm wondering, with this lack of respect, how do you reach, convince, and teach your young about their heritage and self-esteem?
The other question I have is with respect to the impact of colonization. That has been quite devastating to your people. Madam Villeneuve spoke about going back to the land. It might be possible up here because you're so isolated, but how hard is it going to be due to the technology of today and with the young having been touched by it? How do you go back to your old ways, the traditional ways?
Chair, PSAC, Aboriginal Peoples Committee, As an Individual
Yes. I raise four grandchildren. They're really into technology, and, as my sister Therese has said, technology is very violent. Why can't we be working with companies? Why can't our bands be working with companies to develop tools that are implemented into technology?
But the land, she's alive, and she does exist. None of us can live without her, right? I think we have to bring back some of the teachings of the elders on our relationship to her. I was just sharing with sister Arlene here—that's a union thing, “sister”, and if anybody is offended by that, I don't mean to offend—that it's about building that relationship again of who they are with themselves.
What is called for all across, for all Canadians, is decolonization education. We all need to get decolonized. I can be colonial just like that, right, and not recognize it; then I have to go through it, and then you go through shame and hurt. But if we go through it together, I think that's the healthiest thing for Canada. If Canada acknowledges that we're all living under this together and that it's a “we” approach, not “Canada's aboriginals”.... I hate that term, because I don't belong to anybody, just like Canadians don't belong to the States. I think that's something that needs to be done.
When you talk with youth.... My granddaughter is doing a thing on residential school right now. She actually kind of gets what happens with people, because she says, “Well, how come we're here?” She's only eleven, and she's asking how come we don't take care of our own money. I say that it's colonial, and that's too big for her, but think if we started with.... When you talk about healing, I think it's really about re-identifying. It's not healing. I don't think we need to heal so much as we need it to be acknowledged that we know what's going on. We can identify it.
But when is Canada going to stop hurting us and why are we always the ones who need the healing? I think we just keep reacting to the systemic policies that keep hitting us and hitting us.
On our own lands we're having to try to protect for third-party agreements; we're trying to acknowledge a treaty that was supposed to have been done a long time ago. We want implementation. I know that the Gwich'in nation is asking, “When is it going to be implemented?” We finished this a long time ago, they're saying, so come on, right?
I think there's too much focus on us and not enough on Canada. What is Canada willing to do? What are you going to do as Canadians to hold government accountable to re-educate Canadians as a whole? A couple of years ago, there were immigrants who were getting their citizenship and, at that time, our premier said that was much like the aboriginals, who were the first immigrants. No, we weren't.
I'm not criticizing him, but he was educated too. Do you know what I mean? You get born into that kind of ideology. Well, I think that as a whole we have a responsibility, as first nations, Métis, and Inuit, to work again with that treaty with Canadians, so that we have a co-existence that is one of friendship and peace, that recognizes who we are so that it benefits everybody, and so Canada gets to wear that pride again, that pride of being that peaceful country, because we can't wear it that way anymore.
Mahsi.
Liberal
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
Thank you very much.
Sandra, this woman told you that you weren't walking with the land, and I understand that very well. I was born in the red light district in Montreal. It is very similar to the Hastings district in Vancouver. When I go back to my neighbourhood, whatever happens, I feel confident. My roots are there, and I am walking with the land. I am not frightened. I feel at home, and I am walking with the land.
And so I can understand what that woman said to you. When one is on one's own land, one feels at home. How is it that after so many years people have not yet understood that this is your land? How do you explain that after all this time, you still have to fight? How is it that we still have to do tours like this one and that you still have to repeat to us again what you have just told us? Why is that? How is it that after so many years, people have still not understood? I am ashamed. I am ashamed. I don't know what to say to you. I am at a loss.
I would like all Canadians to be educated about this, to be taught about our history and to know that aboriginal people, the first nations, were not immigrants, but came from here. You welcomed us, you agreed to let us live on your land and agreed to conclude treaties. You are entitled to the money we give you today, it is your due; it is not charity. We are refusing to give you your due. I want people to know that. How can we do that? Tell me.
Chair, PSAC, Aboriginal Peoples Committee, As an Individual
Again, I don't apologize for my way of being, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness.
There are so many thoughts going through my head. It's a funny thing, because I had to be re-educated too. The term that my husband helped me use was decolonization. I had to be decolonized. I did that with the land and I did it in the community of Lutselk'e, because I didn't know the difference between the Indian Act and the treaty. The people of Lutselk'e taught me very, very well, and I'm proud to be from there. I'm also a proud member of the Mistawasis first peoples, because I was born there.
The land here loves us all; Mother Earth loves us all. When I first came to the north, I got out of a vehicle in Fort Providence and this energy ran up my legs. I said she's either going to make me or break me. Believe me, I was very mixed up. I was three years in recovery when I came to the north. I was bouncing all over the place and I didn't know it; I thought that was normal. So the north has been very, very kind to me. My sisters at the table here have all contributed to my well-being in one way or another, and I acknowledge that. More than all, I acknowledge the Creator. When we have aboriginal meetings we always acknowledge the Creator. I know in my job that we're implementing spiritual health. It's part of recovery. I think we all need that spirituality.
I would like to see this committee acknowledge the whole thing about the treaty and the nationhood. That's the start. How can we amend that? I know Canada is doing it. What's going on is that there's an economic base here; there are corporations and governments. As human beings, we have a tendency to get greedy. It's our nature to be in the place we are. If we don't acknowledge the Creator and ask for that kind of help, we're in big trouble, because we're human beings.
I don't know what else to say, other than I hear you, sister. It's nice to hear that. It's nice to come to things like that for a change and to hear that you've heard us. I'll just leave it at that.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Thank you. I'm glad to have another opportunity to question, but I've got to think of where to go here right now.
I sense that what you've talked about, Ms. Lockhart, is of primary importance.
I think of an elder who I used to respect a lot. He was a drinker, but what people would say about him was he's good on the land. That concept for males in society, for men who got their respect and dignity from what they did and accomplished, is one of the problems we have here now. In the society we have where your respect and dignity comes from the fatness of your wallet, and you may have gotten that from one source or the other, the dignity that aboriginal males have got from traditional practices has been very much taken away from them one way or the other.
It's like the caribou issue last year. Actually it's like a number of issues I've dealt with where males' role in this northern part of this world, where we still are hunters and gatherers and it's a very important part of our psychological makeup and it's a very important part of who we are, has been downgraded one way or the other.
As I'm the only male voice here today I thought I'd better throw that in and ask you for your comments about what you think about the role of men in our society, aboriginal men in their society, and how important that is in dealing with violence and the family and dealing with unity in the family.
January 20th, 2011 / 11:25 a.m.
Executive Director, Centre for Northern Families, Yellowknife Women's Society
I wanted to point to a real difference between the north and the south around a really critical issue. My sister is a band council member on a reserve in northern Ontario, and they have boundaries around that reserve. So whether it's child welfare or police, it doesn't matter who it is, if they go on that reserve the reserve knows about it and they have to give permission. There is a clear relationship there.
In the Northwest Territories relationships are very muddy because there are no reserves except for a very small one. It's all about public government, being friends, and collaboration. When community people come in contact with those systems that are public they don't understand the racism involved in that.
I'll just give you an example. I sit in the legislative assembly every day, and whenever community MLAs respond to almost any question, whether it's aboriginal or not, they always spout out policy of government, from my perspective. So there's a real buy-in where community people are confused because there are no clear boundaries around aboriginal and non-aboriginal rights in the Northwest Territories. Unlike my sister's reserve, any child welfare worker can walk into any home in the Northwest Territories and take any child--it used to be up to 45 days--with no questions asked. Now there are questions asked, but it's the government system that's asking the questions. That government system is racist and discriminatory, and in fact the human rights violations in the Northwest Territories are at the extreme end. You have people who don't understand that.
I'll just give you a quick example of a recent case where we had a social worker in the Northwest Territories. For years there were nothing but child welfare workers. Sad to say but true. But we have a new social worker in the Northwest Territories and they are hired by defence lawyers now to interview victims of violence. The women in the Northwest Territories don't know who they're talking to. They think they're talking to child welfare social workers. No, they're talking to defence lawyers hired by offenders to discredit those women, and we have no defence against that.
We have no capacity to go to the community and say, “Watch out, women. Those social workers who are contacting you work for the guy that just raped you or beat you up. Be careful.” So our situation is really different from that of the south.
When you're talking about all the inherent rights of aboriginal and Inuit people in this land, those are very muddy waters up here. There is really an impression that we're all working for the good of everyone, and that's just not true because of those discriminatory systems that are so entrenched here and not questioned.
Our agency was specifically defunded because we didn't agree with child welfare policies. And that was in writing. We were specifically defunded. So if you're not on board, you are not happening. And the federal government has a very specific kind of requirement for money to be transferred to the territorial government. The territorial government keeps it, and they deliver these services to communities whether they like it or not. So there's no real capacity for the community to stand up and say “We don't do things that way here. We need our own money.”
So be aware of that. The north is in particular jeopardy because there's a real facade of public community good that doesn't address racism.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
I think we can go to another round, but it's going to have to be a very tight three-minute round or else not everyone will get to ask questions and interact. So I'm going to be really strict with this round.
Ms. Neville, for the Liberals.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Thank you.
I was going to ask something totally different, but, Arlene, I can't let your last comment go without asking you to elaborate.
You talked about a public facade of community cooperation underlain--my word--with racism.