We have two women, one long-time northerner and another aboriginal woman with a healing background, who have gone into five of the eleven communities, I believe. We're going in sort of under the radar. We're not going in saying we're here to talk about violence, because we don't want to get the community up in arms about that, but we're meeting with the women in small groups and then in larger groups on the second visit, talking to them and taking direction from them about what they would like to see happen and what their needs are. For example, in one community the women said they weren't really allowed to meet together, so they wanted to go mountain climbing because if they go climbing in the mountains around that area then they can be off by themselves and talk about things. That's the direction we've taken, and we're working toward their being able to go mountain climbing.
The women have said that traditionally they used to tan moose hides, and that's when they would go off by themselves. They talked about when you're scraping that moose hide you get a lot of your feelings out. Then the elders can say to you that this is analogous to the lives of women and take them through the steps. It is really interesting, but they aren't able at this point to get off by themselves and do some of those traditional things. So on the one hand we're looking for funding to allow that, and on the other hand we're also looking for ways to help them find other avenues to get off by themselves.
What seems to be critical is to do this in ways that don't raise a ruckus in the community. For example, in another community the women said if they wanted to be able to meet as a women's group, without fear, they needed the community to sanction this, so they had a community feast. We found the resources to have the community feast with 90 people in that community, and then a whole bunch of women could come to visit a women's group meeting the next day.
It is just feeling our way in each individual community but taking direction from the women there.