I'm the chair of the committee with PSAC, and we have a male vice-chair. We're really pleased to have it that way. We have a national aboriginal peoples circle with PSAC. Karen Wright-Fraser is our female representative for the north for all three territories. We have a male representative too.
Again, it's cultural. There needs to be a balance, because there's no way I could tell you what it's like to be male. My husband would need to do that. As his wife I recognize what the impact of cultural change has done when you talk about dignity.
My husband takes my sons out on the land. We custom adopted my grandson. Boy, there's a lot around that to talk about--and foster care. He has taken him out since he was two years old, so he's good on the land. He has FASD, so there's the healing power, the identity, and all of that.
I think if you're going to have a standing committee with aboriginal women, you're not going to get the full picture unless you do it with men too. You'll only see a small part of the picture. Men have been terribly impacted, because they lost their role of being good on the land--the power of the land, the recognition of all that. A lot of men are not educated, so they're not valued. Education is being valued more than the land. So there's a lot that's impacting our men.
I know in Yellowknife--I've heard about it, but I've never been invited--there's this healing thing for men. But I think there are a lot of women sitting on it, and a lot of people from Yellowknife. Forgive me if I offend anyone, but whenever I hear about violent men it tends to fall on aboriginal men from the community. They're not looking at the impact of trauma from residential schools and the stripping of who they are as aboriginal men as being contributors to that--and losing the role of being equal partners.
We used to understand each other. I was taught a little differently. When we did have violence and sickness, we had specific things we did for it. It wasn't that we were free of it. Some of it could get really harsh.
The worst thing I heard was that you could excommunicated from your community and live alone. That is the harshest thing you can do, be alone. They do that in the judicial system; they'll segregate and isolate them as punitive measures, right.
I think in some way, when you talk about healing and you're not including the voice of men and the perspective of men, we're creating that excommunication and isolation again. We're putting it all on their shoulders. Then we wonder why they're still responding.
Again, I think that aboriginal people, when they medicate.... I think a lot of our approaches are always addictions. We don't always look at it as these people medicating because they have nothing else. We're not doing enough harm reduction. I tell my children that I want them to be responsible with their drinking. I don't say drinking is bad and they will become alcoholics. You have to respect alcohol and this is how you show respect for it. Drugs are illegal; they come from plants. So I make it more holistic and it's working. At some point they're going to experiment, and I want them to talk to me.