I really struggle, because you talk about violence against aboriginal women—and I just did a piece about something in Time magazine on this—and you talk about women as if we're separate from the rest of the community, which makes it really hard. If you hurt me, you're going to hurt my child, you're going to hurt my husband, you're going to hurt my community, and you're going to hurt my nation. So I would like to see a more holistic principle in anything you're going to do.
You need to start looking at how you are preventing us from having our nationhood. You don't settle our land claims. The current system is dividing up our land and dividing up everything, because you're not recognizing us as a full nation. Every nation needs its land.
I'm going to say it again, and I'll say it until the day I die: I'm in my homeland and yet I'm studied to death as an aboriginal person, and now as an aboriginal woman, and yet I'm the least understood.
I'm going through decolonization, and I hurt. I can name what's going on, and when we come to public things like this and name it, we still have to live in it and then walk away. And Canada still doesn't want, for whatever reason, to really rectify the wrong that was done within our treaty, within the agreements the Inuit and Métis have. That has to be recognized and re-education has to happen, and the principle has to be that we're a holistic people who still very much live with our land and want coexistence.
I'm a nurse who recognizes that. I'm a traditionalist with the medicine. I'm very fortunate to be able to offer a holistic approach to people who want to make their own choices.
So we're not saying that there aren't good things. There are several good things that we have within Canada with each other, but we have to be recognized as a nation. So please recognize us as a holistic nation and have a holistic approach.