I'm from the Awo Taan Healing Lodge in Calgary, a 27-bed emergency shelter for abused women and children. We provide a broad continuum of support services guided by aboriginal traditional teachings—including prevention, intervention, and healing—to anyone affected by any form of violence.
There are two components to our program. First, we have the residential program, which is a 27-bed, full-service emergency shelter. We operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have a 24-hour crisis line. We provide emergency health care—we have a nurse practitioner on board with us—as well as health intervention. We provide a child support program, transportation and meals, and cultural and elder support.
In our non-residential programs we provide outreach. Outreach is for moms and children who have left the shelter and are transitioning back into the community for healthier, violence-free lives. We provide a youth and family program. This is an early intervention program for our youth and pre-teens, which looks at healthy relationships, including dating relationships. We have an anti-bullying program with our partner school, Piitoayis Family School. We have a triple-P parenting program. We have healing and peer support circles for women, men, and children. We have a cultural enrichment program, as well as an elder support program.
We all know that the extent of violence against aboriginal women is huge. I took this quote from Dr. James Waldram to further enhance this point:
Among the most serious health problems affecting Aboriginal people in the decades since the end of the Second World War...are injuries sustained as a result of accidents and violence.
As for a definition of family violence, I wanted to bring it from a historical perspective to contextualize the reality of aboriginal women today. Family violence is a consequence of colonization, forced assimilation, and cultural genocide, the learned negative multi-generational actions, values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavioural patterns practised to weaken the aboriginal people.
In 2001 there were just under half a million aboriginal women in Canada, representing 3% of the total female population. I won't go into the statistics because we've already heard some of those.
One of the other points I wanted to make is that a research project by the Canada West Foundation stated that more aboriginal people live in urban centres than on reserves, especially in western Canada. Two-thirds of urban aboriginal people live in western Canada, primarily in Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver.
I won't talk about the various barriers faced by aboriginal women. Rather, I will move on to the Awo Taan Healing Lodge and the composition of our clients coming in. In the past 10 years, we have served 2,500 women in the emergency shelter alone; that's not counting our other programs, which I mentioned earlier. Our statistics show that approximately 50% of the women coming in have been first nations women. What that means is that the burden of the service needs of first nations and aboriginal women coming into the city is on some of our aboriginal organizations. There is a need to increase support and funding for our agencies.
In the province of Alberta, from March 2009 to March 31, 2010, Alberta domestic violence centres, including Awo Taan, accommodated 6,169 women and 5,601 children provincially. That's among 43 emergency shelters in the province of Alberta.
In that same year, the shelters were unable to accommodate 10,364 women and 6,474 children. We know for sure, from the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters' statistics, that 67% of the women entering emergency shelters in this province are aboriginal women.
I just gave you the number of the women and children that we've turned away. We think approximately 17,000 people were turned away in Alberta, and 67% of those are aboriginal women and children. What does that mean? What about the women who are not accessing shelters? Where is their safety? Where are their cultural supports? Where are their healing places to go to?
We are severely lacking supports and services for aboriginal women in this province, and I'm sure across the country as well. Our statistics indicate that the rural and urban migration is increasing at a rapid rate, yet the dollars are not matching the needs for service. Therefore, we can assume from these numbers that thousands of aboriginal women in this province are not receiving the care, the intervention, and the safety required to live violent-free lives in this province.
My recommendation from the Awo Taan Healing Lodge, based on the 20 years of service that we have put into advocacy for aboriginal women, is to develop a comprehensive strategy to develop a research agenda for aboriginal women and children. This would take a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to the issue of violence against aboriginal women.
Thank you.