When I look at what needs to occur within the Treaty 7 area or within the province of Alberta for us to see a difference, and the fact that we have a huge number of women who choose not to engage with the police at all...there needs to be trust built and it has to come from the top; it has to. I don't know how else to put it without saying that it needs to be mandated.
When I talk to aboriginal women and people who are employed by the Calgary city police, I hear consistently that there is a huge piece of racism involved within that organization that goes to the top of that organization. There are people who are employed by them who say that if they raise a stink, they are told very clearly that they will be at the bottom of the ladder very, very soon. They have to choose whether they're going to stay employed or move forward with filing any kind of complaint against superiors about racist actions within the police force. When I see that, I know that has to change for us.
One of the other things we look at.... I talk to women and their families, and I see the impoverishment, as Jo-Anne mentioned. We have a huge number of aboriginal women living in urban centres who have no idea how to access services. There may be services there, but they're not accessible for them. If they don't know they're there, then they're absolutely useless, and that is huge. So the services need to be appropriate.
We're looking at healing these women. Between the residential schools and the sixties scoop, which was the apprehension of children, which removed children permanently from their homes...again, I look at the destruction of family circuits. You're destroying the family units. Without support, those families can never grow. They can never become whole and healthy again.
I look at the family from which I came, and it is so fractured. It is so fractured. I have eight aunts. Every one of my aunts was raped, more than once, and it was okay because it happens to everybody. Really? Does it need to? When we talk about those kinds of acceptable numbers.... My daughter is 15, and if I have my way she will never be raped, ever, because it's not acceptable, and that's what I'm asking from you, that those pieces of violence are no longer acceptable.