All I can say is that you are absolutely correct. Those kinds of funds, which would be able to assist and help our women at the community level, are not available, or they're very limited. When you, as a single parent or as a young woman, want to access these funds, even at the community level within your own community, because of restrictions and everything you're not eligible for them. So it creates many problems. And of course, as you know, within our actual communities on reserves across Canada, there is a terrible lack of housing and there are many health issues, which cause all these other relationships in terms of the lack of identity, the lack of our traditional roles, and that awareness. We have our elders within our various nations who are striving and working on this and are trying to do the best they can. That is ongoing.
However, as aboriginal women, we are not able to access any of those kinds of resources. But we are doing the best we can with the limited resources. Our grandmothers and our teachers.... As a former teacher, a retired teacher, I know the importance of getting a good education so that you are able to go out and provide for your family. That is crucial, and as NWAC, we provide training programs to assist our women to get more training. If they haven't finished high school, perhaps we can help them to do that or to get a specific kind of training.
According to statistics, our women have a higher number of successes within those areas. It's not that they don't want to. It's the lack of resources, as you said, to deal with special needs, such as child care. If you have two or three children at home, how can you be expected to pursue a college program? Those kinds of things are important. And we need to deal with them to stop all those other areas, such as violence, and I guess discrimination as well--this is where that comes in--and the racism that goes along with it.