I think the ones in the rural areas lacked information, because the information sources are very limited, especially in more remote communities. If you speak to someone in or living close to an urban area, you will find that their knowledge of what's out there will be much greater than a person living in a northern area. As well, I think there are less economic opportunities in the remote communities than in the more southern areas near urban communities. They are at a disadvantage.
We found in our research with Sisters in Spirit that what has happened is that a lot of young women left their communities to go to urban centres. A lot of them ended up.... Well, there's the Highway of Tears, for example. A lot of them were leaving their communities to go into large urban areas and never got there; they were murdered along the way. A lot of them end up going to larger cities, and they fall between the cracks. They don't know where to go.
There are a lot of situations where we could focus, especially on young women. We can work with the friendship centres, for example, and with native women's organizations in cities and in larger centres, to help them navigate the systems. NWAC does have, through the labour market development initiative, a small program to help young women enter the labour force, but it's very small and much more is needed. We should target the younger women as well. What we're focusing on at NWAC now is the young women, but the older young women. Here I think we should focus more on the younger teenage population.