Good morning.
Ullakut.
Thank you for your invitation. I don't speak much French.
I would like to bring greetings and best wishes from Rebecca Kudloo, who's our president. She lives in Baker Lake, Nunavut, and is not able to be here today. She very much appreciates this opportunity.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Pauktuutit, it just celebrated its 30th anniversary as the national representative organization of all Inuit women in Canada. It has a broad mandate, but our work is focused in three main areas: health is certainly one; violence and abuse prevention has been one of the biggest priorities for 30 years now; and socio-economic development broadly.
I'm happy to answer any further questions you may have about that.
We've been asked today to talk about best or promising practices in education, the social programs that can help prevent violence against women.
For Inuit women, violence prevention policies and programs must be based in Inuit culture, values, practices, geography, and language broadly. This is standard practice in our work. We produce a broad range of resources for people to use in the communities, whether individuals, service providers, or other organizations. Our work is always produced in plain language English and at least one dialect of Inuktitut. Inuktitut is one of the three indigenous languages in Canada expected to survive, and it is still used on a daily basis.
We try to learn as we go and improve our ways of communicating. The Internet is rapidly spreading across the north—we now have a Facebook page—but things like radio are still very effective. Everyone goes home at lunchtime and listens to the radio, so it's a challenge. Probably one of our biggest challenges is communicating across one-third of Canada's land mass, but we try to learn and improve.
Unfortunately, Pauktuutit has been working on this issue for 30 years, and not only has the situation not improved, it's become significantly worse. I won't reiterate all the statistics and rates of crime. They're very well known. I would like to note that a recent report by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, which is the Inuit land claims body in Nunavut, recently released its most recent report on the state of Inuit society and culture, with a focus, in part, on violence against women. It says that Nunavut is the most dangerous jurisdiction in Canada in which to be a woman or child, and that's absolutely true.
With regard to violence against women, it also has to be addressed as a significant mental and physical health issue. There's the whole range of responses: emergency, interventions, medevac, surgeries, rehabilitation, time away from their families, and employment. I'm sure we're all quite familiar with a lot of those impacts.
I would like to just draw your attention to the fact that there were four regional health surveys done. There are four primary Inuit regions in Canada.
In Nunavik, in the study conducted in 2004, they found that half of the women who participated in the Inuit house survey reported they had been victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault when they were minors. One-quarter had encountered the same problem as adults. For men, 16% of men, who participated in that regional survey, indicated the same problem as children, and 13% as adults. In Nunavut, one in two Inuit women have experienced severe sexual abuse during childhood and these injuries go far beyond broken bones. They can damage a soul and ruin a life, potentially, without support and specialized services. Those are by and large not present in Inuit communities.
We know in our hearts, but cannot yet prove through evidence, that many victims of child sexual abuse are choosing to end their pain by ending their lives. We know.
I'd like to talk briefly about a project that we're just concluding with Status of Women Canada. This has given us the first opportunity to conduct a survey of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among Inuit women and men, different age groups, about the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that support these crisis levels of violence. We're actually gathering results as we speak. The project will end at the end of March. We hope we'll learn a great deal from the results of that survey.
Part of what we're doing is developing a tool kit of resources. Our project is to engage men and boys in reducing violence. Again, it's the first opportunity we've had to take this approach. We're also developing a tool kit for individuals, men's groups, and others to use in the communities to encourage men to come and talk about their challenges, their difficulties, and try to heal.
With regard to recommendations about best practices, we participate in every opportunity we're given to bring forward the voices of Inuit women. At the end of October we attended the 4th National Aboriginal Women's Summit in Membertou, Nova Scotia. As members of the national planning committee, we're now trying to prepare a report from NAWS. When we were in Membertou, our task was to look at the recommendations from the first three NAW summits with a view to what has been done, what needs to be done now, and what needs to be done next. The major theme in the recommendations that came forward from 2007 was the need for coordinated, multi-year sustained funding. This work has to be tailored to meet the unique needs, priorities, and circumstances of first nations, Inuit, and Métis women, and it must be done in equal partnership with representative organizations. Unfortunately, that has not yet been done.
I'm going to speak just briefly about the national action plan to address violence against aboriginal women that was announced in September. I know some organizations responded quite quickly. We didn't, because we needed to understand what was in there, what might be new, what might already exist. We actually just issued a press release last week to the extent that we could, based on the information that we have received, primarily from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Of the $7 million annually that's available for family violence prevention and protection through Aboriginal Affairs every year, Inuit women across Canada are at this time in receipt of $75,000, which is 1% of the $7 million. Inuit communities continue to be specifically excluded from federal funding that's available for shelters on reserve. We've tried to bring that up at the policy level with the department for about 20 years—as long as I've worked with the organization.
Taking a look at the $20 million that was available this year to aboriginal representative organizations, which included a theme around family violence prevention, of that $20 million, we received $80,000 this year to work on economic development. When you look at this $20 million plus the $7 million, of $27 million this year that is specifically for aboriginal peoples, women—and I would interpret that as Inuit women—through Pauktuutit, are receiving one half of 1% of the annual funding made available through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. I felt I had to bring that to your attention.
I would also say that with regard to best practices or promising practices, there haven't been enough Inuit-specific violence prevention initiatives that have been evaluated over time to really even offer promising practices. We are supported in our work. Our work is directed closely by women in the community, service providers, Inuit experts, and other experts. We're confident that we're on the right path, but it has to be broader, sustained, and evaluated over time.
Again, I'm very grateful for your time this morning. Thank you very much.