Thank you.
I want to begin by acknowledging the first nation of the traditional territory on which we are meeting. I send my thanks and greetings to the Algonquin Nation, and also to you, the status of women committee, for interest in some of our programs and for giving us this space.
I'm not one to read, although they sent me to school and I can, but I'm much better in 10 minutes if I take you on a little trip. If you want to put your seat belts on, we'll do that.
I work for an organization of indigenous friendship centres. There are 28 in Ontario. We provide the services and programs—cultural, recreational, educational, social support, addiction, and anti-violence work—for people who live in towns and cities. We're part of a national network. There are 118 indigenous friendship centres, and probably some of you have one in your riding.
What we were asked to talk about is some of our programming, specifically working with men and boys about ending violence.
The federation has a long history of doing this. We have enjoyed fairly long and committed support from the province, through a beginning with the NDP, through Conservatives, and through Liberals. Really since we began in 1971, but formally in the early 1990s, we began programming.
For a long time, we worked from the perspective of the victim. We provided supports, circles, counselling, and some court support, through what I think is still called the aboriginal courtwork program. Everybody is changing their lexicon, and we all have to rush to keep up, I guess.
A number of years ago, it came to us that the only way we were going to end violence against indigenous women, which is who I am here to talk about, is for men to stop it. It's a simple answer. It's a hard process. We had to look at what we were doing and what we could do better. We also have learned in the past 30 years of doing this that the answers for our community have to be distinct. They are not going to be the same thing that the mainstream or everyone else does.
We've also found that working with men takes some savvy in getting them to come in and begin to feel and not just to talk, and not having to go to a program. It's not a thing you do while you're in provincial or federal jail, but it's something that's important.
One of the programs in particular that I want to talk about is named Kizhaay Anishinaabe Niin, which is Ojibwa for “I am a kind man”. It speaks to a long history of not having violence, of not behaving in that way. To make it easier—if it is easier for you in English—it means “I am a kind man”.
The elder who named it was very clear that it's about taking responsibility. It's about picking up your culture and traditions, a tradition that does not in any way, shape, or form tolerate violence against women, young women, or girls. It couldn't be packaged nicely in terms of family violence. Sometimes we have to have a verb in this, and it has to be about ending violence. It can't just be about wanting to talk about it forever.
Kizhaay very recently was expanded to a number of sites in Ontario, to all of our friendship centres, and there are a few other places we deliver it. It has four components. The first one is education, acknowledgement that sometimes things become normalized for you and you don't understand that you were raised and taught violence. Children learn what they live, so people who had an experience where there was violence in their lives, of course, went on to continue that.
It was also to re-establish our traditional teachings, long conversations with respect to residential schools, child welfare, federal corrections, to all kinds of reasons that people have been moved and displaced from understanding our culture.
It's to inspire men to help other men, and for them to know that any violence against women can't be solely the responsibility of indigenous women or all women, that men have a role to play.
Last but not least, it's to support men who choose not to use violence. We do that through a variety of programming, including cultural programming. We have a course that runs 12 weeks or 16 weeks. It has a curriculum. It deals with histories of violence, intergenerational trauma. It talks about examining your own attitude and beginning to change it toward your relationships, your intimate relationships in particular. It has one-on-one counselling supports, group-based activities, circles, and a variety of activities where men can network, can support each other. It is a very simple model.
Indigenous men in Kenora supported take-back-the-night initiatives. They got a local business involved. It gave them coffee, and they handed out coffee all night and protected the parade route. They encouraged men to come and be supportive. While they were there they were teaching them very simple ways of dealing with their power and pulling back and, even if they were just walking in the same direction, not having to walk behind a woman. They could wait a few minutes. They could walk across the road. They could do all kinds of very simple things that lots of people unfortunately don't know about. We can have all kinds of public education campaigns, but if they're not targeted at certain people, they're not in a language or if they're not produced in ways that are familiar to our community, they're not going to be particularly relevant.
The other issue I have to mention here is that not all violence that is directed at young indigenous women and girls and women generally comes from inside our community. It's important that a committee like yours take a broad perspective. When taking a broad perspective, you can't forget that indigenous issues may not exactly follow your public education proposals or your campaigns. There may be other things.
We have created a series of recommendations for you. One is that you create a national initiative that is focused on any violence against indigenous girls and young women, which is the mandate you asked us to talk about today. In that program you also need to consider young people and youth. The earlier we normalize positive behaviours, and less violence, the more successful we're going to be. We need to be able to transmit it not just to youth groups where some violence in relationships will already have been learned and will occur, but as early as we can.
In Kizhaay we have a young men's peer program and a young men's mentorship program where a young man works with our Kizhaay workers in the community and learns to talk about this among his peer groups. We also believe that indigenous cultural competency and anti-racism training, which is part of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission talked about, is good for everybody and we should do that and some of the roots of violence will become clearer. When you understand where they come from, you can understand better the behaviours and we have a better chance of addressing them.
We do support the capacity development of indigenous organizations. We need to do some of this work, but this isn't the kind of money we usually get to work.
The last thing I want to talk to you about is that this committee could play an important role. We have had a number of indigenous women's summits. We're about to have the fifth one. At those national indigenous women's summits across the country, we talk about how the situation for indigenous women could be improved. We've made tons and tons of recommendations. It's a federal, provincial and territorial process, but nobody monitors the implementation of the agreement. You could play a very important role in strategically talking about ending violence against not just girls and young women but indigenous women by monitoring that. If you said every once in a while you wanted to know the kind of progress being made on these things and what is being done, it might make it easier to integrate what is being done. You would play an important role in having the provinces and the federal government actually talk to each other, and not just talk but perhaps be accountable for something for a change.
I'll leave my remarks there.