Thank you.
My name is Alana Robert. I'm from the Manitoba Métis Nation. I'm so proud to be the first woman in my family to go to university.
I've always wanted to pursue a career in law to help combat the magnitude of violence and exploitation experienced by indigenous women in our country, and I'm currently studying at Osgoode Hall Law School.
I vividly recall this aspiration of mine being validated when speaking at a women's rights march only a few years ago. I saw a young indigenous girl in the crowd, perhaps eight years old, holding up a sign that said, “Will I be next?” This moment made me realize that our young indigenous sisters should be dreaming of their future, not for their future, and so I began to try to create a safer space around me for the women who surrounded me in my life.
I began a group at the University of Manitoba called Justice For Women. I brought together community organizations and leaders to help create consent culture workshops.
These workshops helped educate students about how to obtain consent and ways that they can design student programming to mitigate the risks of sexual violence. This encountered reluctance, so I created and successfully advocated for a policy that mandates this training to students across every single faculty at the largest university in my province.
I then designed a self-care and sexual violence resource centre that serves our community and secured funding to operate it.
While this work has made and continues to offer an impact at my home in Manitoba, this is only one component of the ability that we have to create a safer environment for our women, particularly our indigenous women, who experience a higher incidence of sexual violence.
I know students who go to class and sit only a few seats down from the perpetrator of violence against them, and students who use Justice For Women services because they don't know where to go or because there is nowhere else to go.
This leaves our women behind, and there's a lot of work ahead of us. The government can help advocacy groups like mine build the first generation free of violence against women.
With your support, we can create a national policy mandating all post-secondary institutions to have comprehensive consent education, response centres, and resources that are accessible to students. We can support the establishment of full-service community centres where women escaping violence can go for legal assistance, counselling, financial planning, and cultural activities, all within the same space.
This can reduce the re-traumatization of women that occurs when they are forced to retell their stories over and again. For indigenous women, who are particularly targeted, this is especially important to ensuring their safety.
Many environments of our young people and indigenous women are conducive to violence. Our women are capable of greatness, which can be achieved when we facilitate a society that lifts them up so that they can flourish and reach their full potential.
Thank you.