If you look at indigenous women—and again, I've worked with them for 25 years—you see they have always been kind of the anchor in the home. They've been the provider. They have made sure they kept the family unit together. If you look at young women and that whole of flow of where we start, you see we often start at birth when we take their children away. We start taking their home away right from birth. We take away any kind of hope that they have for a better life, right at birth.
We kind of do things really backwards. We do things to indigenous people that we would never do to.... I see things on a daily basis that happen to these young women, and there's no way they would treat my daughters the way they treat these indigenous women.
The way we need to really start looking at is that when you talk to indigenous women in institutions—and my God, I've dealt with hundreds of them over my 25 years—often there's that feeling of hopelessness. Often you see that unresolved trauma, that unresolved abuse. Right from childhood they get punished for being victims of abuse and victims of our current system.
Until we start respecting and appreciating that, it's not going to change. They're in these institutions. They're angry and feeling hopeless. Giving them a sewing class is not going to help them once they get out of the institution.
We have a proposal in front of Status of Women right now. We want to get business in our community involved in helping young indigenous women to create and set up businesses and become contributing citizens in that way. We all have this mentality of “Here, have a welfare cheque and everything is going to get better.” It's not.
These kids I work with on a daily basis are no different from my kids. When they get out there and start to work and earn money, they want to earn more. They want the same things that all of our kids want, the same things that all of us wanted growing up. Until we come to that realization and have those expectations.... I'm sorry, but as long as we continue having sewing classes for indigenous women, it's not going to get better. We're not preparing them for life outside of the institution. The sewing classes don't cut it; I'm sorry.