Good morning.
[Witness spoke in Anishinaawpemowin]
[English]
That means I'm very happy and deeply honoured to be here, and thankful to Sheila that I've been invited.
I'm not going to speak as long as Sheila has, or Lori, but I am here as a support for Sheila.
I would like to make a land acknowledgement. I always turn it more into a people acknowledgement. I am always thankful to our ancestors who left this land, all of it, in a wonderful and pristine condition before the colonizers came over from Europe and other places.
As an academic, I did my Ph.D. on domestic violence in our communities, which is incredibly high. Of course, there's a great correlation between that and missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
As for the red dress alert, it is nothing for us, without us. As indigenous women, especially on reserve, but indigenous women who also have positions and places in Canadian society, we do the act of participation. We do the act of leadership, which we can also view as an act of reconciliation. It's not so much that we are awaiting the go-ahead for us to take the leadership, we just do it.
I am Anishinabe. I'm from northwestern Ontario and the Lac Seul First Nation. I've done a lot of work in the area of violence against women. I am now with Movember, the moustache people. I work a lot with indigenous male inmates in federal prisons. When I talked to them, I realized they were raised in homes of violence and chaos. We need to get a handle on that, because we're so used to being the bad people, the bad men, and the bad women who are targeted for violence.
Again, the red dress alert should be for grassroots and indigenous women all over in Canada's societies.
Thank you, meegwetch.