If I understand your question correctly, in order to have safety, we have to have policing authorities also be able to do their jobs in a way that they understand human rights, but the colonial project is, in fact, overriding, oppressing and suppressing traditional knowledge and traditional rights. Our human rights are being sacrificed for the sake of economic development. We are ostracized. We face racism by the non-indigenous communities that we live next to.
The only way to do this is through education and dialogue, not pamphlets, not reports that.... It has to go beyond the reports and the rhetoric. We need safety within the communities that will provide knowledge about what colonialism has done, so that this colonial project that we keep referring to is profoundly understood as mentioned in the royal commission, as mentioned in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in the MMIWG.
To be safe, I really don't know. I've been doing this for 32 years and I do not feel safe in the community that I grew up in because the town of Oka rides roughshod over us. The Minister of Indian Affairs refuses to include the Longhouse in any negotiations. They refuse to put a moratorium on development so that we can at least sit down at the table in an atmosphere of peace. If we are not sitting down at the table in an atmosphere of peace, we are under pressure. It is coercive.
We have to undo this and look at a human rights-based perspective of the dignity and worth of a human being and provide those safety measures so that we can speak in safety, so that we can speak with honesty, but starting from the same page, where we are aware of the impacts of multi-generational trauma. It wasn't just our languages and cultures that were attacked. It was our homelands. It was the lands upon which our whole language and identity are based.
I know that for me, in my community, we cannot call the police. There is nobody to come help us when there is violence in the community and INAC is very much aware. Minister Miller said that they are very aware that the community I come from is imploding. We have organized crime of every kind that you can imagine in this community. Nobody is willing to help us.
This committee should act on this and decide what would you do if you were in my position where you are not safe in the community that you grew up in and in which thousands of generations have been before.