Good afternoon to everyone who is joining us today.
My name is Martina Saunders. I am an Ininew Iskwew—a Cree woman—from York Factory First Nation. I am appearing before you today on behalf of York Factory First Nation and the MMIWG2S+ implementation committee of Manitoba.
As many of you may be aware, York Factory First Nation entered a partnership with Manitoba Hydro on the Keeyask project on the Nelson River of the Treaty 5 territory in northern Manitoba. Our first nation was focused on bettering the livelihood of our Cree nation when we participated as best we could in the project planning and environmental assessment process of the Keeyask project.
York Factory First Nation quickly learned that covert and overt racism, sexism, homophobia and sexual violence was being experienced by our indigenous women and two-spirit people in these hydroelectric projects as a result of this historic and ongoing relationship with Manitoba Hydro. Not only have our young women and two-spirit people experienced these human rights abuses, our women—including me—have faced bullying, harassment, racism and discrimination by industry workers at the corporate offices of Manitoba Hydro in the urban centre of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
These acts of violence and human rights abuses occurred decades ago and as recently as a few years ago.
These experiences have caused a lot of harm and trauma and have impacted our people in horrific ways. We continue to call on the provincial and territorial governments to act on our calls for a public inquiry into the racism, harassment, discrimination and sexual violence in hydroelectric development projects in northern Manitoba.
We need to examine and understand the structural and systemic factors that continue to harm our people, but most importantly, our murdered and missing indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. We ask that gender-based analysis be a part of all industry approval assessment processes, which will allow us to view any proposed resource extraction project through an indigenous world view, way of being and with a decolonized approach.
Those are the notes that I've put together. I don't know if I used my five minutes.