Good morning, everyone.
My name is Sydney Levasseur-Puhach. I am speaking on behalf of Ka Ni Kanichihk this morning.
I am very grateful to have this opportunity to share with you a bit of what the organization does and some recommendations that we have for the government today.
I'll tell you little bit about myself first. I am an Anishinabe woman and a member of Sandy Bay First Nation here on Treaty 1 territory. I'm also a sun dancer. I recently competed my second year in the lodge. I am co-chair on the board of directors at Ka Ni Kanichihk. I'm also a student doing my master's of clinical psychology at the University of Manitoba. Mental health is something that I am fully immersed in at all times and highly passionate about.
I will speak a bit about the organization. Ka Ni Kanichihk is an indigenous-led non-profit that offers programs and services that are culturally relevant for indigenous women, youth and families in our community. We offer services focused on training and employment, culture and ceremony connection, and health and healing.
I'll give you a bit of an overview. A few of our programs are really focused on restoring well-being in our community. We have our Medicine Bear counselling program. There we work with families of missing and murdered indigenous women. We provide elder services and therapy sessions, as well as connection to ceremony.
Our heart medicine program is designated for women who are survivors of sexualized and domestic violence. They also receive elder services, counselling and connection with ceremony.
Velma's House is a 24-7 safe space for women in the city centre who need a reprieve from domestic violence situations and an opportunity to get off the streets of Winnipeg.
We also have Mino Pimatisiwin, which is a sexual health program. We offer STBBI testing and other sexual health-related services, as we know that indigenous women are safer and more comfortable being treated by other indigenous women in the community. Often, health care services have not adequately met the needs of our community.
We also have the Butterfly Club. This is a program for indigenous youth and two-spirit youth who have the opportunity to engage in ceremony. It's really aimed at a lot of prevention work. We like to engage youth early to mitigate the risk of harms, which are quite prevalent on the streets in the city.
As I mentioned, we do both prevention and intervention work. Everything we do.... The way we see it, mental health is connected to every part of ourselves. In order to understand mental health, we also have to understand physical and spiritual health and physical safety. A big piece of that is that our environments need to directly meet our needs in order for us to be well in any way. In many ways, they do not currently. We require adequate access to resources and social supports in order to achieve well-being.
Another critical component of that is that we need to be in charge of our own well-being as indigenous people. As indigenous women, we know what we need to live a good life. As far as self-determination goes, it is such a crucial component of living well. I think we've seen a lot of issues that have arisen systemically when we are not in control of our own well-being and of our own lives.
Ultimately, I would like to iterate that we are not broken as indigenous people, as indigenous women; the system is broken. This is an inequitable systems issue that requires adequate and sustainable funding for programming that is indigenous-led. We really just need to have support in order to carry out what we need to do for our communities, for our programming, for access in remote communities to receive services that are needed to move forward and operate collectively as empowered nations.
I say meegwetch for your time today, and I look forward to speaking further and answering any questions you may have.