Status of Women committee  Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. It's an honour to be here as a representative of the aboriginal women and children who are served by Minwaashin Lodge and to give a voice to the countless urban first nations, Métis, and Inuit women who are living with the reality

Status of Women committee  Sorry, I can't understand that at all.

Status of Women committee  I would say there are women who come from all regions of the country. I come from Manitoba. Because there's a lot of violence in Winnipeg, a lot of women are migrating to Ottawa, because this is a safe place for them to start their healing journeys. We do find a lot of women comi

Status of Women committee  We're about a $2 million agency, but we have multiple grants. We must have at least 13 grants in place. They are all program funding grants, so it's hard to keep going all the time. But, yes, we're a multi-funded agency, like most agencies.

Status of Women committee  Recently the Aboriginal Healing Foundation closed, so we're feeling the impacts of all of those programs and services that were set up after the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. We've had to lay off some people, and programs and services have been scaled down. That's the c

Status of Women committee  We had to lay off two people.

Status of Women committee  At our centre we employ about 40 women.

Status of Women committee  Our two spirit program is one that's going to be ending in a month. So that's one program. We've modified our programs and have had to get funding from other places to keep them going. But we do need more counsellors; we absolutely need them, because there are a lot women suffer

Status of Women committee  I can say that the culture program is the most important, because when women learn about their identity and their purpose, and they do their healing, they can start giving back to their communities. The basic foundation of our healing is our culture, because everything we need i

Status of Women committee  Yes. Often women come to our centre because they've been shamed into not identifying as aboriginal because of the intergenerational impact of the residential schools. They come in not knowing anything. Their grandmothers never said anything to them about being aboriginal. They f

Status of Women committee  We have day programming. We have a lot of program calendars. We have a great website, if you ever want to check it out. We start with every stage of life, from the children to the teenagers to the adults to the grandmothers. We offer programs and services for every stage of life.

Status of Women committee  Well, since the Aboriginal Healing Foundation closed, there's no recourse for funding to keep these programs going, so a lot of us are left up in the air with that. We're hoping that something's going to come down the tubes, some kind of strategy or something to keep those progra

Status of Women committee  Yes, we're right here in Ottawa.

Status of Women committee  Well, a lot of people coming from the reserve experience culture shock. When they come to a big urban city, they're lost and oftentimes there's no safe place for women. So they come to our centre and then they're welcome. They see other women practising their culture and identity

Status of Women committee  They don't have stabilized housing when they come here. There are a lot of issues they have to deal with to get settled in. So yes, they are at a high risk of violence. Oftentimes, if they don't connect with the service, they'll connect with another element, and then they can go