Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'd like to begin by thanking the standing committee for inviting the Native Women's Shelter here to the table. We are very happy to be here. My name is Nakuset, and I'm the executive director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal. Our mission is to provide a safe and suppor

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Okay. Our programs were strongly grounded in the teachings of the medicine wheel, which focused on the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional healing. The “Moving Towards the Seventh Generation” program included positions that were created with the needs of survivors in mind

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have up to 200 women who come through our shelter. We also have our outreach program with maybe another 60 to 100 women, and 60 children.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  They come from all over. As I said earlier, people are referred to us from communities such as Povungnituk. We offer many programs that are not available in their community. When we received funds from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation— I'm going to have to hold the baby.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We've had funding since 1999, so there was always an expiry date. But the expiry dates were maybe every two or three years and we always got renewed. I'm on maternity leave, but I spoke to someone at AHF and asked how it looked for future funding. He gave me the impression that o

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  How did he say that? Were you listening? Could you repeat the question?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It was set up for other things. We opened our doors in 1987, but when we knew of the funding it completely changed the programming of the shelter. We're very well known because of our programming, and that's why we have so many people referred to us. Now it's sort of a shock, bec

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The kind of programming that we have is really traditional holistic as well as western, but I don't think we can get that through Health Canada. I don't think you can ask them for a prescription for a sweat lodge. These are the kinds of things that we lost through the residential

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Health Canada excludes those who don't have status. That's a big issue, because a lot of native people who come are Métis. There's also an Innu community that isn't even recognized as being native. None of them have status, so they can't access these services. There's also the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You know, it's almost like sensitivity training, because I don't think that... For the particular phone call that I had to make, when they heard, “Oh, I have my Indian status, and I'm covered”, they said, “Oh, your Indian status”. They almost equated it to someone on welfare, as

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Like I said, there was a client at the shelter, and she is Innu from the Labrador area. I'm not exactly sure the name of her community, but she doesn't have an Indian status card because for whatever reason her community is not recognized by the government. So there's a lot of th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  To your question, I think there is a lot more healing that needs to be done. It's generation after generation. There's also a lot of denial amongst our people about whether or not they're affected by it, and the types of effects are so vast. I don't speak my language because my

Status of Women committee  Hello. My name is Nakuset. I'm the executive director of the Native Women's Shelter. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what the shelter is and what we are seeing at the shelter. The Native Women's Shelter was established in 1987, and it's the only shelter in Montreal

Status of Women committee  According to the coordinator of the outreach program, which was designed to provide follow-up services to our former in-house clients, the incidence of violence is just as prevalent. She estimates that 70% of her clients are victims of domestic violence. Last year one of her clie