Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Ullukuut, members of Parliament, Chair, Vice-Chairs, guests and staff. Pauktuutit is a national representative organization of Inuit women in Canada. We lead and support Inuit women through work and address our unique interests and priorities. We work

Status of Women committee  Every Inuit woman and girl deserves to life free from violence in her home and community. Pauktuutit recommends that Inuit women, in partnership with the federal government, advance a holistic strategy to ensure access to a high-quality, culturally safe continuum of prevention, i

Status of Women committee  Perhaps I can add further to the healing part. In my community, when 30 children were sexually abused by a priest, we started a community-based counselling service. We started out with counselling on child sexual abuse, but we soon found out there was a lot of need in the commu

Status of Women committee  Pauktuutit has a project called “Engaging Inuit Men and Boys”. We look at things as holistically as we can. To help the women, we have to start helping our men, too. It has been very popular with the men. When we come into the community to do a workshop, they're starting their me

Status of Women committee  Yes. In order to run a program such as the one I was talking about, the counselling part, we need support, of course, from the government. We were lucky; we got support from our community to start. However, we also did a lot of education on child sexual abuse and how it affects t

Status of Women committee  Yes. I think we still have a long way to go in educating some women about their rights. A lot of them don't know sometimes what their basic human rights are. Samantha, did you want to add a comment?

Status of Women committee  Also, when they come down, sometimes they run into other problems because they are vulnerable when they come down. Other people take advantage of them, so that's a problem. They don't have support when they come down.

Status of Women committee  I don't have the answer.

Status of Women committee  If I could add, with regard to the lack of shelters.... In my 35 years of being involved in this area, I know of 30 women and their kids who have been murdered in their homes.

Status of Women committee  That's why we were saying that Inuit are distinct and have distinct needs. It's really hard up north trying to get resources, because of the high costs of building anything. One thing I have been bringing up is that, when women are being abused, especially if they have kids, they

Status of Women committee  We are still asking for more shelters, but we are also asking for healing programs that are suitable to our people, like the one I mentioned, which is community-based and in our language.

Status of Women committee  Up north, there's a big backlog in the circuit court system, and women will wait months and months for their court.... You know, if the husband is going to court, they're going to have to wait. It's not.... I'm sorry, English is my second language, and sometimes I get.... If yo

Status of Women committee  They speak the same language, but there are different dialects. When you're providing services for people with different dialects, it sometimes gets expensive translating for their dialects.

Status of Women committee  Just before I came down here, I had a meeting with Agnico, a gold mine in Baker Lake. It's two weeks in and two weeks out for the workers, and all the women are left to survive at home with the children. We were looking at maybe starting a cottage industry for them; women like to

Status of Women committee  We have bigger centres like Iqaluit, the capital, as well as Rankin Inlet. Those are probably 2,000 to 3,000.