Yellowknife (Mar 24/03) - It begins in childhood, social workers say -- the violence that cuts through a home and tears a family apart from within.

"Where did family violence come from?" Ann Kasook said softly, sitting around a table in Yellowknife's Northern United Place for a recent family violence workshop.

"We learned it as children," Kasook said. "So many of us looked at it as a normal way of living. So as we get older, we carry that along with us."

Kasook is the executive director of Inuvik Transition House Society, a safe house for women in crisis. She had never attended such a large workshop -- attended by more than 50 front line workers -- on the subject of family violence before.

"I see a lot of the focus on aboriginal people, because that's who we are," she added. "But there are non-aboriginal people that are going through family violence as well."

The workshop comes at an important time. The territorial Department of Justice has announced it will introduce family violence legislation in June.

The legislation will work hand in hand with the Criminal Code of Canada process -- people at risk can apply under this new legislation 24 hours a day, seven days a week for protection.

"I'm really pleased," said Barb Saunders, calling the event one of the biggest inclusive consultation processes she has seen in the North.

"We called on workers from grassroots, aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups to assist us in developing an action plan. This is not our action plan. This is an action plan of the NWT. That's coming across loud and clear."

Target of abuse

Trudy Samuel, of the Council for Persons with Disabilities, said people with disabilities are some of the most vulnerable people when it comes to family violence.

"Largely, in the NWT, we are unaware of the numbers of the impacts of family violence on persons with disabilities," Samuel said.

"It's such a huge issue. You can't just have a program to fix it," she said. "We need long term sustained work at the local level."

NWT Youth Council's Josanne Tanche said she attended the workshops because she wants to get into child and youth care.

She lives in Yellowknife, but she is from Fort Simpson.

"This is something that needs more attention. There is a lot of it going on that is not reported," Tanche said.

"There needs to be more awareness of what violence is. A lot of young people, and a lot of elders, don't know they're being abused," Tanche said.

Lyda Fuller is the executive director of YWCA in Yellowknife, who run the battered women's shelter.

"We see (ending family violence) as a critical issue around the country and certainly in the north."

Fuller was part of the coalition that put the action plan together.

"As shelter folks, we need to take our message out into the community as broadly as we can," said Fuller. "When you work in the field you know the information, so you just make this assumption that everybody else does. And that's not true."

Fuller says the new family violence legislation is a positive step forward.

"It includes looking at having woman stay in the family home. That's a key piece, because of the difficulty finding women housing. So if services could come to her, that would be important."

Families healing together

Paul McGaffey, a family consultant in Yellowknife for the territories, has a private practice and was excited to participate in the workshops.

He works in the "trauma treatment model," he explained, where the whole family that person lives with is engaged.

"The healing takes years," he said. "It's important the family of the individual who comes for treatment be involved in the treatment, like a healing circle. There's an accountability."

It didn't surprise McGaffey that 90 per cent of the workshop participants were women.

"In the circle, the woman is always considered to be the source of healing, of new life."

Maria Storr, works with the Inuvialuit Regional corporation as a program manager for child development programs, based in Inuvik.

"I believe it starts when the child is young; and when you're working with that child you're working with their parents, their families, it has the rippling effect. That's why it's important for me to be here," Storr said.

Kasook had a distant look in her eye for a moment, sitting close to Storr, then she said: "I'm seeing so many groups now coming together -- disabled, health and social services, housing, income support. I'm hoping that we're not going to keep silent now, that we'll continue to move forward.

"It takes a community to raise a child."