Indigenous women confront violence with education
Knowledge is power in the struggle to make homes and communities safe, say activists
Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Tuesday, December 2, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Violence against indigenous women may be a common part of the Northern experience today, but it need not be inevitable tomorrow, according to organizers of two public discussions this week.
Darian Erasmus, left, Lila Erasmus, Karen Mitchell and Jacey Firth-Hagen participate in a youth committee meeting in Javaroma earlier this winter as part of the Walking With Our Sisters Project. A community conversation is scheduled at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre Wednesday night beginning at 7 p.m. - photo courtesy of Stephanie Young
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Yellowknife co-ordinators of the Walking with our Sisters Project, a travelling national art exhibition with locally-produced programming, are honouring Canada's missing and murdered indigenous women through hard work and public education this month.
The fourth and final community conversation being assembled by the team, which numbers more than 50 volunteers, is scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. It is to be followed on Friday evening by a panel discussion, or "teach-in" at K'alemi Dene School in Ndilo.
Tonight's theme is "de-colonization," according to co-facilitator Lila Erasmus.
"The whole purpose of the conversation and the teach-in and exhibit is to bring to the community the knowledge that this is happening in our country in the hopes that we can create the awareness in our community," said Erasmus. "We are taking this understanding to the community and getting more people involved and raising that awareness - with indigenous and non-indigenous people working together to support and help each other."
More than two dozen participants discussed ways to empower indigenous youth during the third community conversation, held at the museum on Nov. 19.
"It went really well," said Erasmus. "We just opened it up to the floor and let people talk."
Participant Leela Gilday spoke of the powerful impact viewing the Walking with Our Sisters instalation in Winnipeg had on her during a trip to Manitoba this past spring.
'Quite powerful' exhibit
"The exhibit is quite a powerful way of honouring those missing and murdered indigenous women throughout the country," said Gilday. "It's a real way of humanizing the women."
The exhibit features almost 2,000 beaded moccasin uppers layed out on the floor, representing the women's unfinished lives.
"When you walk in you realize these women were all someone's mom or daughter or sister or auntie or even grandmother," she said. "It makes you reflect on your own family."
Reaching out to youth is particularly important, Gilday added, because so many missing and murdered indigenous women are young.
"The stats speak for themselves," she said.
This past spring, the RCMP released a report revealing the number of confirmed missing and murdered women indigenous women in Canada exceeded previous public estimates. As of November 2013, the RCMP were aware of 164 missing and 1,017 murdered indigenous women in Canada, according to records dating back three decades.
In the NWT there are four unsolved cases of missing indigenous women and three unsolved murder cases involving indigenous women.
"The more we can engage the youth to come and see this exhibit and start a conversation, the more we can raise awareness and change some of these statistics," said Gilday. "To me it's great to see all of the people that are volunteering to help bring this exhibit here and I really hope Yellowknifers will come out and experience it because it really is an opportunity to connect us as a community"
Uncomfortable Truths and New Relationships
Friday's teach-in, titled Uncomfortable Truths and New Relationships, is the first session in a three-part interactive discussion series designed to inform and inspire people to speak out and organize against violence against indigenous women and girls.
Panelists include Erasmus, Nola Nallugiak, executive director of the Native Women's Association of the NWT; Pertice Moffitt, a health educator; and Dene lawyer Val Conrad.
"These four women have all done the thinking and some of them have done the research as to why this issue of violence against aboriginal women is so pervasive in our society and why it's an issue governments don't want to tackle," said event co-organizer Lois Little. "We're hoping for a great turnout."
Cece Beaulieu, a councillor with Yellowknives Dene First Nation, will facilitate the evening.
"We're going to be confronting the hard, uncomfortable truths about violence against indigenous women and we're going to be looking at ways we can change that as individuals and as a community," said Moffitt.
Moffitt is a co-investigator and the NWT academic lead in a five-year University of Saskatchewan study into rural and Northern communities' response to intimate partner violence scheduled to wrap up in 2016.
"The panel will probably talk about colonialism and a little bit about the history of women being marginalized and theories of oppression," she said. "We will pull apart or think about what's going on when we ignore something like missing and murdered indigenous women."
The energy being generated by the programs leading up to the art instalation, scheduled to run at the museum from Jan. 9 to 24, hints at the potential for change that accompanies community-wide communication and awareness, she added.
"It has the potential to make a change for everybody in our communities and it has a potential to end the violence, so in 30 years we are not having another display of moccasin uppers to commemorate 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls," she said.
