SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It will not only take a village to end violence against women, according to YWCA executive director Lyda Fuller. It's also going to take a strategy tailored to the North.

Status of Women Minister Patty Hajdu, standing right of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, says gender equality is key to the Liberal government. - photo courtesy of Status of Women Canada

She participated in consultations held earlier this month with Status of Women Minister Patty Hajdu. The event was part of a series of consultations on gender-based violence taking place across Canada, with local advocates, academics and front-line service providers.

"I asked the minister if she might look at a Northern strategy ... The conditions are different here, the violence is more pervasive, the rates are higher and we don't have anywhere near the kinds of resources that you would have in larger communities," said Fuller.

In a 2013 report, Statistics Canada found women in the territories are victimized at a rate eight times higher than those living in the provinces.

Status of Women Canada reports that one in three women in Canada will experience sexual assault in their lives.

Aboriginal women are even more at risk: sexual assaults account for a third of violent crimes committed against aboriginal women, and a 2014 Statistics Canada report found indigenous women were twice as likely to expedience violence than indigenous men, and three times more likely to be victims than non-indigenous people.

"I can attest having worked with shelters in other southern jurisdictions in Canada that the rates are higher here. I think they're higher really because of the traumas that Northern people have faced. The whole thing around colonization and residential schools has really harmed people," said Fuller.

But the harm isn't limited to Northerners, she says.

"One of the side effects of that would be the feelings on the part of the dominant society of the lower value of aboriginal women. And so it's OK to take them off and murder them."

Hajdu says the safety of women is of paramount importance.

"Gender equality has become a key component for the government of Canada. And in order to reach gender equality, women have to feel safe in the spaces that they occupy," she said. "We hope to achieve is a strategy that can put into place some supports that provinces and municipalities and front-line organizations need so desperately."

Of the 33 communities in the NWT, 11 do not have an RCMP detachment. Which is a problem for people in the communities without detachments who go looking for help.

"You're pretty much on your own," Fuller said, adding that when people reach out to settlement officers, community nurses and other helpers, these people can find themselves in danger too.

"People have been forced out of communities because of that," she said.

Fuller said the YWCA recommends against filing emergency protection order applications in communities without RCMP "because where there's no enforcement - it's just a piece of paper."

"It's a whole dynamic in a community where people are afraid to talk, and they're afraid to disclose, and they might even be told not to," she said.

"We've even seen that in Yellowknife: we've seen where women put messages in their kids' lunch boxes so their teacher can call the RCMP."

While Fuller says she's "hopeful" after the consultations with the minister, she says funding is what's needed. Hajdu says this was a theme at the consultation in Yellowknife.

"We heard about people's frustration with funding mechanisms throughout the federal government, and the work that they're doing being impacted by the kind of funding cycles or the lack of funding, or people not understanding the unique needs of the North," she said.

"We talked a lot about systemic violence as well, the violence people feel at the hands of the bureaucracies that are actually designed to serve them."

A federal strategy on gender-based violence is expected to be released in 2017.

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