THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL PEOPLES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, June 6, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 6:45 p.m. to study on the new relationship between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Senator Lillian Eva Dyck (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I welcome all honourable senators and members of the public watching or listening to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples either here in the room or via the web.
I would like to acknowledge, for the sake of reconciliation, that we are meeting on the traditional unceded lands of the Algonquin peoples.
My name is Lillian Dyck, from Saskatchewan, and I have the honour and privilege of chairing this committee. I now invite my fellow senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Tannas: Scott Tannas, Alberta.
Senator Doyle: Norman Doyle, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Boniface: Gwen Boniface, Ontario.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate, Ontario.
Senator Christmas: Dan Christmas, Nova Scotia.
Senator McPhedran: Marilou McPhedran, Manitoba.
Senator Boyer: Yvonne Boyer, Ontario.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Sandra Lovelace Nicholas, New Brunswick.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
Senator McCallum: Mary Jane McCallum, Manitoba
The Chair: Before we begin we have two pieces of housekeeping. First, is it agreed that communications be allowed to take photographs and film during this meeting?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Second, it is possible that senators will be called to the chamber for votes. Should the bells start to ring, we will finish up with the witness that is in front of us, then head to the Senate Chamber to vote and return after to continue.
We apologize in advance for any disruption this may cause, but you’re getting a chance to see the Senate in action. It is especially exciting that we have our Indigenous youth to actually witness that.
This evening we are very happy to host our third annual Indigenous youth leaders forum. We have nine youth from across the country who have been participating in activities all day. These youth have a variety of backgrounds and experiences, and we are unbelievably lucky to have them with us.
Today our meeting is continuing our study on creating a new relationship between the Crown and First Nations, Metis and Inuit in Canada. Each person will have a few minutes to present, followed by questions from one or two or more senators. We have just 10 minutes for each youth this evening.
Before we begin with our first youth, I would like to acknowledge that during welcoming remarks in the chamber, it was mistakenly stated that Kayla Bernard hailed from Ontario. In fact, she is the only youth leader this year representing the Maritimes. She comes from Nova Scotia.
We will begin with Kieran McMonagle.
Kieran McMonagle, as an individual: Good evening. My name is Kieran McMonagle. I am a Metis mother of one from Dryden, Ontario, in the Treaty 3 region in northwestern Ontario.
I was born and raised in Dryden. I left for a very brief period and my heart found my way back. It was through my path that I came to work with other Indigenous youth in our region. I work for a public school board in Keewatin Patricia, which is our region. We cover the largest area in the province of Ontario, and we serve a population of 55 per cent First Nation, Inuit and Metis students.
The program that I work within and that I work to support is called Four Directions. I am a First Nation, Metis and Inuit graduation coach, based out of Dryden High School. I work to support over 300 First Nation, Metis and Inuit students and their families.
I was the first First Nation, Metis and Inuit graduation coach in the province of Ontario. We began about four years ago with one cohort of students. We worked diligently to understand the barriers that Indigenous youth face in our region and made a commitment to do whatever it takes to support them in overcoming those barriers.
Since that time, each year I have been able to work with an additional cohort of students, and my first cohort now will be graduating this June. Historically, within our high school, approximately 30 per cent of Indigenous students would graduate on time and be on track to graduate after fours years. It is projected that this June, or later this month, 77-plus per cent will graduate on time. The provincial average in Ontario is 80 per cent. In four years, working with that cohort of students, we have been able to maintain the good work we’ve been doing.
As an Indigenous youth born and raised in northwestern Ontario, there are a lot of barriers to be faced, and I think within our school system is the place where we can create change. We can be active participants and be a driving force to recognize those barriers and overcome them.
We are not just focused in our work on at-risk youth, but we are focused on all Indigenous youth, First Nation, Metis and Inuit, in creating a level playing field and providing equity of opportunity to ensure there is equity of outcome. Historically, Indigenous people have been at a disadvantage in this country, and now is our opportunity to overserve and make that right. That piece of reconciliation and movement forward identify the past and present barriers in place and how we can work together in this country to overcome them.
I am hopeful for our future and the future of my family. As I said, I am a Metis mother of one. My daughter is Metis Ojibway. It is important to embrace our culture and be proud of who we are. Since I worked in this position, I have seen an increase in self-identification. I have seen an increase in parents being involved in the school system, specifically parents who have had experience with the residential school system and have that distrust. By building this relation with students and their families we’re able to move forward and overcome that.
In the past four years, I have seen increases in parent engagement in the school system, in parents continuing their own education if they stopped at some point, student retention, academic achievement, and strengthened identity among my students which builds the greater community and the community within the school. Within my board, we work to support students and serve students from the Far North. In Keewatin Patricia many students attend our schools from the 52 northern communities. The reality is that they have to leave their families at an early age. They have to come to an area where they don’t know anyone, where they don’t have support or they don’t know what’s available to them.
Something I am passionate about and I hope to work toward at the federal level would be identifying the importance of Indigenous languages. In Ontario, what ends up happening is that students come with their first traditional language. It is not recognized as a second language within the province or in the school system. They’re denied access to additional support such as English second language programming, increased literacy and numeracy support, which again puts them at a disadvantage. Even though we’re trying to support and remove barriers, institutionally and systemically those barriers are still there.
Another gap I have seen in service is that when students come from federally funded schools they have not been equipped with the resources. They’re at a different level academically because of those gaps. It’s so far down the line that in the secondary level you don’t have the resources. Literacy intervention and those additional supports aren’t necessarily there.
In our school board we are also passionate about building partnerships with federally funded schools and doing mentorship programs with teachers so that there is consistency for students. Something I have seen in my work is that the most important thing is building that relationship, having that trust, and moving forward to work together to support students and families at all levels. When you’re working in Indigenous education the holistic approach is most important.
Thank you.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: We’ll now have questions from senators.
Senator Boniface: Thank you very much. That was incredibly passionate on a number of fronts. I think your passion will drive you and be an incredible motivator for students. I was interested in your comments around the students from the Far North. I am very familiar with their communities and with your community.
Do you think there should be a greater bridging opportunity for students in terms of the language opportunity as well as other identified areas where students may come into a larger district school, such as Dryden, and find themselves at a disadvantage? If so, where would that need to be drawn from?
Ms. McMonagle: In our program we really focus on transition programming to ensure students have a strong understanding ahead of time of what they’re walking into. We see with students from the Far North that there is often tribunal council involvement and lack of housing and support. Students are placed basically wherever they have the opportunity to place them. If they are not placed, they don’t have access to education. We’re seeing overcrowding in boarding homes and, I would say, conditions that are not conducive to a healthy living environment for students.
First would be safe and sustainable housing for students. Second would be building that transition. In my community right now our education authorities have actually purchased a home just outside of Dryden. They have house parents from the community. There are two parents from the community who speak the language and are involved in their traditional activities. The students who come are boarded and live with them. They have access to their culture, access to the language and access to their heritage. They have two people who understand them. It’s really a family dynamic. We’ve seen success with those students and that model.
That is the biggest piece. That transition is the most important aspect for not only the students but their families many kilometres away.
Senator Boniface: Excellent.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentation. It was incredible and heartwarming that we have youth who are so articulate and intelligent. We’re reviewing the marijuana bill, which is negative talk, so it was good to hear your comments.
I was interested in the increase in the number of parents who were in residential schools and the increase in parents continuing education. How did this happen? Critical thinking skills were removed from us in residential schools. I can see you have excellent thinking skills.
Our youth need to make their own decisions and life choices about whether or not they use marijuana or how they will live their lives. That is their decision to make. How did that number increase?
Ms. McMonagle: I used to work at the community level with the local friendship centre, so I was able to build a lot of relationships years ago. I’ve been working with some of my students since they were five years old, and they’re turning 18 this year. Having that established relationship was the key piece. I saw very quickly that there was a trust from those families I was able to work with in the past; but for families I hadn’t met before I would start by reaching out. I would invite them into the school. I would keep track if they would return my phone calls or if they would engage and come to the school. If they didn’t, I would do a home visit. I would show up with coffee or tea. I started building that relationship in their comfort zone, whether that be in their home or in a place in the community.
Luckily, word of mouth in our community is a great way to communicate. They would ask about the program or ask other families about me. It’s interesting because the conversation that happens on reserve, whether in low income housing or wealthy neighbourhoods, is the same conversation about the program and the support we provide their children. They were open to at least hearing what we had to say.
We started to bridge the trust by going to their home, regardless of what it may look like or where it may be, taking off your shoes, curling up on the couch, and just opening up and having a conversation. I would do that multiple times until we had somewhat of an established relationship. Then I might invite them into the school when there weren’t any people. Over the summer as holidays or after hours, I would provide transportation. If they had to go to the food bank on a certain day, I would offer to drive them and say, “I forgot something. Do you want to come in and grab a coffee, a tea or something to eat?”
It was very thought out about how I would start introducing them. The kicker for me was having a parent/teacher interview night. I invited all our parents. I called them, texted them, emailed them and sent them Facebook messages to say when it was happening and to ask whether they needed transportation. We also provide food at those events. All the key pieces of food, security and transportation helped make that connection. I would say, “Hey, I am going to be there. I’ll show you around.”
At my first parent/teacher interviews, it was person after person after person. I took them down and introduced them to the teachers. They were really proud of their children. The culture within our school has changed as well. Teachers make sunshine calls to talk about the great things that are happening, not just the negative pieces. We were able to expand that relationship. As our students progress through high school, I am now not the openly person they have a relationship with. They have a relationship with a circle of caring adults who also support their children.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Kieran.
Our second witness is Kayla Bernard, First Nations from Nova Scotia.
Kayla Bernard, as an individual: Hello, my name is Kayla Bernard. I grew up in an Indigenous community called Indian Brook, which is in Nova Scotia. It’s not too far from the city but very close to the old residential school that has now been closed.
When I think about Canada’s relationship with Indigenous, Metis and Inuit people, I stop and sigh, as there is much work to be done. As a youth leader in my community, I feel this is a heavy weight on my shoulders, as it has now become my work. I am now responsible for it as, unfortunately, the adults have yet to do this work figure it out. Unfortunately, I’ve lost hope that generation will figure it out.
What is this work? Why does it weigh so heavily? Reconciliation is a word that is thrown around a lot in Canada, especially by Canadian leaders. Unfortunately, it is a word that is used without action. It is great to speak of reconciliation, but it is meaningless without any action attached to it.
It is great to believe we live in a diverse country, one that embraces all of its peoples, but anyone who actually lives in Canada knows that is a lie. There is a lot of work to be done. The conditions of Indigenous communities are appalling. I am speaking from first-hand experience growing up on a reservation. Many don’t have access to proper drinking water and sewage. One memory I hold as a child is my father filling up our bathtub with brown sludge or contaminated water coming out of tap that was not suitable for human consumption. Sometimes, we would go for a week without bathing and have to eat our food on throwaway plates because we couldn’t wash dishes.
Our communities are without properly trained doctors, counsellors and other health care providers, causing our people to have to seek care outside the communities, often from doctors who are racist and do not understand the culture we are coming from.
Our schools, the place where we are to educate our children and prepare them for the future, are lacking properly trained and qualified teachers. This puts us in a world where the odds are already stacked against us. Because of this, my family decided to send me to a school outside of my community, a school where I faced bullying and racism from a very young age. By the end of my primary grade, I could tell you many derogatory and offensive words to describe a native person, words I didn’t understand. I would come home and tell my mother. Her face would look shocked and appalled, and she would say, “Never use those words again.” As a five-year-old I didn’t know what they were; I just knew they were words. I learned, as I got older, that those words were hurtful. That was the trade-off. For a proper education, my emotional well-being was sacrificed.
With the best intentions, my parents wanted to see me succeed. My father had finished school with a grade 3 education, and my mother finished school with a grade 6. This worked. I went on to graduate from high school, and now I am attending university. I am on track to be the first person in my family to hold a post-secondary degree, but that has not been without lasting scars and mental health conditions that I will never be able to live without.
As Indigenous people we need you, the leaders of our country, my country, to admit and accept there’s work to be done. Hiding it, sweeping it under the rug and pretending it doesn’t exist haven’t helped anyone and won’t help anyone. I know the odds are stacked against me as an Indigenous woman. I know I face high chances of physical abuse, violence and assault. My mother calls me every night to make sure I am in my house with my doors locked when it is dark outside. I am not to go outside after it’s dark because she wants to know I am safe and that I will be there tomorrow.
I know I am fighting to fit into a country. I know I am a minority in a country where my people were once the majority. I know I am second class, a token, a box for employers to tick to create diversity requirements. I am fighting to fit into Canadian identity and sacrificing my own culture with each step I take because it’s easier to be White than it is to be me.
I also know I come from a family of fighters, a strong, caring family who would do anything for our neighbours and give anybody the shirt off their back. I know I can make change. I have begun the hard work through my education, through my volunteering and community involvement, by sharing my culture, challenging racism and being a role model for other Indigenous youth. All youth, especially Indigenous youth, can effect positive change.
My question is for the members of the Senate, the leaders of Canada. Will you accept your place, your role in the work that has to be done, stop hiding it and actually create Canada as a country where all its people are proud to call it home? Or, will you sit, wait and let it pass you? Canada’s relationship with Indigenous, Metis and Inuit people is not one to be celebrated. It’s one where much work is needed to be done.
Thank you.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: Thank you, Kayla. The bells are ringing but we have time for one question.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you so much. I didn’t get a chance to ask you this earlier. Were you with us in New York at CSW?
Ms. Bernard: Yes.
Senator McPhedran: I thought so. It’s great to see you again. To explain to colleagues, we facilitated students coming from different parts of Canada to the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN in New York. Kayla was one of those students and was with us in circle for prepping. It’s great to see you again.
Ms. Bernard: Thank you.
Senator McPhedran: My question is connected to that. You’ve been talking to us about your experience locally. You were with us for a global conference.
Ms. Bernard: Yes.
Senator McPhedran: I am wondering what thoughts you have about your role and others whom you work with, young Indigenous leaders, as global citizens.
Ms. Bernard: I have been doing a lot of work nationally and globally. I was just in Sweden at a conference on mental health and specifically suicide prevention. My work has been to help empower other youth, especially our Indigenous youth, to look at suicide prevention in a different light, to see it as life promotion.
We know our communities are awful. We know we have a lot of problems. We know we come from trauma. We don’t need to rehash that. Trying to prevent suicide by limiting access to guns and building high walls doesn’t do anybody any good. We still need to empower youth to find reasons for their lives to be worth living, to improve their quality of life and to help them find a connection to their community.
When I was in Sweden, I was able to share that perspective on a global level with 40 other countries and leaders from all around the world. I was the youngest person in the room. Everybody in that room could have been my grandparent.
Senator McPhedran: Kind of like this room.
Ms. Bernard: Youth have a different perspective, a fresh perspective. We see things in a bit of a different way because we are growing up in a different time. We’re growing up in a time that is changing. Our perspective is valuable because sometimes what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. It would be foolish for us to try to spend another 150 years in Canada doing the same thing.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: Senators, the vote is at 7:25. If someone has a short, quick question, we can do that. If not, we will suspend and come back after the vote.
(The committee suspended.)
(The committee resumed.)
The Chair: We now have our third witness for this evening, Bryanna Brown, Inuit, from Newfoundland and Labrador. You have the floor, Ms. Brown.
Bryanna Brown, as an individual: My name is Bryanna Brown. I am an Inuit woman from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. I am 20 years old and I am a Nunatsiavut beneficiary. I would like to thank all of you here today for listening to me.
I would like to acknowledge our land and I would also like to acknowledge our Indigenous ancestors, who I am sure would have wanted to be able to speak about their experiences but did not get the chance. Without their strength, their grace and their resilience, I would not have been here today. In preparing what I would say, I prayed that their presence be with me and that they watch over me to strengthen, support and guide me. I thank them as well.
Lastly, I would like to thank my grandmother, my hero and the strongest woman anyone could ever know, Ms. Sophie Margaret Ford. My grandma survived more hardships than any person I have ever met. She has a substantial impact on my life. She taught me to be the strong woman I am right now. Yes, you are an insanely intelligent woman, and I love you more than anyone will ever know.
This coming fall, I am lucky to say that I will be attending my fourth year of university, studying business. I am currently training to become a first aid instructor through the St. John Ambulance IDP program, funded through Indspire. I, along with four of my Indigenous friends, have been blessed with being chosen for this wonderful opportunity, and I thank Indspire very much for this. There’s a huge lack of accessibility to first aid knowledge and health services in small, isolated communities and reserves all over Canada. Due to the many fatalities and traumas we face, this education is needed the very most.
I also had the honour of being one of Dr. Tom Gordon’s first Indigenous employees as a research assistant for the Traditions and Transitions Research Partnership. Through working for the Traditions and Transitions Research Partnership when I was in my first year of university, I learned much about my culture and heritage, thanks to this project. I must also thank another researcher with whom I worked closely. His name is Dr. Hans Rollmann. He helped me learn a lot about my family history. He helped me to find out that my great great-grandmother was taken to Spain in the late 1800s to be exhibited in a human zoo. His research also helped me a tremendous amount when appealing my Inuit status through Nunatsiavut.
I also worked for the Labrador Aboriginal Training Partnership last summer. In this job I got the chance to help my people in Newfoundland and Labrador find employment. My wonderful boss, Carol Best, nominated me so I could be here today. Thank you very much, Carol.
I would like to speak about the intricate connectivity of the countless struggles we Indigenous peoples face, such as mental illness due to intergenerational trauma. I would also like to address the issue of systemic racism. I will explain my own personal experience with these issues and why I believe we as Indigenous people struggle the most.
Because of the silence regarding the struggles that we face, I believe you cannot judge a book by its cover. Racism, sexism, discrimination, oppression, mental illness and addiction do not have a clearly identifiable look. You cannot see just by looking at someone. You cannot tell that they’ve been sexually assaulted, that their husband beats them or that they do or do not have parents. What you can see are things like when someone does not show up to work, someone who is homeless on the street or someone is in jail. Sorry, I am getting emotional.
What we do not see are the interconnected reasons leading to these instances. A lack of understanding regarding this is the very reason Indigenous people are indirectly put to death through suicide, have their children taken away from them by social services, end up in jail, or even find themselves as a patient in the psychiatric ward. What leads us to these ugly things is not our fault. When I see my people, regardless of who they are or their situations, I see success in them. I have a very unconventional way of defining success, but that is because I understand the barriers and all the hoops we have to jump through that other people do not.
The fact that these people are alive, that alone or in itself is success to me. The thing that is failing is not us; it is the system. This is very hard to understand. Sometimes it’s hard to understand that these barriers even exist if you do not experience them yourself or live them. I believe that is the hardest part about racism. The same goes for sexism. A man cannot always see the oppression a woman faces due to sexism. This is why Indigenous women in particular are the most oppressed in Canada. The problem is due to the culture in our society. We are silenced by society due to the stigma placed upon these topics. We are silenced and shamed out of speaking about these huge problems. We are silenced in society from addressing sexual assault. We are silenced when talking about mental illness. We are silenced when it comes to speaking out about racism.
This is further due to education. Education lies in the hands of academic scholars who are typically of a White background because they come from a background that gives them the privilege of not having to think twice about race, gender, poverty or a broken family due to intergenerational trauma. These people are writing the books we need to receive a degree. In these textbooks lies a gigantic gap in education on our experience as Indigenous people versus the White experience.
The majority of the people in power to make decisions for many years throughout history have not been Indigenous, of course. This silence is created through living in a country dominated mostly by westernized culture. We lack the freedom to express ourselves or address these issues because we are so busy working twice as hard to survive or we are judged when we do speak out. This, again, connects to mental health because if we do not speak about our issues, they add up and we internalize them. This leads to mental illness and, of course, oftentimes leads to suicide.
I also believe that gender roles in White culture compared to Indigenous culture is extremely problematic. Before Canada was colonized, there was very little emphasis on gender roles in our culture. Indigenous women are used to having a more matriarchal culture for thousands of years. We are seen as leaders. We are worshipped as creators of life. I believe this is still practised in our culture today. When you are seen as a healer for your family and your loved ones in your community, it is very difficult to be placed with the burden of having to try to heal the pains of people who are dealing with intergenerational trauma. It is nearly impossible to fix, and this leads women to feel very isolated. At the end of the day, when they are faced with working and having to deal with their own traumas and those of their families and communities, there’s no one to hold them. I believe this is why Indigenous women are being murdered and are going missing. That is definitely a problem as well.
Today I decided to wear a red dress in memory of missing and murdered Indigenous women. A woman named Loretta Saunders from my own community went missing. I was not close with her family but I was very close with her brother. We would speak about our issues very often regarding intergenerational trauma, and even things that we would want to do with our lives. Ironically and unfortunately, Ms. Saunders was researching missing and murdered Indigenous women when she died. That says a lot about our culture and our society. Almost being a missing woman myself, having the fear of going missing, being murdered or having my family be murdered, was very scary for me. It’s something that I must deal with every day.
Through proper education is the only way that we can really understand the issues we are going through, not through the education we are being taught. There needs to be more education delivered and created by Indigenous people. I also believe we need to speak about our issues. We are constantly silenced. We need to speak about them. We need healing, and I believe that’s the only way we can fix it.
I also know there’s a huge issue when seeking therapy. There are accessibility issues. If when you go to therapy you go to a psychologist who is typically non-Indigenous, it’s hard to explain your struggles to someone who has never experienced them and does not have the education to heal you. It’s very difficult and another reason why many Indigenous people do not seek therapy. I don’t understand why someone would want to pay someone who doesn’t understand what you are going through because that in itself could possibly be traumatic. There are issues there as well. We need to find ways of healing. I believe that’s the only way we can close the intergenerational part of intergenerational trauma.
Lastly, I would like to say that in 1879 our very first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, warned that if the schools for native children were to be placed on the reserves, the children would live and practise their savage ways with their savage parents. Though he may learn to read and write, he will still have the mind and habits of an Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write, and he was right. This led to children being taken away from their families. They were forced to go to residential schools. Though we were taken away from our culture, today, I, Bryanna Brown, can in fact read and write. First and foremost, I am and forever will be a savage.
Thank you.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: Thank you, Bryanna. The bells are ringing. We have a vote at 8, senators, just for your information. Senator Doyle, we probably have time for a second question.
Senator Doyle: Thank you for a very good presentation. You were involved in helping to organize the first-ever International Conference for Inuit Leaders. Can you tell us about some of the logistical challenges that you faced? What were some of the lessons that you learned from it?
Ms. Brown: I learned a lot about my own culture. I noticed the different dialects of Inuktitut all throughout the world. I was very excited to see so many successful people of my own culture in one place from all over the world. I learned a lot through trying to help organize the conference. I have organizational issues myself due to ADHD, so it really helped me learn and it was a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.
Senator Doyle: Your bio says you wish to take on some extremely worthwhile and difficult challenges along with the St. John Ambulance and Indspire. What motivated and inspired you to take on human trafficking, violence and sexual assault, which are a scourge to begin with? What motivated you to take that on?
Ms. Brown: What motivated me to take on the issues of sexual assault, human trafficking and assault in general is the fact that Indigenous people are affected by these assaults the very most. Indigenous women in particular, where they are so isolated, they go missing and because of their circumstances they’re the most targeted. They have issues a lot with mental health because we, as Indigenous women, carry a lot of weight of the pain that people have due to the intergenerational trauma because we are still looked at as the leaders and healers of our communities.
But if your husband might beat you or if your husband or your son is emotionally upset or if your sister has gone missing, it just makes you really upset. It really affects your mental health, and that’s the reason why we’re so isolated. Because of the state of our own mental health, I believe that’s the reason we are the very most targeted.
I myself have experienced being targeted, so I understand how it works, especially with human trafficking. That is the reason I spoke about that.
Senator Doyle: Thank you.
Senator Pate: In the interests of time, maybe I’ll make a comment instead.
I want to thank you very much, those of you who have already spoken and those who will. You speak about issues that far too many young people in Indigenous communities and other marginalized communities experience first-hand. It makes you some of the strongest advocates and strongest voices. That’s why you’re leaders going forward and why you will make a difference, not just in the discussions we’re having here, but in the future.
And the fact that you linked issues of missing and murdered Indigenous women to trafficking, prisons and to all of those issues is vitally important. I want to thank you because it’s clear the passion comes from having first-hand or second-hand knowledge certainly within your sphere and first-hand knowledge of all of those issues. Thank you for that, because it reminds us, as we’re rushing for votes, that these are not abstract issues; these are people’s lives.
The Chair: Thank you for your testimony. We will suspend while we return to the Senate to vote. We’ll be back.
(The committee suspended.)
(The committee resumed.)
The Chair: We have our fourth youth witness tonight. Welcome, Amanda Fredlund from Manitoba. You have the floor.
Amanda Fredlund, as an individual: My name is Amanda Fredlund. I am from Manitoba. My home community is Churchill, Manitoba, home of the polar bears. U am currently in my fourth year at the University of Manitoba. I have been in the city for at least four years now. I was kind of back and forth for a while.
I am incredibly honoured to be here to share a bit of my story, my experiences and, like someone said earlier, the things that are really close to my heart. I would like to recognize that we are on unceded Algonquin territory. It’s a nice change of territorial acknowledgment to include the unceded part. I was excited to say that.
Deciding what I wanted to say this week was a bit of a struggle. I recognize that many things need to be said, but I was only given 13 minutes. I have to cut that down a bit, so I will try to speak from the heart with guidance from my notes.
I want to give a bit of background and context of where I come from. Churchill, Manitoba, is an adhesion to Treaty 5 territory, land used by the Dene, Cree, Inuit and Metis. Historically it is a meeting place which I always thought was very unique in that there isn’t one majority representation in the community. I am proud to be a Dene woman in that territory. Churchill is a small community of 900 people now because of recent struggles. Growing up from a very early age, I realized the importance of community and the support that it gives. My father was raised in a small community in Nunavut. He is of settler heritage but he was born and raised in the North. My mom is a very proud Tlicho Dene woman from Treaty 11 part of the Northwest Territories.
As a residential school survivor my mom taught me a lot about what it means to be strong and resilient. She is the person who has inspired me the most to be a leader, to challenge myself, to get out of my comfort zone, and to be a support in university for friends, family and whomever I can. She experienced a lot of hardships and trauma growing up. When I was a child, I saw how it affected her. She has always been and still is the strongest woman I know. She continues to teach me lessons despite having passed away suddenly in 2013. It is her memory and her legacy that I honour in all the work I do. I want to be a kind and strong person like she was. I value all of those traits very much and I try to show them in the work I do.
The importance of community has always been very obvious to me because I am from a small community. Leaving my community when I was older, I learned to value it even more moving to a city where you kind of fumble around until you find your community, a place where you feel safe. I learned that community is where you’re protected, supported, encouraged and pushed to your limits and even past them to accomplish great things. University is the place where I am at in life now. I am enjoying the community and recognize that it is helping me to overcome the challenges.
I am in my fourth year at the University of Manitoba. In my first year, it took me less than a week to find my community. The Indigenous student's centre on campus is an amazing atmosphere, filled with the most supportive and inspiring people. I got to know friends very quickly. It’s my home in the city now.
I was invited in my second year to attend a Student Leadership Conference, and that’s what pushed me. It was my first push into leadership. I was in a room with 500-plus other student leaders from across Canada. It was actually an epiphany moment for me, seeing so many other students my age and younger accomplishing all these really great things like spearheading campaigns, associations, organizations and fundraisers, things that I thought in my mind only older people who had been established for a long time could do. To me, that was very inspiring. I thought, if so many other students could do great things, the least I could do is try.
With that in mind, in my community on campus I decided to challenge myself. I started by volunteering as part of the Neechiwaken Peer Mentorship Program. Neechiwaken is a Cree term for friend. It is formally mentor/mentee, but it is really the relationships you create with new students to help them feel comfortable in the community we have on campus, to answer questions, to give them advice, and to guide them in any way you can. I really enjoy supporting and helping people in a very hands-on way by showing them where the cafeteria is, explaining the tutor system or just sitting, chatting and gossiping. The little things are what make a community comfortable, and developing relationships is a very big part of it.
A lot of students that come to the University of Manitoba are from surrounding communities. Leaving their community and coming to the city puts them at an immediate disadvantage, so they’re out of their comfort zone. The community we have on campus really helps them to get established and connected with available resources. To get more involved, I decided to run for the Aboriginal Student Association. In my third year I ran as co-vice president and then in my fourth year as co-president. The Aboriginal Student Association at the University of Manitoba is a balanced council. For our leadership, we have male and female co-vice presidents and male and female co-presidents, which ensures that we have both perspectives.
As female representative of both of those positions in the two years I was with them, I was able to get involved. What I learned about leadership in the past two years especially is that it’s a lot of hard work. That’s what leadership is. It’s not dictating or telling people what to do. It’s waking up at 6 a.m. to be on campus to cook 150 bannock dogs for students as a free lunch. It’s giving up my weekends to tutor. It’s washing dishes and setting up chairs. It’s a lot of sweaty work, but it’s fun at the same time because you’re inspiring, encouraging and pushing people to succeed.
I know how much that meant to me in my first and second years. Still there are leaders I admire at the university. I see them work really hard. I see them behind the scenes, giving up their hours unpaid and with scraped knuckles. To me, that is leadership. I would love to continue to do that for the rest of my life.
Before I run out of time, I want to share with you some of the big projects I have been part of this year. This year I was the female co-president of the Aboriginal Student Association, as I explained. We have had a couple of big projects on the go. I will share three with you.
The first is a women’s council. The university Aboriginal Student Association has a women’s centre that is an advocacy group for women on campus. We have the Aboriginal Student Association, an advocacy group for the Indigenous students on campus. I wanted to establish something that was for Indigenous women. As a speaker said earlier, Indigenous women are one of the most vulnerable, especially on campus where the rates of assault and rape are quite high. I wanted to create a support from resources already there but in a more structured way. It wasn’t just me. Along with other women we created a women’s council with a mandate to advocate and create a safe space on campus for Indigenous women. That was my first project. It’s still quite new, but I hope to work on it over the next couple of years, if I can, to develop it further.
Another project that the Aboriginal Student Association worked on this year was pertaining to language. We’ve heard the term reconciliaction before which encompasses the spirit of the campaign we proposed. Reconciliaction was an idea born only two years ago. This year, two of our association members came here to Ottawa to propose in front of the Canadian Federation of Students a campaign that would promote call-to-action No. 16 to develop Indigenous language degrees on campuses at post-secondary institutions across Canada. It was accepted. The Canadian Federation of Students, or CFS, represents over 60 campuses across Canada. Now they’re promoting the campaign as well.
As a Dene woman my mother went to residential school, so growing up I never learned her first language of tlicho dene or my father’s first language of Inuktitut. A lot of students on campus are coming from community backgrounds where that disconnect is very apparent. You can see a deep desire in students to connect to their language and culture. I am really excited that our team was able to spearhead something like this, and I am really excited to see where it goes. There has been a lot of development at the University of Manitoba to hire more Indigenous staff and faculty, but the goal would be for every university in Canada to have a full Indigenous Language degree. That would mean different languages in different provinces, of course, and that’s a very exciting thing.
On something a bit closer to home, as some of you may be aware, Churchill had more struggle than usual. Our rail line was washed out last spring. We just passed the one-year mark, and a lot of community members are struggling because the port is struggling. Before the rail line washed out there were fewer jobs. People weren’t being called back to work. With this newer development, even fewer people are being called back to work. That kind of cascaded to a bunch of results, such as higher costs of food and a higher cost of living. A lot of community members left. About 20 per cent of high school students are no longer there. They had to move south because the cost of living is just too high.
This year I worked on a fundraising project to help my community a bit. We fundraised just before Christmas, and we donated our money to the Christmas Cheer Board in Churchill. We had an elder donate a pair of slippers to be raffled off, and I donated some of my wildlife prints as well. It was very personal for me that I was able to use my connections in a good way. As Indigenous people, the work we do is ultimately for our community. In a way, we’re giving back to our community in the work we do. That’s what I did.
Another project that I have recently been a part of is a promoting life collaborative between the Canadian Foundation of Healthcare Improvement and the Churchill Health Centre. We had meetings last week to brainstorm ways in which we could develop programs in Churchill that would empower our elders and encourage our youth to be a part of it as well.
There are issues with suicide rates in a lot of remote and rural communities. Something needs to be done. It needs to be addressed, for sure. In Churchill, fortunately, we haven’t had an issue with suicide rates in a long time, but we have a vulnerable population of elders. Because of our isolated state, a lack of programs and a high cost of living, the community felt we needed to develop programs that would empower the elders and create opportunities for them. We invited stakeholders in the community to be a part of that by using existing resources to make change.
I’ll finish with that. I want to thank you again for having me and giving me the opportunity to speak from my heart.
The Chair: Thank you, Amanda. We’ve gone well past time, so we will move to the next speaker.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: We now have our fifth witness for the evening, Theoren Swappie from Quebec. You have the floor, Mr. Swappie.
Theoren Swappie, as an individual: Hi, I am Theoren Swappie. I am from the reservation of Schefferville and from the reservation of Kawawachikamach. I go to high school at Jimmy Sandy Memorial School in Kawawachikamach, and I am a secondary four. In Ontario, I think that’s tenth grade.
Today I want to talk about how much education and the meaning of education has changed for me. I am proud to say that school has changed for me in a positive way, thanks to my science teacher revealed. She has changed the meaning of education for me because this year she started a new way of teaching us as a class. She has put aside the textbooks and she has sat down with us and asked, “How do you want to learn?” She sat down with all of us, and she learned our strengths and weaknesses as a group and as individuals.
I’ve never felt like this about school before, thanks to her. I have developed a passion for school. School used to be a chore for me. When there are long breaks now I can’t wait until school starts again because I am eager to sit back down in that class and learn with my science teacher the way we want to learn. The fun thing is the way she teaches. It is not just her teaching; it is also our teaching each other. It’s not just her talking; it’s our talking as a class. We learn from each other. She made me realize my strengths and what I am capable of doing.
The next thing I want to talk about also connects to education. I come from the reservation of Schefferville where we face a lack of higher education after high school because there are no funds. Once a member of my community finishes high school, the options are limited as to what they can do next. In most cases, you see people finishing high school but they can’t leave because they don’t get help from the band. My band faces economic problems. I think that stems from education. It’s a cycle because we have a problem getting higher education, which then leads to a problem in our band. In my hometown of Schefferville there needs to be a change for higher education to better ourselves as a community because without higher education it’s hard for us to help each other.
I also want to talk about another issue we face in our community: improper medical attention. In both my communities, we’ve recently seen an increase in death rates because of improper medical care. A lot of times people will go to dispensaries and, I am not lying, they will literally send us home with Tylenol and that’s it. In most cases, those pains lead to bigger health issues like cancer. We have had a lot of cases in my community where a person repeatedly went back to the nurses and all they kept saying was: “Take Tylenol. Go home, rest and take Tylenol,” over and over. Eventually, that leads to bigger health problems.
That issue connects back to the lack of education. Education is key in helping ourselves. How is my community of Schefferville supposed to help themselves with the lack of higher education? My band can’t provide help for a high school graduate going to college. It's really hard for the individual, and it ends up with the individual coming back into the community to find work.
The Chair: Are you open to questions now?
Mr. Swappie: Yes, I am open.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Tannas: Theoren, I understand that you are a radio personality.
Mr. Swappie: That used to be my past job. I have a new job now. I think there was a slight error with that. At the moment I work at a local gas station, but I did work at the radio station.
Senator Tannas: Tell us about your experience in broadcasting. How did you get there and what did you do?
Mr. Swappie: I got my job when I applied for a summer job. I made on-air announcements and played music. I really enjoyed it.
Senator Tannas: That’s great.
Senator Patterson: Thank you for your presentation. I was wondering about your concern with post-secondary education. Is it not possible for you to get access to post-secondary education through the departments responsible for Indigenous services and Indigenous affairs? Is that option not open to you?
Mr. Swappie: We have elementary and high schools in both communities, but we do not have any colleges or stuff like that. We would have to go outside of our communities because we live in a very remote area.
Senator Patterson: Is there any way, through Indigenous programs, that you could apply to get support for going to college or university outside Schefferville?
Mr. Swappie: The way it works with my band on the Naskapi side is that I go to my band and the school will help me to apply for college when I am done. The band will fund me and help me with monthly loans when I move outside the community. However, it’s not like that with the other community, the community of Schefferville.
I actually feel privileged to be half Naskapi and half Montagnais and to have the option to go to college. At the same time, my heart breaks for the Montagnais side because it’s not an easy option for them to go outside to get a higher education.
The Chair: Thank you, Theoren.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: We’ll now move on to our sixth witness of the evening. We have four more witnesses this evening. Perhaps I could remind the remaining four presenters that they have about 10 minutes and then two minutes or so for questions from the senators.
We now have Colette Trudeau from British Columbia. The floor is yours.
Colette Trudeau, as an individual: Hello.
[Editor's Note: Ms. Trudeau spoke in her Indigenous language.]
My name is Colette Trudeau, and I am proud to be Metis. I live in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, and I am so happy to start by acknowledging that we are gathering on the unceded territory of the Algonquin peoples, and I appreciate their allowing us to do this good work on their lands.
I am Russian and German on my mother’s side, and I am Metis on my father’s side. My family is originally from St. Boniface, Manitoba. I am a descendant of the Hamelins. I like to say that my family was hardcore because during the resistance they hid Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont when the Canadian military arrived in Batoche, Saskatchewan.
I am currently the director of youth and the Off-Reserve Aboriginal Action Plan program director with Métis Nation British Columbia. However, I am proud to say that I recently accepted the position of director of operations with my nation.
I didn’t grow up knowing I was Metis. I remember the day when I was in elementary school and an Aboriginal support worker approached me and said, “Do you know you’re Aboriginal?” I remember going home to my parents and going up to my mom and saying, “Mom, I had an Aboriginal support worker say I am Aboriginal. Am I Aboriginal?”
“You need to go talk to your dad.” I went and spoke to my dad and I said, “Dad, are we Aboriginal?”
“You need to talk to your grandmother.” I can still remember, to this very day, being on the phone with my grandmother and her yelling at me on the phone, saying, “We are not Aboriginal. We are French Canadian.” I must have been really persistent because at some point she eventually broke down and said, “Okay, we’re Metis, but you will say we are French Canadian.”
Once I found out that I was Metis, I actually had no idea what that meant. I went to school. Because I was a high achiever, I was welcomed once a year to a gathering outside of my community. I was given awards for doing well, excelling academically and in athletics. It wasn’t until I was very lucky to get the position as director of youth with Métis Nation British Columbia that I was really able to start my journey.
I am really proud to say that through my journey I was able to support my grandmother, prior to her passing away three years ago, in becoming proud of who she was. I remember going to Batoche and her coming to the airport to see me off. I remember telling her, after I came home, that I had seen different headstones in the Batoche cemetery of Hamelins. She was so proud. That was something I was really proud to do, and it has been part of my mission in all the work I do.
There’s a lot of preconceptions of who the Metis are and what we look like. We are one of the distinct Aboriginal groups recognized under the Canadian Constitution. We’re a distinct nation, with a rich history of blended cultures and unique identities. The Metis arose as a result of the unions between European trappers and First Nations women. We have our own Michif language and culture, and we love to jig. The Metis flag is the oldest flag in the country, and we proudly claim the Canadian hero Terry Fox as our own.
I’ve been in my role as director of youth for almost nine years. My current priorities are related to Metis youth governance, programs and service delivery. In thinking about what I wanted to speak with you all about today, I really wish I had 20 days. I want to touch on some really key pieces I am working on. I really hope that that will support your research.
I am really lucky to say that I was a part of the creation of the Youth Act in British Columbia within Métis Nation B.C. It entrenched youth governance into Métis Nation British Columbia, which means our Metis voices matter. We have a Metis youth who sits on our board of directors. She represents the voices of our youth at the community, regional and provincial levels. She also has a voice at the national level.
Something that we are coming up against right now is that the federal government has been appointing either collectives or individuals who aren’t associated with our nation to represent Metis youth voices across Canada. This really needs to change. It has affected our ability to bring the voice of our youth at the grassroots level up to a federal level. I leave that with you. It is incredibly important to go to the nations and speak to the leadership at all levels of government.
I have a passion project that I’ve been working on. It’s called Sashing Our Warriors. Like many of my colleagues here, it’s related to the missing and murdered Indigenous women. We developed a sash with our Metis youth and our Metis women committees in B.C. We acknowledged that there was very limited information related to Metis experiences with violence. The inquiry into the missing and murdered Indigenous women states that many studies related to violence against Indigenous women and girls are First Nations specific and do not reflect the experiences of Inuit and Metis women and girls. Without a more detailed assessment of the unique challenges Metis women and girls face, these report recommendations will not be as effective for the Métis Nation.
We had an open survey where Metis women could self-elect to respond. Within two weeks, we had 250 respondents from across British Columbia. That just demonstrates how willing our women are to come forward to tell their stories. It was very heart wrenching to be the person on the other end reading those stories.
I was going to wear the Sashing Our Warriors today, but it didn’t go with my outfit. I would like the opportunity to send each of the senators a Sashing our Warriors. You pin yourself, and then you sash another warrior who is committed to ending violence against Metis women and girls. It really keeps the conversation and dialogue alive.
Another piece that I want to touch on is around education, training and employment. According to a Métis Works survey, Metis youth fail to complete high school. They face significant gaps in wages. When they pursue managerial positions, they are expected to receive 35 per cent less than their non-Aboriginal peers. Metis living below the low income cut-off is 6 per cent higher than the general population.
My team at the Ministry of Youth within MNBC has been completing research to create Metis-specific data. One of the most astounding issues we found during an environmental scan was that fewer than 1 per cent of 110 employment and training programs in British Columbia were Metis specific. According to the 2016 census, there are almost 90,000 Metis people in B.C.
To address this, we launched on Monday the Métis Community Support Worker Program in conjunction with the University of the Fraser Valley. We created a cohort of 18 Metis people who are experiencing several barriers to accessing education. We’ve provided them with all the tools to meet all the requirements of the program. They will leave the program with a certificate, biweekly they will have access to cultural workshops, and every day they will be able to see a Metis elder in residence.
One of the final pieces I want to touch on is that I’ve had the privilege to travel over the last few weeks, to Metis charter communities across the province. We have 38 Metis charter communities in B.C. They’re all volunteer driven. They’re a very passionate group of people who are also experiencing burnout. During those conversations, I was asked to have conversations with Metis people about what reconciliation with government looks like to them. One of the main things that came out of that was recognition of the historical injustices experienced by Metis people.
I am sure all of you know that any apologies or any settlements made by the federal government have not included Metis. I want to speak specifically to residential schools and day schools. Our residential and day school survivors were not a part of that apology. Our Metis people were not identified in the Sixties Scoop, and our Metis veterans have not been identified.
This is incredibly important because to me it makes it feel like I am a second-class Aboriginal person. In the Canadian Constitution there is no hierarchy in the way our Aboriginal groups are listed. It’s concerning for me when we start using buzzwords like Indigenous. The word has been very prominent and it’s very much an umbrella term. When I think about the Canadian Constitution, I think I am in there as Aboriginal but I am in there as Metis.
The last and final piece I want to leave with all of you is please say Metis. Please say it. We’re not accessing programs. We’re not accessing resources that are available to us because so many are just like me. Their families went underground. They don’t know. They’re just starting their journey and they don’t feel Aboriginal enough to access. The only way they do is by seeing themselves in the communications that go out.
When it comes to communicating with Metis people, say Metis. Every time the government says Metis, they’re supporting the awareness needed in Canadian society that the Métis Nation and our culture are alive and well. It also supports those, whose stories are similar to my own, to feel pride in their identity and to know they have a nation to come home to.
Merci.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
Senator Christmas: Thank you very much, Colette, for describing your journey to understanding your Metis identity. I am sure in your work you come across others who are also on that journey. Based on what you’ve learned, how do you help, advise or guide other young people who are also on that same kind of journey?
Ms. Trudeau: Thank you so much for asking that question because that was a piece I wanted to touch on.
The experience I’ve had is in creating Metis-specific programming. I’ve found that a pan-Aboriginal approach doesn’t work for our people. We are very much at ground level for a lot of our people, a lot of our youth who will be the change makers for our nation. When we host programs, we ensure we have healthy elders and we have the ability for our youth to experience their culture in a safe place.
In my role I wanted to ensure that a lot of those first touch points for our Metis youth who are just starting their journey are with the Ministry of Youth within MNBC. We can assure it’s a positive one. I’ve received feedback from Metis youth who have started their journey and have become part of our programming. I always felt like was something missing from my life. Now that I am here, I know where I belong. It’s providing that community and that sense of belonging that are so important to me. That’s my main mission, and that’s keeping my grandmother’s story alive as well.
Senator Christmas: I wish you all the best. Not only have you become an example, but you are leading others to embrace who they are. I wish you all the best.
Ms. Trudeau: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you. We’ll now move on to our seventh witness, Ruth Kaviok from Nunavut.
Ms. Kaviok, you have the floor. Please proceed.
Ruth Kaviok, as an individual: [Ms. Kaviok spoke in her Indigenous language.]
Good evening. My name is Ruth Kaviok and I am from Arviat, Nunavut. I am the elected president of the National Inuit Youth Council. NIYC represents over 25,000 Inuit youth across Canada, roughly 50 per cent of the Inuit population. Our people are young and our youth face many challenges: mental health, suicide, food security, overcrowded housing, and the list goes on.
Today I want to speak with you about what is working, specifically in education. I am going to highlight a program I just came out of. It’s called Nunavut Sivuniksavut, also known as NS, an eight-month post-secondary college for Inuit students. It has been around for over 30 years and it’s located just down the street from here at 450 Rideau. The program enlists 40 youths out of high school. Students come mainly from Nunavut, but there have been a few from Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador and Inuvialuit in NWT.
As youth growing up in a small Inuit community, we think it’s normal to see hunger, homelessness, dropping out of school and suicide. Suicide rates among Inuit are more than 10 times higher than the national average. High school dropout rates range from 40 per cent to 70 per cent. Imagine that. It’s unacceptable anywhere but especially in a wealthy country like Canada.
Before attending NS, I was aware of some of the things our people went through, such as residential school, the High Arctic relocation and TB. My dad contracted TB and spent many years of his youth in southern Canada with no connection to family. I had heard of these things, but I never really connected the dots. Connecting those dots or Inuit historical events can be summarized in the handout I have for you today. When you open the pamphlet, you will see a curve. The curve is a graphic representation of the relationship between Inuit and many outsiders, Europeans and southern Canadians who have come to our lands over time.
The graphic represents a special lens through which to view these relationships. It depicts the measure of control and independence that Inuit had over their society and their lives over time, beginning with pre-contact and moving right up to today. The NS curriculum, the Inuit history, can be simplified in this graph. At NS, we refer to it as Inuit power curve.
Also at NS, we learn about our shared history beginning with pre-contact, a time when we were totally self-sufficient economically, socially and spiritually. We then move on to look at the waves of various groups that came to our lands for specific purposes: the explorers, whalers, traders and missionaries. All these encounters had an impact on our people, some good and some bad. In any case, as these relationships played out, life began to change and we gradually began to lose some element of control over our lives during these encounters.
Then there was the government era, when foreign justice systems and E tag numbers were introduced, when the military became a new presence in our lands, residential schools were set up and Inuit were forced to move into communities. At a quicker pace now, Inuit lost more and more control. Our people fell sick from diseases and epidemics. Social programs were introduced. There were systematic dog killings. Our only transportation was taken away and government administrators took over.
This era, in the 1950s, saw Inuit go to the bottom of the power curve. In the words of an esteemed elder, Rhoda Karetak from my home community, “We realized we had lost complete control over our lands.” Can you just imagine the many negative feelings and attitudes that individuals must have been carrying within them at that time: the hurt, the confusion, the pain, the shame, the anger, the resentment and the mistrust? The list goes on.
Imagine this being a starting point for rebuilding a society to thrive in the modern world. As many anthropologists predicted, it could have been the end for us, but it wasn’t. In the late 1960s and 1970s, oil and gas companies discovered the black gold of the Arctic and seemed to invade our lands. At this point we knew we had to speak up. From that humble beginning, a political renaissance was launched by a handful of young Inuit, resulting in what can easily be referred to as the second quiet revolution in Canada.
The 1970s was a turning point in our relationship with Canada. Out of that early movement grew a national Inuit body, ITK. From that, many organizations decided to resist the curve of time. The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation focused on bringing television to us in our own language. Pauktuutit, the Inuit women’s representative body and the land claims movement changed the map of Canada.
As outlined in the 42 articles of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, we also learn about our rights at NS. This contract between the Inuit and the Crown is a living document that deserves wholehearted implementation. We also learn about the realities and challenges of Inuit today. We learn about the political landscape with an Arctic focus, of course, but political revitalization alone doesn’t make a healthy society. Cultural revitalization in its many forms is important to youth today.
At NS, we also learn traditional skills, along with many Inuit songs and dances. We perform our audiences at places like the Governor General’s winter party, Winterlude, and last year at the Centennial Flame when the Coat of Arms of Nunavut was unveiled. These performances allow us to be ambassadors to the rest of Canada. Along the way, it instills pride in who we are: Inuit. It connects us with Canadians and builds friendship and compassion. Understanding who we are, why things are the way they are and how we got here, allows us to understand ourselves, our communities and our place in this country.
When we know where we come from, we can move forward with a vision of where we need to go. That’s what we learn at NS. Education is key. If you want to help our people, my message is that we need to have a system of education that reflects our culture, our language, our values and our story.
Like our leaders who fought for our rights during the quiet revolution, I envision an Arctic where our youth are healthy, both mentally and physically. Like our leaders before me, I envision an Arctic where our culture and language are thriving and practised, and I envision our youth pursuing post-secondary education.
As part of our Inuit-Government Relations course at NS, students are given a number of biographies of Inuit leaders who paved the way to where we are today. I chose John Amagoalik’s biography and strongly recommend your reading it too. In this book, John spoke about travelling by plane to remote Inuit communities to consult with Inuit about the first proposed Nunavut claim in the 1970s. Ironically, the plane crashed with many Inuit leaders in it. They survived and they continued to do their work. I was inspired to write a poem about John A.
Inuit
Why must we have a shame in ourselves when it was not our fault?
Our heroes are to be remembered as warriors as they nearly died for us.
They put their lives on the line to make Nunavut what it is.
They stared death in the face in that airplane crash and they got up and kept fighting.
My heart is racing as theirs must have.
My eyes fill with tears.
My feelings are that I am an Inuk.
That is who I am.
My thoughts are that we Inuit to have more pride in ourselves.
I am strength in my confidence for reconciliation with the federal government.
I am fear in the remnants of the plane crash.
On the tundra east of Iqaluit how could they survive and still manage to fight for us?
How could they?
Our leaders are to be remembered as heroes, as they nearly died for us.
They weren’t just visionaries or leaders, as great as that is.
Our legacy is to be warriors just like them.
I know, because it is who I am.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: Thank you so much.
Senator Patterson: [Editor’s Note: Senator Patterson spoke Inuktitut.]
I think it’s great that you pay tribute to the leaders for the amazing story of the creation of Nunavut. I do remember waiting for that plane in Iqaluit. We were all wondering why the plane never landed. It was a very memorable time when we found they had survived.
I want to ask you about your comments on education. It is great that you lauded the NS story. Unfortunately, it’s only 40 people or so per year. You went to school in Arviat. How are things looking for the kids at home? Do you have a good feeling about where education is going? You mentioned low attendance and high dropout rates. Are things slowly getting better, or what would it take if not?
Ms. Kaviok: I would say it’s getting better because of the programs we offer in our high school, specifically the drama club, the after-school activities and such. The process we are doing as political leaders is making their future a little bit better. I’d say it is improving, since I graduated at least.
Senator Patterson: Could you tell us a bit about what your hopes are for the Inuit Youth Council? What are you working on?
Ms. Kaviok: Yes. We have five main topics that we will try to implement. We have a face-to-face meeting in two weeks from now. We will be doing a strategic action plan on the five topics of suicide prevention and mental health, education and empowerment, language and cultural practices, and two more that are related to the political part.
Senator Patterson: Good luck to you. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ruth.
We will now proceed with our eighth youth presenter this evening, Rae-Anne Harper from my home province of Saskatchewan.
Thank you for being here. You have the floor, Ms. Harper.
Rae-Anne Harper, as an individual: Hello. I’d like to begin by acknowledging the unceded Algonquin territory that we are currently meeting on.
Good evening, Madam Chair, and the members of the committee. I want to share how privileged and honoured I am to be sitting in front of you all today in the discussion of the vision of a new relationship between the government and our Indigenous nations.
My name is Rae-Anne Harper, and I am a Plains Cree and Metis woman. My homeland is on the Treaty 6 territory in Onion Lake Cree Nation. I am currently living off reserve in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan.
I would like to share three points with you today: One, a very short overview of the friendship centre movement; two, some barriers I have seen that our youth have reported; and three, some ways friendship centres address the barriers and solutions we’ve heard directly from youth.
For myself, growing up and residing in an urban setting, it was a challenge for me to learn about our culture and the ways of my people, but a good thing there were friendship centres with an open door to invite me in and teach me about my Indigenous heritage. I started going to friendship centres as a young girl, attending children’s programs. As I got older, I worked as a summer student in the friendship centre summer programs and transitioned into a full-time youth coordinator. Not only did the friendship centre get me on the road to providing for myself and being independent, the friendship centre also helped me realize that I have a voice and a power as a young person.
With these newfound skills, I was confident enough to run for a provincial friendship centre youth representative. I have now moved forward to the NAFC National Aboriginal Youth Council as president. The Aboriginal Youth Council advocates for the urban Indigenous youth population and those who are travelling temporarily to cities for medical reasons or other supports.
The urban Indigenous population has been growing steadily and is the fastest growing segment of Canadian society. According to the 2016 census, more than 61.1 per cent of Indigenous people are living in Canadian cities. The total Indigenous youth population, including those in the cities, is among the fastest growing populations in Canada. Our young Indigenous people are increasingly expected to play a vital role in ensuring Canada’s future economic growth. The rate of this growth is so high due to a number of reasons. To name a few, they are migration, employment, education, health, wellness, a change or simply evading unlivable circumstances.
The friendship centre movement is a network of 125 friendship centres in provincial and territorial organizations from coast to coast to coast. Friendship centres are the most significant off-reserve Indigenous service delivery infrastructure and are the primary providers of culturally enhanced programs and services to urban Indigenous residents and those temporarily visiting cities. For over 60 years, friendship centres have been working with and for urban Indigenous communities on a status-blind basis, and youth are at the very heart of the friendship centre movement. At one point our current NAFC president, Christopher Sheppard, was the Atlantic youth representative on the National Aboriginal Youth Council. This goes to show that friendship centres foster growth and leadership.
Friendship centres have been supporting urban Indigenous people for over 1,800 different culturally enhanced programs and services in health, housing, education, recreation, language, justice, employment, economic development, culture and community wellness. In 2015, there were 2.3 million client contacts. Among those were over 16,000 youth client contacts.
The services are based on the needs presented by each person who walks through the friendship centre doors. This includes addressing the barriers urban Indigenous youth face. Friendship centres do this in a non-judgmental, culturally safe way, based on Indigenous teachings and culture. This is important as our youth have reported that culture and identity must be kept at the core of any of our initiatives. One of our major barriers in addressing youth issues is the lack of multi-year specific youth stream funding.
For a youth strategy to be successful with our urban Indigenous youth, there needs to be dedicated youth workers in all of our friendship centres where youth involvement and engagement can happen. Indigenous services need to be where the urban Indigenous youth are. The friendship centres most recent funding agreement unfortunately includes very little for youth. Urban youth programming, youth councils and youth involvement have not been as supportive as they could have been since the years that friendship centres received core funding specific to youth.
This was through the cultural capacity for Aboriginal youth funding pot which, sadly, had ended in 2014. There hasn’t been a specific funding stream since this time and friendship centres need youth specific support. Friendship centres receive funding through organizational capacity programs and services funding streams directed to the vulnerable sector. Youth are placed in this stream. However, this is not youth specific and friendship centres need the capacity for support and engagement.
Mental health is one of the major barriers for youth, as we have a high youth suicide epidemic happening on and off reserve. We have inaccessible mental health facilities. We need to change the language as a lot of our Indigenous youth don’t want to admit they have mental health issues.
Another barrier for our youth is poverty. Urban Indigenous youth need more support. The lack of urban Indigenous youth specific funding leads to Indigenous people on the streets not being able to support themselves after aging out in foster care, and many of our Indigenous people are being incarcerated.
Another barrier is that racism and prejudice in our cities follow the issues of our people. Friendship centres like Val-d’Or have presented to the Quebec provincial and public constitution on racism. Friendship centres work in the community to build bridges, but youth are still experiencing racism and injustices like Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine, as examples.
You must ask the youth how they want to be consulted. Include them in conservations from grassroots and provide support for those conversations because they know exactly what they want. Youth want to see cultural activities. Youth want to feel safe with non-Indigenous in the community. Youth want to feel safe with the local police and RCMP. Youth want to be leaders in their communities, and they want the support to become leaders. Youth want to speak their languages, and youth want to be supported to establish a connection to the land.
None of this can happen at the capacity we need it to unless there is a youth specific funding stream to support urban Indigenous youth in our friendship centres where a majority of Indigenous youth live in Canada. The nation-to-nation approach needs to include the urban Indigenous perspective. Canadians need to see their service providers strive to include Indigenous peoples and reach out to friendship centres to support programming and service delivery. We need to ensure that the legacy of the friendship centre movement as established is not lost in the shuffle as this new nation-to-nation landscape continues.
Thank you.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have time for one question. Seeing as I am from Saskatchewan, perhaps I will ask one, although it looked like Senator Tannas was getting ready.
Senator Tannas: I anticipate your question.
The Chair: Senator Tannas and I have said in the past that we often don’t get enough input from urban off-reserve Aboriginal people and youth in particular. Your testimony tonight fills a gap that we’re very much in need of. You’ve provided us with some very specific recommendations.
My question has to do more so with you personally. You gave a very focused and articulate presentation. Did your involvement with the friendship centre allow you to succeed more within the educational system? Did they encourage you to go to high school or post-secondary education? Could you give us a little more information about that?
Ms. Harper: Actually, 100 per cent. I was encouraged to finish high school by my ed, Bonnie. I was struggling to stay in school. I was quitting a lot when I was in high school. I wasn’t feeling comfortable. My local friendship centre and the board encouraged me to continue my education.
Now I have graduated. Then I graduated again during my upgrading program. I am now conditionally accepted into U of A transition year program. I definitely have the friendship centre to thank for that.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That was beautiful testimony.
The Chair: We are moving now on to our ninth youth witness this evening, Spirit River Striped Wolf from Alberta. Once you get settled, you will have 10 minutes for a presentation, followed by questions from the senators.
Mr. Spirit River Striped Wolf, as an individual: [Editor’s note: Mr. Spirit River Striped Wolf spoke in his Indigenous language.]
Hello. My name is Spirit River Striped Wolf. My Blackfoot name is Iyimakoyiomaahkaa. I received this name from an elder who recognized my perseverance, despite trauma. I come from the territory of Niitsitapi, also known as the Blackfoot territory or the Blackfoot Confederacy. My home nation is Aapátohsipikáni, also known as the Piikani First Nations located in southern Alberta.
I work for a social innovation project based at my university in Calgary, Alberta, called Mount Royal University. With a group of folks I helped co-found and name I also helped to name the project Otahpiaaki which supports Indigenous fashion entrepreneurs with social capital as well as finding ways to lower input costs for them.
Along with three other Indigenous undergrad students, I have been working on major subprojects. One is examining copyright laws and what that process might look like when protecting Indigenous designs from appropriation and theft. Another is working on prosperity crops with the intent to source textile crops and dyes in Indigenous communities for Indigenous fashion designers by 2025, as well as to have a highly skilled workforce to support Indigenous fashion entrepreneurs.
The amount of work my university has done to incorporate Indigenization is very admirable. When I am away from my reserve and my family, Mount Royal University serves as my home away from home. Every year in November, specifically, we have an annual fashion week in Calgary, Alberta, to further enhance the social capital gained by our fashion design partners. If you find yourself in Calgary in early November — November 5 to be specific — please come and check us out. I have given postcards with my contact information to the clerk to be handed out.
My project has been to look at economic growth in Indigenous communities. To my surprise, what it led me back to was cultural genocide. It led me back to the lateral violence in my communities, the trauma in my communities.
Christian Welzel, a researcher that I learned about my classes, developed a theory called the human development theory. It basically said that democracies are only stable when the socio-economic conditions of the society are favourable. This makes sense, right? We’ve seen what happened in Germany after World War I. The level of economic and interpersonal threat was so high for the German people that their liberty values were totally superseded by their survival values. That allowed for a populous leader to rise and make claims that he would bring back jobs and security and that no one was better than the German people. We see that Welzel was right: The Germans didn’t want freedom. They wanted authority and order, and so authoritarianism was born in that macro example.
When I compare this theory to another theory called historical trauma or intergenerational trauma, the literature says that to successfully induce historical trauma into a nation, the nation should have all four of these experiences: one, segregation and displacement such as the reserve system; two, overwhelming psychological and physical violence; three, cultural disposition; and four, economic deprivation.
We know Indigenous people struggle with economic threats, but so do many immigrant communities around the world struggle with racism. They struggle so much that these immigrant groups use entrepreneurship to cope with that exclusion to the labour market. This ability to be entrepreneurs and independent has allowed them to contribute millions of dollars to their national GDP. In the U.K. alone, ethnic minority businesses contribute around 15 billion pounds to the national GDP, while making up 5.8 per cent of small and medium size businesses or enterprises.
I began looking into culture because one thing these immigrant groups have readily available is social capital from their respective ethnic cultures. When we look at what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission brought to us, the term cultural genocide, I knew I was in the right direction.
I am a policy studies undergrad in Calgary at Mount Royal University. In my class I’ve learned that economic growth is a function of three things. The first is the backdrop of the international political and economic order. An example could be the battle between communism and capitalism we saw during the Cold War, how that affected our entire world and how we’re still living in that world today. The second is our domestic institutions. That goes to the old market or state-led economy debate that I am sure you’re all very aware of. The third is our culture. This part doesn’t get touched on very much when it comes to policy. Regardless, economic growth is dependent on all three of those areas.
I spent about four months working on this project. I don’t have enough time to go into the depths of what I found in my research, but I am more than willing to share it if I am contacted for it. What I discovered was that culture is heavily influenced by our biology. We don’t decide our culture. Our biology does, and our biology reacts and is influenced by the circumstances of the backdrop of the international, political and economic order and to the domestic institutions found in our country.
You can see how cultural genocide has made it nearly impossible for a sustainable economic growth in Indigenous communities because of trauma. Our culture isn’t teepees and as community centred as it used to be. It’s about trauma, shame and survival. That morphs into the stereotypes that White folks are used to and the pain and suffering that Indigenous youth are used to. Addictions and suicide are means to numb pain, to numb shame and to numb vulnerability.
Why shame? I want to be a researcher when I am older. A big influence for that is Dr. Brené Brown, a social work PhD at the University of Houston. She has literally saved my life with her work. Her work is partly why I am sitting here right now. Through her work, she has given me the words to describe my experience with historical trauma and cultural genocide.
What does cultural genocide look like for me? For me, it’s about feeling unworthy but at a primal existential level. Brené describes or defines shame to be a primitive emotion. My further research shows that it’s a primitive emotion that has been left over from all of our ancestors who had to ensure they were integrated into their tribe. If you were unworthy for the tribe, that could mean death. That could mean non-survival, so our flight and fight response activates.
This feeling is debilitating. If we could give that feeling words, I would say it would probably say you’re not enough or who do you think you are. We learned that from the Canadian government with their cultural genocidal policies dripping in White supremacy.
The cultures of First Nations communities are based on the value of shame. According to Christian Welzel, that kind of social threat will cause the biological values that scream liberty, equality and fraternity to be superseded by survival values. When you value survival over all else, you will be more inclined to accept a populist leader that promotes authority and order.
In other words, an authoritarian regime. Brené Brown defined shame as the intersection of feeling isolated, trapped and powerless. All three of those things intersecting is what causes shame. What I heard today was a lot of isolation, powerlessness and feeling trapped. I regularly feel isolated, trapped and powerless. My anxiety and debilitation are functions of shame. It’s also important to mention that Brené says that the only folks who don’t experience shame are folks who can’t experience empathy. She says you either have shame or you’re a sociopath. Maybe opt for having a little bit of shame.
Shame in Indigenous communities is the core of Indigenous historical trauma. Developmental programs in Indigenous communities should use the shame resilience theory, which was a theory developed by Brené Brown that introduces a theoretical continuum that is meant to explain the response of shame in participants during economic, existential or interpersonal threatening circumstances and what areas are weak.
The one extreme of the continuum is shame and the other extreme is empathy, which also acts as an antidote to shame. Our communities do not have that. I am only recently developing a sense of empathy. Only recently do I see how important my mom and my sister are, and the importance of the many communities I am a part of. Before, I was way too concerned with numbing the pain. I couldn’t see there was an antidote nearby. There are developing antidotes of meaningful relationships developing in my life. Most importantly, I’ve begun to develop a meaningful, trusting relationship with myself. I know, with that ability, I can create change in my life for the better because I want to and because I can’t see it any other way.
It took a really, really long time for me to get here. I have my family to thank for giving me love in my childhood when I knew it was hard for them, something that’s just not very available for many Indigenous youth. Growing up, I had a mother and sister I absolutely loved and still absolutely love. I also grew up with a father that wouldn’t stop hurting us. I grew up with anxiety, depression and confusion as to why my life circumstances had turned the way they had. My dad did not understand love and belonging. I know this because he thought love, connection and belonging were displayed through the giving of material goods.
When he was there and when he tried, he would say, “I want to give you the things I never had growing up.” He thought the cause of his shame was due to a lack of material goods given to him as a child from his foster father. Perhaps he saw his foster siblings get that from his foster parents and that he didn’t. Perhaps he thought his abuse, which ranged from forced child labour to sexual assault and other acts of betrayal, was his punishment for not being good enough for love, belonging and connection. With my father, a Sixties Scoop survivor, perhaps there was more to the story that I didn’t know growing up.
Here’s a quote from my premier, Rachel Notley, as she apologizes to Sixties Scoop survivors and their families. She said:
Many of you struggle with self-identity due to losing your culture, your language, and the connection to your families.
Many of you spoke about ongoing challenges with government systems and education and police and justice.
When we look clearly at what was done to you, what we did to you, it is no wonder that it is so hard for so many of you to trust again.
Not only is trust fundamental to economic development and prosperity, it also needs to be fundamental to reconciliation. We need to understand shame and empathy and just how fundamental that is to a resilient and prosperous cultural zone.
A culture resilient to shame is necessary in such threatening times right now in our political, environmental and social spheres where our trust is being challenged constantly for every single one of us regardless of race. Our resilience to that is waning as a society, but Indigenous people have seen this struggle for a very long time because it’s not about money or having an attractive appearance. It’s about people cultivating an open heart to trust in order to make change that benefits the collective.
My elder for the Otahpiaaki project, who is also my high school Blackfoot language and Aboriginal studies teacher, asked me to incorporate how this also comes down to our disconnection to the earth. I didn’t understand what that meant until I spoke with a dear friend, colleague and mentor of mine from the university. With all of what I’ve researched into, I think I have an idea of what it means now.
Our connection to the earth is our ability to open our hearts in the face of vulnerability, to be truly yourself, to be you with your whole heart, unapologetically, because that’s what it means to be reconnected to the earth. It means reconnecting with our bodies and our hearts. It is your sense of ego or your sense of self and its ability to trust the physical body. To trust your body really requires you to have a healthy relationship with your body, to be accountable to your body, to establish respect and protect your boundaries.
I have found that to heal from trauma you literally have to develop this relationship with your body. Developing any relationship takes time, patience and communication. What the Indigenous people used to always know is that when you can connect to your body to its senses and you have this loving relationship cultivated with yourself, you are connected to the earth because your body is from the earth. Our body is analogous to the earth because we go back to the earth when our time is done.
I hope I can continue to work on this knowledge, to work and collaborate with Indigenous folks with similar goals of community prosperity building in First Nations communities because this is about Indigenous people becoming economic leaders in Canadian society. It is about Indigenous peoples becoming their own and owning what’s theirs. This is about activism and reconciliation and to help to contribute to the Canadian economy. That’s all I have to share.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
The Chair: We have time for a very quick question or comment.
Senator Coyle: Thank you so much. That was a very inspiring and very instructive talk.
In your remarks you spoke about community prosperity building, Indigenous design, social enterprise and social innovation. I know you’re at school now and you’re obviously doing incredible things from that platform.
What are your ambitions for your future?
Mr. Spirit River Striped Wolf: Thank you, senator, for that question. I want to continue doing this work. My ambition is to do this kind of work. It wasn't Colten Boushie, but it was Colton Crowshow from my community in Piikani who was murdered in Calgary. During one of the memorials, elders from my community I remembered growing up around had swollen eyes. They were telling us that the police and the government were not listening anymore, and that we needed our youth to take on positions or roles where they have influence and know what’s going on. I think that kind of imprinted on my heart for my ambition. I think that’s where a lot of my passion comes from because I don’t want to see my elders cry like that again.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We’ve come to the end of our session.
On behalf of all the senators, I would like to thank our Indigenous youth witnesses this evening. Thank you Kieran McMonagle, Kayla Bernard, Bryanna Brown, Amanda Fredlund, Theoren Swappie, Colette Trudeau, Ruth Kaviok, Rae-Anne Harper and Spirit River Striped Wolf, for sharing your insights with the committee.
(The committee adjourned.)