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Jennifer Spence-Clarke - Urban Warrior Alliance "I'm an Anishinaabe Kwe and I come from Manitoba. I also have Metis ancestry on my father's side. I grew up in the inner city, varying between North End, West End, downtown, central areas. There was a lot of indigenous people, however I didn't grow up in my culture. I grew up in the church. I knew I was indigenous in some way but back then that was something that you didn't want to admit to people. It's a lot different now. We're proud to call ourselves indigenous." "I think that started when people realized that the residential schools were a huge mistake, that our elders had stories to tell. And not just the stories of the abuse that took place within the walls of those schools, but the stories of before they went to the schools. Their lives were vastly different." "Now my baby will grow up in this culture. She'll grow up around the ceremonies, around sun dance, and she'll go to powwows. She'll walk with us as we show her what the culture is. It's taken me a long time to figure out what that means, but I think my awakening started when I was 17 or 18, and I'm almost 40 now. Some of us don't get there for a long time. My mom was almost 40 when she started to come back to our culture." "I have three sons, four daughters and one granddaughter. The issue of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women makes me feel like I need to be more educated as a human being, an adult, a mother and as an indigenous female. It's easy to say knowledge is power, but I think it's true in so many ways. We can arm our kids with that knowledge. How to stay safe, how to walk in healthy ways. It's easy to want a quick solution to all of this but it takes these really small steps that we make with each of our kids. If I can impart any of my wisdom on my children and my grandchildren, then maybe when they grow up they can find the ways to help their community and walk that path with their children. Maybe that helps in just a small way but we have to start somewhere." "In terms of what our government can do, unfortunately it all comes down to money. And it's a sad thing. We don't have access to funding to do the things that will help our community. A lot of these issues are created by poverty." "The government, especially the conservatives, from what I understand, is that they're not big fans of people who don't get jobs, who don't make their own way in life and pull up their boot straps. But sometimes you can't. Sometimes you're so broken by those colonial systems that impact your life. And one of those systems is the justice system. People going in and out of jail. People who have lost their kids to CFS. Sometimes we think those systems are designed to kill our culture even further." "We need healthy living. Healthy cultural living. Maybe we need to go back to our ceremonies. A lot of people tell me they don't practice that kind of stuff, it's just not something they do. And many of them are people who grew up with parents and grandparents who went to residential schools. It's really hard to crack those shells." "We've talked about putting culture camps in communities so kids can go on the land an learn. It would keep them busy. There's an epidemic of suicide. A lot of kids are losing hope. And we try to fight that suicide spirit ceremonially to." "There's a lot that can be done. It's just how do you tap into it and figure out what each community needs if you don't first as critical questions about where kids go wrong when they're small. What contributes to gang life? What leads to exploitation of women and girls? Some girls as young as 9 are out on the streets being sexually exploited by people. By adults...I don't even know. Where did they get lost along the way? I really hope the inquiry will start looking at these questions." July 31, 2016.