ST. PAUL – Two organizations in the St. Paul region are among the 18 Alberta organizations that will receive funding from the federal government’s $7.3 million funding to advance gender equality.
The funding, distributed by Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE), is aimed at helping Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations provide more gender-based violence (GBV) prevention programming.
University nuhelot'ine thaiyots'i nistameyimakanak Blue Quills (UnBQ) will receive $453,751 and the Mannawanis Native Friendship Centre (MNFC) will receive $391,000.
University focus
UnBQ is using the funding for its “Building Capacity to Address Gender Based Violence in the Saddle Lake Cree Nation Schools” project.
This is a capacity building project being done in partnership with Saddle Lake Education Authority, said Sherri Chisan, president of UnBQ. The funds will help “create policy and governance practices in support of increasing traditional knowledge that values women and girls' roles and responsibilities.”
She added, “Reinvigorating Cree knowledge and practice is intended to decrease violence perpetrated on women and girls.”
According to information from the Government of Canada, the project includes developing training materials, training school staff, and conducting a review on human resource and financial policies.
Chisan expressed her gratitude for the funding, which will be used to “engage in work that will benefit our Nations and future generations.”
“We acknowledge that our people continue to suffer from the effects of colonization, displacement, and Indian Residential Schools – essentially being forcefully separated from our own knowledges and ways of living,” she explained.
“One of the many complex effects has been the violence that our women and girls have experienced, so we are happy to have the support of [WAGE] to address this situation.”
Mannawanis
Hinano Rosa, executive director at the MNFC, said he is also grateful for the funding.
The MNFC will use the funding for its two-year miyo pimistisiwin (The Good Life) project, to develop a training manual for best practices to empower Indigenous women, girls and people who belong to 2SLGBTQI+ communities, and to address gender-based violence, said Hinano Rosa, executive director of the MNFC.
Funds will also support training around that manual.
Rosa said MNFC’s research will involve collaboration with community partners, such as Indigenous knowledge keepers, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMWIG) survivors and family members of MMIWG.
Ultimately, Rosa hopes that at the project's end, there will be more awareness created around gender-based violence.
Gender-based violence “is not something that just happened recently,” says Rosa. “This has been an ongoing problem for years... generations.”
