Indigenous community pleads for talk about abuse
MMIW inquiry reaches struggling Algonquin community of Kitcisakik
When the Algonquin community of Kitcisakik conducted a study to better understand the abuse residents had lived through, thenchief Adrienne Anichinapeo knew the results would be bleak.
Questionnaires were passed out asking people if they had been victims of violence, either physical, sexual or psychological, and if so, to what extent.
Had they been insulted or intimidated? Slapped, punched or stabbed with a knife? Were they sexually assaulted by a stranger, someone they knew, or a family member?
In the end, Anichinapeo told the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls on Thursday, more than 90 per cent of the community reported having lived through some form of trauma.
“The violence we’re living doesn’t come from outside,” Anichinapeo said. “It comes from within our communities.”
With much of Thursday’s testimony focused on domestic violence and abuse, Anichinapeo detailed her own difficult upbringing, speaking of being sexually abused in her youth and how it’s always stayed with her.
“A child always remembers when you do something to them,” she said. “The wounds I suffered are still there.”
Anichinapeo sought therapy in the mid-1990s and became Kitcisakik’s chief in 2009, wanting to help the small community “out of its suffering.”
Most in Kitcisakik, about 120 kilometres south of Val-d’Or, live without electricity or running water. Families do what they can, Anichinapeo said, but still struggle.
Children complain of cold feet and hands in the winter. There’s little work available and much poverty.
Anichinapeo wanted to help change this once elected. But she then lived through a different kind of violence — the psychological torment that came with being an elected woman, she said. She was intimidated and threatened by men in the community. Protests were held outside her home. She battled suicidal thoughts.
“I understand today why women leave their communities to go to cities,” she said. “Their families have exploded. They’ve felt rejected by their communities.”
Asked what her message to other women is, Anichinapeo recalled a recent incident where her 10-yearold daughter’s friend fled her house when an argument erupted between her parents. She feared returning home but also didn’t want to go to Anichinapeo’s — she was afraid if Anichinapeo signalled the fight to authorities, she would be taken from her parents.
“We need to denounce violence and stop closing our eyes to it,” Anichinapeo said, calling for solidarity among women. “It’s through our women that our communities will make it out of their misery.”
Nathalie Hervieux, an Innu woman from Pessamit, said she barely told anyone she was testifying at the inquiry. She had done the same, some 20 years ago, when she sought therapy and first spoke of what was done to her as a child.
“I’m not here out of vengeance or to break my family,” Hervieux, 55, said through deep breaths. “I’m doing it for me, for my children, for my grandchildren and for all the children and women it can help.”
Hervieux said she was four or five years old the first time she remembers being sexually abused. She knew it was wrong but couldn’t tell anyone. One of 15 children, she doesn’t remember the first time a family member abused her, she said, but the incest continued for years. She was only 13 when first raped.
The violence robbed her of her childhood — she never learned any games, how to play instruments or how to skate, she said.
“I didn’t know anything a child would do for fun,” Hervieux said. “All I knew was sexuality.”
Her father died when she was still young, Hervieux said, shot by her brother during a domestic dispute. The family never spoke about it.
At 16, she started drinking to ease the pain. She made few friends and lived an isolated life. She remained terrified of the dark, haunted by nightmares and blamed herself for what was done to her.
Through tears, Hervieux admitted to later being physically abusive with her own daughter, the result of years of pent-up anger and rage.
At 33, she sought help for the first time, and slowly turned her life around. She encouraged others to do the same Thursday.
“We need to talk about it,” Hervieux said. “A lot of people lent me their hands and ears when I needed them. And I think that’s the remedy. Love can give you hope.”
Following Hervieux’s testimony, commissioner Michèle Audette took the microphone.
“I might cry how moving this is,” she warned.
Throughout the inquiry, each witness has received a donated eagle feather at the end of their testimony, a sacred gift and honour.
As of Thursday, however, the inquiry had unfortunately run out of feathers, Audette said.
But there was something else. A man who heard Hervieux’s testimony, she explained, had rushed back to his home in Kahnawake, took apart his headdress and returned with an eagle feather, wrapped in red tissue, to make sure she could receive one.
Hervieux, stunned, let out an audible gasp when she saw it, then broke down in sobs as it was handed to her.