Cree member to lead advisory council
Resident of northern B.C. a longtime advocate for rights of Indigenous women
Her ceremonial name, Wahiyow Cawapata Scoo, means Far Sees Woman and it is as apt as a name can be.
Barb Ward-Burkitt, a Cree member of the Fort McKay First Nation who has spent most of her life in northern B.C., has been named the new chairwoman of the Minister’s Advisory Council on Indigenous Women (MACIW).
Ward-Burkitt, who joined the council in 2014 and has served as vice-chairwoman since 2018, replaces the outgoing Chastity Davis, a member of the Tia’amin Nation who had held the position since 2014.
“It’s my understanding there are no other advisory councils on Indigenous women, that it is a British Columbia thing,” the 67-yearold said from her home in Prince George. “Just like the legislation around UNDRIP is a British Columbian thing, too.”
The council was established in 2011; and last fall, B.C. became the first province to pass legislation implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Ward-Burkitt said that not only the minister responsible for the council, Scott Fraser (Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation), but other ministries as well seek the advice of the council, made up of 10 Indigenous women.
But do they heed it? “Yeah, they’re taking it, but the other piece that I think is critically important is the council then reaches back out to them to see if that advice has been taken.”
From the time she was a little girl, Ward-Burkitt was determined to make a difference, no matter what obstacles were strewn in her way or how many hoops she had to jump through. Her mother wasn’t taught to read in the residential school she was sent to, so from the time she was a young girl Ward-Burkitt would read to her. Her mom stressed the importance of an education, even though many or most Indigenous girls in the North never got beyond Grade 8.
She became a mom herself in Grade 11, but remained determined she would complete her Grade 12.
Head down and do the best you can, as she put it.
It was the beginning of a journey but not the end of her travails.
“I’m a survivor of domestic violence,” Ward-Burkitt said. “I think violence against Indigenous women and girls, abuse, all of those things, I think for the most part there’s still a lot of silence around that.”
She has been a child-care worker with Indigenous children and those with special needs, was a faculty staff mentor in field programs for northern B.C. at SFU, and is the longtime executive director of the Prince George Friendship Centre, the largest of the 117 such centres across Canada.
All of the women on the minister’s advisory council are connected to their communities and have families that have been impacted by violence and colonization, just by the very nature of being Indigenous women, she said.
A lot of time has passed since First Contact, which in coastal B.C. was 1774; a lot of time will be needed to heal the damage done, Ward-Burkitt said.
“There is certainly a lot of work to do. When you think of colonization and residential schools and the Indian Act, how long those things have been around, and here we are all these years later.
“In my mind it’s going to take just as long to reverse that and go the other way,”