WOMEN’S SHELTER SEEKS HELP
Hosting fundraiser in Kahnawake and soliciting donations online
Sanctuary for native women is holding a fundraiser in Kahnawake and soliciting donations online to raise money for a van after its old one broke down 13 months ago. Christopher Curtis has details
A dark-haired girl runs through the front office of Montreal’s Native Women’s Shelter, swooping between workers as they scramble to keep up with the daily caseload.
It doesn’t matter that she’s living in a women’s shelter with her mom, that this is probably one of the hardest periods of this young family’s life. She’s a tiny child and, like any other kid, she seems intent on having fun even in the toughest circumstances.
And the girl can play, she can run around, smile and sing and make a mess in this place because it’s safe here. For the women and families who come to the shelter — often to flee an abusive relationship or get out of a life on the streets — this is the central service the shelter can provide the city’s indigenous women.
“The first thing we try to do here is make people feel safe,” says Anita Metallic, who helps families get acclimated to life inside the shelter. “This is our little community and in this community we take care of each other, we help each other and we look out for each other.”
But in the 13 months since the shelter’s van broke down, it’s been getting tougher for Metallic and her colleagues to provide these women with the services they need. It may seem like a stretch to think of a beatup Honda Odyssey this way but the van held things together at the shelter; workers used it to move clients into their own apartments, to pick up donated clothes and furniture, to go on grocery and supply runs.
“Moving someone into a new apartment by loading bags and boxes onto a city bus is virtually impossible,” says Tealey Normandin, who helps women find housing outside the shelter. “Some of our clients use canes, they can’t lug things around on the bus. It’s not a luxury item, it’s indispensable, we need another van.”
After hobbling by on borrowed rides, bus trips and other improvised transportation, the women’s shelter will host a fundraiser at the Host Hotel in Kahnawake on Saturday. They’re also soliciting donations online to buy the new van. The shelter’s funding comes from a mix of donations and government grants.
“I’m not patient, we needed a van yesterday. It drives me crazy that we don’t have one,” says Nancy Rice, who’s organizing the fundraiser. “So when I started working here a few months back, that was something I knew we had to tackle.” Rice has a lot invested in the shelter. Before working there as its cook, she was a client trying to get out of an abusive relationship.
“Being a client here was so out of the realm for me,” says Rice, a Mohawk from Kahnawake. “I was a nurse in the (United) States for 20 years, a professional. Being up here and having an episode, all of this was new. I saw a councillor in Kahnawake and he recommended I stay here and I thought, ‘Oh my god, 40 beds in a big room, what’s going to happen? Someone’s going to steal my stuff.’ I walked in and, it sounds crazy but right away I was relaxed.”
Rice and her colleagues try to create a healing environment for the 23 women and children who live in the shelter. There are sharing circles and traditional healing practices like smudging and trips for sweatlodge therapy.
The shelter isn’t just for survivors of domestic violence, though. People also use it as a way of climbing out of homelessness, finding sobriety or simply as a way of transitioning from life on a remote reserve to life in Canada’s second largest city. Though the city prides itself on being cosmopolitan, workers and clients at the shelter say they face discrimination in Montreal almost every day.
“The racism is blatant. Some
This is our little community and in this community we take care of each other, we help each other and we look out for each other.
people outright say they won’t rent apartments to (aboriginal women),” says Sarah Davis, the shelter’s family care worker. “Sometimes you’ll call 911 for a client and the dispatcher will actually ask, ‘Is she an Inuk woman?’ You see discrimination in hospitals, at the welfare office, at the (métro), anywhere there are services. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have doors slammed in your face all the time. It must be awful.”
Davis says that despite the obstacles these women face, there are hopeful moments.
“Sometimes, it can be as simple as having a client come back,” she says. “Maybe they went back to the abusive relationship, maybe they started drinking again but often they come back (to the shelter), they get help. That takes so much courage and strength. It’s the reason we do what we do.”