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House Hansard - 64

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 4, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 64 - May/4/22
Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)
  • May/4/22 11:00:22 p.m.
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Madam Chair, today I want to acknowledge all my colleagues. Each and every one of them here today is participating in what has been a very difficult conversation for indigenous people not just here, but across the country. I want them to do more than sympathize, but to honestly ask themselves what it would be like without their mothers, what would it be like without their sisters, or what would it be like without their grandmothers. Every indigenous family in this country knows that pain, but I do not want to talk about the pain. We talked an awful lot today about the pain indigenous people have suffered, but I want to remind members that with this pain it was not the current government or any government in the country that kept us alive: it was indigenous women. Indigenous women kept our nations alive, and they still do today. That is precisely the reason the government, and every government in Canadian history, has persisted to ensure this problem is not addressed. By evidence of what has occurred thus far, is the fact that our indigenous women continue to go missing. How can we say to the contrary? I want to talk about the remarkable women in my life who have made a contribution to my presence here today. They are really the only reason I am here. Indigenous women have fought for our nations. They fought for every single child, and one woman who comes to my mind in particular is my mother. Her name is Grace Desjarlais. She is the sister of a woman named Brenda, who was taken through the sixties scoop. The sixties scoop, the residential schools system and every government policy to date has not consulted indigenous women; however, they expect their labour. When Brenda, my biological mother, was working as a sex worker after aging out of the terrible foster care system that this country still has, she fought. She had an option presented to her. She said she could have given up and gone down the road that so many of our sisters do, but she fought and she stayed alive. She was able to live to the age of 42: a feat that many indigenous women do not get the opportunity to do in this country. She asked her sister, a woman she barely knew, to do something courageous. She asked her to take her son and to save him from a system that would kill him. That was me. Women came together from my community and said “no”. We took a challenge against the court, and I was one of the very few children not apprehended even though the first person I met in this world was a social worker and an RCMP officer. The people who would save me were indigenous women. This is a holistic issue, my friends. When we support indigenous women, they will continue to save lives. They will save our nations. I know this because I have seen it. I am here because of it. There has been no government program, no government policy and no government that has done this work for us. When I see the work of the calls to action, the calls to justice, I see mothers, aunties and kokums who did everything they could to make sure that the government listens. Today, I hope this debate goes much further than just words. To every government member here today, I want them to imagine what it would be like not to have mothers, grandmothers or sisters and then ask themselves whether it is worth waiting and whether the government has succeeded. That is the one thing I hope they take from this debate.
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