Sharing Thoughts

At the first Ottawa launch of Honouring Indigenous Women: Hearts of Nations - Vol. 2 on August 22 2013, we asked our guests 3 questions in an engagement exercise. Regretfully, we didn't have time to share their responses with everyone at that time. Here, we would like to use this space to make up for it. Below is the result of this exercise. 

We encourage you to ask the same questions to members of your community, and you are welcome to share your thoughts with us that will help guide us in our efforts to transform our relationships with Native women through the form at the end of this page. With your permission, we can add your responses to our findings below.

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Q1 - Describe your relationship with Native women:

• Relationship based on listening, solidarity and support in organizing against mining
  
• Friends and Lovers!
  
• Toastmasters
  
• Drumming group
  
• Curious, Distant, Respectful
  
• Cautious Ally, wishing to learn
  
• Partners in change
  
• Trying to find solidarity, Community, Sharing, Role Models, Strength
  
• Distant
  
• I am an Anishnaabe woman with a daughter who is very strong. I am a 60’s scoop survivor who never got to know my mother
  
• Strong
  
• My relationship with Indigenous women is one of relationship

Q 3 - How Would you like to transform your relationship with Native Women?

• More innovative changes - working together
  
• Aboriginal women are the key to the future. They are the bridge to the connection to the earth which has been lost
  
• I would like to be more intentional - greater awareness, convictions, understanding.
  
• Find courage to voice and ability to support
  
• More generosity of Spirit
  
• My connecting actively with Aboriginal groups in my community and engaging them through the organizations I’ll be working with, employing ethics and values of being an ally
  
• Hear more of my ancestry
  
• I want it to be one of the Strongest
  
• By helping to give voice to those who have been silenced and by encouraging others to celebrate their gifts.
  
• Would like mutually beneficial relationship based on trust, respect and love
  
• Take direction in decolonizing my relationship with both the social and bio-sphere

Q2 - Imagine your relationship with Native women in 5 years:

• Understanding, Collaborative and Healing
  
• My relationship with Indigenous women has not need transformation - it needs strengthening. I need to learn more from Indigenous women by listening and acting with them to build a better future for us all
  
• Trusted Ally, still listening and learning
  
• Many more sisters of Red
  
• Close
  
• Stronger
  
• I imagine it so positively. I look forward to working on women’s rights
  
• In 5 years from now, I hope that my relationship with Indigenous women will be further strengthened through doing more solidarity work together
  
• Elders and Women in politics to help Canada redeem itself
  
• I see my daughter becoming strong and becoming a leader. I see a strong community of Indigenous women realizing their full potential. I see myself sharing my gifts.
  
• Mainstream acknowledgement and support of Indigenous struggles
  
• Stronger and more fruitful; making international connections

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