Labrador women's group researching housing to help Indigenous women escaping violence
Advocate Charlotte Wolfrey says shelters are good but there needs to be a home for women
As a community organization works to study second-stage housing in Labrador, an advocate says safe, affordable housing is one of the keys to combating violence against Indigenous women.
The Mokami Status of Women Council has been running an eight-apartment supportive living program for around a decade. Now it has received funding to look at addressing the gaps for when people are ready to live independently.
"There is a lack of affordable and safe spaces for women and gender diverse people to go," said Stacey Hoffee, executive director of the Mokami Status of Women Council.
The organization received $25,000 to explore second-stage housing to create safe, affordable housing. Hoffe said a consultant from Common Good Solutions in Halifax will be working in Labrador this summer.
Hoffe said she hopes that work can address the gaps. She said the consultant is meeting with a number of front-line workers, people who use the shelter system, organizations and more.
Indigenous women are disproportionately affected by violence in Canada. The RCMP says Indigenous women are 4½ times more likely to be murdered than all other women in Canada.
Rigolet's Charlotte Wolfrey knows the statistics personally.
Wolfrey's daughter, Deirdre Michelin, was 21 years old in January 1993 when she made a distress call to the Happy Valley-Goose Bay RCMP, 160 kilometres away.
On the same day, she was shot and killed in a murder-suicide by her domestic partner.
Michelin had four children, was a good cook, good mother, loved the Inuit traditional way of life and being out on the land, Wolfrey said.
"I just want people to remember my daughter as she was in life, full of energy, good mom," Wolfrey said.
At the time, there were no police in the isolated community of Rigolet.
Wolfrey and others advocated to have police stationed in the community and in Makkovik. Wolfrey said she still wants to see police stationed full time in Postville as well.
"There's still a long ways to go to make sure that women are safe," she said.
To combat violence against Indigenous women, a number of communities have safe houses and shelters and the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada is helping communities apply for Inuit-specific shelters in their communities.
Wolfrey said while that's important, what happens after women leave shelters needs to be looked at too.
"The housing issue in all our communities is horrific and especially Hopedale and Nain," Wolfrey said.
"Once you go into the safe house, you're probably there for six weeks, two months, three months maximum and then you got to make some decisions about where you're going to live and when you got no housing, you got no other choice but to almost go back."
The federal housing advocate called housing in Nunatsiavut a human rights failure after touring the region in 2022.
Nunatsiavut said housing was a priority during a recent visit from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in May. At the time, Trudeau said the federal government was working closely with Indigenous communities on housing but didn't offer a timeline.
Wolfrey said changes are needed now. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls' final report was released in June 2019.
Wolfrey would also like to see programming set up to help people understand healthy relationships and help couples heal together.
"If we don't have the men involved, we're not going to change things," Wolfrey said. "I hope for a Labrador that's safe for everyone."
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