A Perspective on Attending the Steering Committee Meeting

By: Kari Wuttunee

tân’si My name is Kari Wuttunee andI’m from Red Pheasant Cree Nation that is located in Eagle Hills of Treaty Six Territory on Turtle Island. I am a council member for the National Indigenous Young Women’s Council (NIYWC). We are a self-governed council of Indigenous young women under 30 years of age. It includes those who identify as Trans, Two-Spirit, and/or gender nonconforming. The Council works to provide leadership opportunities, community actions and mobilization, and skills training and capacity building. The Council also develops spaces for celebration, reclamation and cultural resurgence with a vision for future generations.

Recently the NIYWC began a new collaborative partnership with researchers from McGill University, the Girls Action Foundation, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal to explore the experiences of young Indigenous women in South Africa and Canada and the relations to gender-based colonial violence.

Along with myself, another council member Melody McKiver (who is an urban Anishinaabe musician with ancestry in Lac Seul First Nation) were invited to Durban, South Africa. In Durban we met the other half of the research group and we spent two days outlining the project and sharing in our experience with NIYWC and the role of mentorship.