Clan Mother’s Healing Village to launch Experiential Voices Website to counter sexual exploitation and sex trafficking

Titled Lived Experienced Leadership: Experiential Voices National Knowledge Gatherings on Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking, the project will be unveiled on Thursday, October 1st in honour of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) Awareness Day on Sunday, October 4th. Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ persons are at greater risk of being sex trafficked and sexually exploited, which can intersect and increase their vulnerability of becoming MMIWG.

This website digital project will showcase the valuable lived experience perspectives that exist across the country – including personal stories, experiences, and solutions rooted in experiential leadership, the site serves as an invaluable resource for front line workers, legislators, policy makers, and governments across Canada to end sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. It is also an important public education tool.

Committee Members: Elders Mae Louise Campbell, Belinda Vandenbroeck and Billie Schibler, Lived Experience Leaders Elder Laurie MacKenzie, Elders Charlotte Nolin, Kim Trossel, Brenda Flamand, Shamin Brown and LE Project Director, Jamie Goulet.

For far too long, lived experience voices have been pushed aside or overlooked. Problematically, their invaluable expertise and savoir-faire as content experts have not been prioritized or respected to guide counter sexual exploitation and sex trafficking initiatives.

In 2018, Clan Mothers Healing Village started defining the focus for this nation-wide project. We reached out to lived experience leaders across Canada, asking them to share their leadership and meaningful solutions based on what has worked in the past, what is working now, and what still needs to be done.

We gratefully acknowledge funding received from Public Safety Canada, LUSH cosmetics, the Province of Manitoba, the Province of Ontario, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Headquarters. Miigwetch.

The digital media website we are launching today is the outcome of this exciting initiative. It celebrates the stories, knowledge, solutions, work, and leadership of persons with lived experiences of sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. In doing so, it diverts attention away from the victimization pieces related to sexual exploitation and sex trafficking, going beyond them to acknowledge and honour persons with lived experience for their powerful responses, strength, resiliency, rich diversity and inclusivity, innovative prevention and intervention projects, actions, and solutions.

The diverse experiential voices, Indigenous Elders, leaders, partners, and allies that have come together for this project know and reveal what the solutions are to dismantle sexual exploitation. These solutions are grounded in the voices of persons with lived experience leadership as well as matrilineal-centred Indigenous holistic healing, principles, and knowledge.

This site includes their urgent calls to action and outlines critical next step, including the creation of a National Council of Lived Experienced Leaders on Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking to organize and oversee strategic initiatives locally and nationally.

“Healing and education must first begin within the heart, before the mind. […] As sexual exploitation and trafficking continue to be social injustices, it is time for a paradigm shift. New treatment models which incorporate Indigenous methodologies need to be explored, and it is the goal of Clan Mothers to revisit the longstanding Indigenous matrilineal model of healing.” – Jamie Goulet, Co-Founder of Clan Mothers Healing Village

Clan Mothers Healing Village believes that healing is only possible when we return to our Indigenous models and methodologies of healing. There is a recently renewed movement and respect for the important role and invaluable leadership of persons with lived experience, Grandmothers, and women. They are restoring teachings, values, and practices that were lost as a result of colonization and residential schools. For more information, visit www.clanmothers.ca