VANCOUVER—In a windowless basement in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, seven women laugh and pass around orange bubble gum and licorice they brought to share.

One does her makeup, getting ready for a photo shoot. Another offers Robin Raweater a tissue as she talks about her five-month-old son, who died four years ago from bronchitis, pneumonia and another respiratory condition she believes was caused by their mouldy, substandard apartment in Surrey. It was the only one she could afford.

Raweater, whose mother was Blackfoot and her father an Indigenous Black man, says her son was refused treatment at a hospital, and when he died, police accused her of being drunk and rolling over on him in bed. That started “a whole chain of events,” which led to her other children being apprehended by social services. When she had a baby girl who is now two, she started to feel her strength returning.

“I realized I was not getting the proper supports I needed at that point in my life,” she says. “I wasn’t being believed or listened to, and instead labelled an alcoholic or violent person.”

In the poorest urban postal code in Canada, the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre is a haven for First Nations women whose voices are rarely heard.

They are the real authors of a new comprehensive, 216-page report being released Wednesday called Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which bears witness to stories like Raweater’s and includes hundreds of their recommendations on health issues, the opiod crisis, affordable housing, poverty and safety.

Those recommendations include a significant increase in mental health and addictions counselling in the neighbourhood, ensuring greater protection for tenants in social and non-profit housing, and justice reforms such as decriminalizing sex work and ending the practice of forcing women charged with crimes to plead guilty in order to get addictions treatment.

“Our sisters are being pushed into poverty, drinking, prostitution — those are our sisters — so the fact that we led the group was very powerful,” said Carol Martin, 58, a Nisga’a and Gitanyow woman who has been involved in the neighbourhood for roughly three decades. More recently, Martin was a victim services worker in the neighbourhood, and sits on the Women’s Memorial March Committee.

She is co-author of the report along with women’s centre staffer and advocate Harsha Walia, but both said the credit should go to the 128 Indigenous women who contributed their stories through peer-led sessions over many months.

This approach make the report stand out from others that document the “plight” of Indigenous women who make up a disproportionate number of local residents. The point of Red Women Rising isn’t just to tell stories, but to reject the labels and stereotypes these women have faced, even from the non-profit services and public inquiries meant to serve them.

“What brings me here is I saw so many systemic injustices,” explains Raweater. “Being an Indigenous woman in B.C., you deal with being labelled so much.

“I’ve faced so many stereotypes, whether it’s dealing with child welfare when they apprehended my children, or the courts or hospitals. I have been put under the microscope for so many years, even when you jump through their hoops.”

For Suzanne Kilroy Huculak, of mixed Okanagan nation and Japanese ancestry, the Downtown Eastside has been home since the 1980s. Despite its reputation as a down-and-out slum with a high homeless population, substandard housing and rampant drug dealing and abuse, that doesn’t accurately describe the place, or the support and solidarity she’s experienced here — “especially from other women, my sisters”— that has carried her through her darkest hours.

She is not a victim, or just someone living in poverty or poor housing.

“I’m a survivor,” she said. “I’m also a witness, a sister, a mother, a grandma, a daughter and a friend; I’m a drummer, a singer, and I’m very active in the community.

“Being part of this project was about standing up with my sisters, because they’ve helped me. The women’s centre has saved my life. Some of these women have stood beside me from when I was less than 80 pounds to where I’m at today. I’m really proud to be part of making this.”

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The Red Women Rising authors hope to change the way people see them, not as impoverished victims, but as leaders and visionaries with ideas about how to fix the systems that should help them, not hold them back.

The report is a mix of anecdotes, artwork, portraits of many of the participants looking happy and confident, and a series of recommendations.

Sophie Merasty, another woman featured in the report, is a 55-year-old of Woodland Cree and Denesuline nation descent, originally from Manitoba.

“I first came to the DTES around 1991 or 1992, right after my sister was killed down here,” she said. “As an Indigenous woman, I have a lot to say about my experience in the DTES of Vancouver.

“Although it doesn’t matter where I’ve gone in this country, I’ve experienced a lot of stereotypes and the oppression of being an Indigenous women. Now I’m in a position where I work with women in the DTES who experience those things I experienced.”

Many of the women who took part also testified or participated in the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and this report is part of the women’s centre’s submissions to that effort. But they felt the national inquiry, and B.C.’s 2013 Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, didn’t represent the full truth of their experiences.

Now they’re doing it on their own terms.

“Something like this hasn’t been smoothed over, glossed over, or shiny to present to funders,” Martin said. “It’s the complete raw data of women opening up and telling their whole truth and life stories. It’s our real, actual life stories — in our words.

“I feel like I’m coming back, rising up, with my gloves on. It’s something I’m really proud of.”

Read more:

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