Duane Hicks
Rainy River First Nations is the most recent Grand Council Treaty #3 community to undertake “Project Green Light”—an initiative to prevent violence against women, men, children, elders, and co-workers.
The community celebrated the project last Thursday with an event at the RRFN gymnasium, which was attended by community members and Grand Council Treaty #3 representatives, including numerous area chiefs.
The project was initiated by the Grand Council Treaty #3 Women’s Council a couple of years ago in response to violence in communities and how it affects areas such as the child welfare and justice systems.
The idea is for community members to accept green light bulbs and use them as their outside light to show that their home is a safe place for individuals who are in need of safety from all forms of violence.
RRFN Chief Leonard had been given a “Project Green Light” bundle—consisting of a green light, green ribbon, tobacco (assema) and wild rice—by Chief Wayne Smith of Naicatchewenin FN last year, after which he asked RRFN director of family services Leona McGinnis and her team to co-ordinate it.
“There’s a lot of people in the community that support this project,” Chief Leonard said Thursday.
“Even though, in talking with some of our staff, we do a lot of work in our everyday jobs with violence, addictions, health, and all of these type of things, I think with this green light program, it’s brought it all together and hopefully we’ll continue with the work the we’re doing,” he added.
Each home was given a green light bulb to display as their outside light at the start of last week.
Chief Leonard said he met with Debbie Lipscombe of Grand Council Treaty #3 last spring, and she talked about having a dream of coming to communities and seeing green light bulbs everywhere.
“Hopefully, in the next few days, every house [in RRFN] will have a green light bulb,” he noted.
McGinnis, who also is the founder of the Grand Council Treaty #3 women’s and youth councils, told the Times that community violence is “a very sensitive topic.”
“People are afraid to put their ‘green light’ out now,” she noted. “However, they would never turn anybody away, they said.
“The first night we gave it out, only one male had it on . . . but there’s more now.
“It’s hard to show support for a project against violence. It triggers memories,” McGinnis said.
“You don’t want to be stigmatized.
“But to defeat it is to face it head on,” she reasoned.
At last Thursday’s event, Chief Leonard presented Mitaanjigaming Chief Janice Henderson with a bundle and blanket with the intent that her community will adopt the program.
And, in turn, she will pass the bundle onto yet another community.
Chief Henderson said community violence is a very important issue, and it is necessary for leaders, communities, and groups such as the Grand Council Treaty #3 Women’s Council to work together on it.
“It takes a lot of work to talk about this issue and the more we talk about it, we will get well; we will have our communities get strong,” she noted, adding such discussions will allow for the development of strategies to prevent violence and promote wellness.
Chief Henderson noted the older generation must talk to the younger generation about residential schools and the “’60s Scoop,” and explain how that has affected the older generation, in some cases causing them to become abusers themselves.
“We need to be able to move on with the help of elders,” she stressed. “We need to look to them to help us give us strength.
“We need to learn the language, learn the culture, because we need that to get well.”
Chief Henderson said her own family has impacted by violence.
In 1978, her mother was murdered in Minneapolis. Later that same year, one of her aunt’s went missing while hitchhiking out west to locate one of her children who had been put into care.
And then in 1993, another one of her aunts was killed in Thunder Bay.
“For us as a family, it is something we have not really talked openly about for many years,” Chief Henderson admitted.
But in more recent years, several FN communities in the region have hosted healing ceremonies, where people spoke about losses in their lives.
And it helped her to start talking, and begin the process to heal and move on with her life.
Chief Henderson urged others to attend these ceremonies, as well.
“I found that I am getting stronger in that way,” she noted. “Being with individuals at whatever ceremony I’m at, it’s really helped me a lot.”
She also received some good advice from an elder: Henderson’s mother would not want to see her sad and holding onto the pain.
“That’s what I think we should strive for—to let go and be happy, and help anyone that needs help to get over their loss or get help in seeking closure,” Chief Henderson remarked.
McGinnis, meanwhile, said violence is learned as early as when one is in the womb, but that the cycle can be broken.
“Violence is not only by men who abuse women because those men all had mothers,” she explained.
“Those men were all in their mother’s womb, and research and statistics have proven that those children in the womb hear and feel everything that’s outside.”
Violence is a family dysfunction, McGinnis added, and it only will stop when people admit that and start to look at it that way.
McGinnis said she was a child who experienced physical abuse, verbal abuse, and sexual abuse although she didn’t understand this until she got older.
But the cycle of abuse carried on through to the birth of her first son who just turned 40.
“I was wishing he would come here today because he was the recipient of my yelling and belittling,” McGinnis said. “I can remember one time when I had slapped him across the face so hard.
“And I didn’t know where I had got that from because I loved him dearly. He was my first son.”
McGinnis went to school, starting working in family services, and was invited to talk at an abuse workshop in Fort Frances.
“I did a beautiful presentation but you know what? It woke up old memories, it woke up guilt as I was driving home,” she noted.
“And I remember how I treated my first son and I thought, ‘What am I doing talking about child abuse to a group of people in the Town of Fort Frances and I’m an offender?’”
When she got home, she had a talk with her 12-year-old son, and asked if he could ever forgive her for abusing him?
“And he said, ‘I can’t right now, Mom. I can’t. But if you promise never to yell or call down or hit my little brother, I will think about it,’” she recalled.
“That’s all I could expect from my son,” she added. “It took years and only now that he’s 40 has he started to put that away.
“But with what he did, he was the catalyst of change in my family because from that day on, I never hit or yelled or belittled my children or my grandchildren,” McGinnis stressed.
“He made that change.”
McGinnis said the cycle of abuse for her family has stopped. Her sons do not hit nor verbally abuse their children.
She thanks her son every day for stopping the violence in her family.
“As a woman, mother, grandmother, I believe that violence can be stopped,” McGinnis said.
“It has to start with women,” she added. “We need to stop being victims and becoming proactive, and looking [at] violence from a different perspective.
“When women stand up and take responsibility for violence in their homes, only then real healing will start.”
Last Thursday’s event, which was chaired by Sonny McGinnis, also featured an opening prayer by elder Genevieve McInnis and several traditional drum songs.
