 grassroots organizer and activist from Vancouver. She's a founding member of the Aboriginal Action Network. She's also a collective member of Great Berlin and a terrific Aboriginal activist. So we'd like to hear from Laura Holland. Please give her a warm welcome. My name is Alun Aya. I'm from the Luxulian clan of the Watzilothan Nation. I, too, am a visitor on Coast Salish territory, and I would like to thank the Coast Salish for allowing us to be on their territory, to live, to work, to raise our families, and to gather here today to stop war. People here today, people with good hearts and good minds, and people who want to stop war. It takes a lot of courage for you to be here today to tell the impressive state that you will not tolerate war anymore. You deserve recognition for that. Give yourselves a big hand! First Nation people, all accruement of First Nations is. I'm also here to speak to you because there's a war going on in your own backyard here today. The Indian wars have not stopped against the Aboriginals in Canada. The occupation in Canada is a reality. Racism, patriarchy and sexism, the government's Department of Indian Affairs has been used as a weapon to control Aboriginal peoples, and it guarantees our oppression. The Canadian government, there is still a fight for Native women and their children to be counted and recognized as First Nations, and be given Indian status. The denial and outright refusal of Indian status is another way of blocking 200,000 First Nations people access to control of lands and resources. It maintains our impoverishment, forces men, women and families to rely on the state. It forces women to stay in violent marriages, or die in violent marriages and has not been dressed in matrimonial property rights for women on reserves. It forces destitute women and children into prostitution and other crimes against the state. This is where we are often criminalized and demoralized. Some of us have not forgotten the slaughter of Indigenous peoples in North America, the reserve system, 19,000 survivors of residential schools, unsolved murders of First Nations people, 500 missing Aboriginal women, the missing women from the downtown Eastside, and the Highway of Tears. We will not forget the respected Harriet Nihaney, a 71-year-old Aboriginal woman who was jailed because she dared some Native ways of life, and Indigenous racist and sexist laws that are used in the cultural genocide of Canada's First Nations. Our position is essentially that actions and attitudes, mainly patriarchal, racism and sexism, are expressions of domination that are all connected because they are rooted in a false, hierarchical world view that destroys community and equality to women and children and all who are Indigenous to war-torn countries. Racism, patriarchy and sexism desensitize us and legitimizes the killing of innocent people and the destruction of Indigenous governments and ways of life. The results for women and children are being trafficked for work or prostitution, displacement and forced migration, poverty and many other forms of violence including deprivation of Native rights, human rights and even food and water. It also includes imprisonment of our men who are activists and are accused of being insurgents. As a feminist in the women's movement, I oppose patriarchy, racism and sexism. I am non-violent peacemaking solutions, veterans as elders, yet we are critical of the state's treatment of them and attitude towards them. Historically, when our originals went to war, they were forced to give up what little rights they had under the Indian Act. And when they were forced to give up their Indian status it meant the whole family lost their rights. When they returned, these rights were not reinstated and they did not enjoy the same rights, pensions and respect as non-native veterans. In fact, First Nation veterans once again had to fight here in their homeland to at least be recognized as veterans. With one hand, the state keeps us oppressed and with the other hand attempts to recruit our children. Our culture is exploited and romanticized with programs such as Bullnagle to glorify recruitment. It promises youth as young as 60 years of age, training, accommodation, paid travel expenses to Wade Wright Alberta and payment. I think we've heard this before. It's for our own good. It sounds like residential skill to me. This time our youth are promised culture and tradition and the way of visiting a family at a pow-wow. Are these extravagant promises or are they bait? Is it bait for those of us with the least power and privilege and those of us who are the most oppressed? Recruitment of our children will not liberate us from the discriminatory laws that keep us impoverished. Recruitment will not guarantee a life without racism and sexism. Does not give us hope for employment, trading, equality without having to promise to fight a war, to kill other indigenous people or to die. We demand an end to targeted recruitment of First Nations youth or to insist on nonviolent peacemaking solutions and you can all demand an end to the Indian wars here in Canada by insisting on fair sharing of resources and speedy settlement of land claims. They have the power to speak up. You can tell this government that reconciliation with Aboriginal people is not enough. You can demand redress to right the wrongs that have been done to the Aboriginals in the Indian Holocaust. In closing, I want to say let's bring those troops home. Let's bring those troops home to a Canada that we can all be proud of, a Canada that treats all of its citizens with respect, humanity and dignity. Thank you.