Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak

Published purpose

This 30-month project will support a feminist response and recovery from the current impacts of COVID-19, through systemic change. Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak/ Women of the Métis Nation will achieve this by building relationships between equality seeking organizations and other stakeholders to collaborate across sectors to advance gender equality. LFMO will develop and implement community-based approaches to address intersectional barriers to equality for diverse women, while enhancing reconciliation and distinction-based approaches for Indigenous women and/or girls’ safety, economic security and leadership opportunities. At the end of the project, the organization will have contributed to addressing systemic barriers by increasing networks and collaboration to accelerate systemic change, encouraging more equitable and effective sharing of resources and advancing inclusive policies and practices to support women’s equality. This project seeks to enhance, adapt and create new partnerships and frameworks in which to apply the Métis-specific CCGBA+ tool developed by Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak / Women of the Métis Nation. LFMO developed the toolkit with WAGE, in a part project, for use amongst stakeholder groups to ensure that the unique realities facing Métis women are incorporated into Métis-specific, pan-Indigenous, public policies– from the development to implementation. This tool was developed to challenge assumptions on the impact of process, policy and programming on Métis Women and girls in order to set the stage for attitudinal, operational and theoretical shifts. With this project, LFMO will produce an online training tool and a number of educational digital shorts, which will result in the first Métis specific training of this kind. The CCGBA+ tool was designed in the image and in consultation with Métis women, and offers an opportunity for systemic change, policy change, and transformation in many sectors, thus improving access, safety, and enhancing the experiences of Métis Women and girls in Canada.