Cree Women of Eeyou Istchee Association

Published purpose

Through this 39-month project, the Cree Women of Eeyou Istchee Association (CWEIA) will increase its ability to prevent and address gender-based violence (GBV) against Indigenous women, girls, or 2SLGBTQI+ people, with a focus on indigenous women from the Eeyou Istchee territory in Quebec. This will first be achieved by gathering quantitative and qualitative data on local population’s level of knowledge about GBV. Based on the information gathered, a taskforce will be created to support, via an online workshop series, CWEIA’s 11 local member association’s prevention and awareness-raising efforts for Eeyou Istchee’s population of all ages on various GBV issues. This project will engage the Gookumnouch Advisory Paataksuun as well as traditional healers in order to create a safe space for dialogue between CWEIA’s staff and its local member associations in order to be better equipped to understand and discuss GBV issues from a culturally relevant perspective as well as to provide comfort and accompany local populations feeling triggered and/or stigmatised by various lived experiences of GBV. Additional partners include the Cree Board of Health and Social Services, Eeyou Eenou Police force and the Cree Nation Government who will have representation on the project’s taskforce in order to disseminate awareness-raising information and training materials on GBV in their respective networks. By the end of the project, CWEIA will have strengthened its capacity to prevent and address GBV against Indigenous women, girls, as well as 2SLGBTQI+ people, with a focus on improving the capacity of its local member associations as well as deepen its collaborative relationships with local community and institutional partners on addressing gender-based violence.