Pauktuutit women’s organization receives $125,000 for leadership project
Funding from feds will help address gender-based violence, says president
Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada president Rebecca Kudloo said $125,000 in funding announced Jan. 21 from the Department of Women and Gender Equality will go towards supporting the organization’s efforts to enhance the participation of Inuit women in leadership roles across Canada. (Photo courtesy of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada)
The national organization representing Inuit women in Canada has received $125,000 from the federal Department of Women and Gender Equality.
Rebecca Kudloo, president of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, said the money will go towards the organization’s Empowering Inuit Women in Leadership project.
“The main goal of the project is to develop leadership opportunities that will help to address gender-based violence,” Kudloo said in an email.
She added the project will also help give Pauktuutit a community presence.
The project aims to implement a gender-based violence framework to advance Inuit women’s leadership. She said Pauktuutit applied to the department for the funding.
“It is our hope that the outcomes of our initial research will lead to opportunities to better meet the needs and aspirations of Inuit women,” she said.
“The goal is to improve or enhance the participation of Inuit women leadership roles across Canada.”
Marci Ien, minister for women and gender equality and youth, announced via a Facebook livestream on Jan. 21 that $14 million will go towards 34 projects supporting Indigenous women across Canada.
She said in a media release that the funding is meant to help address the intersectional barriers to equality that many communities face.
“We cannot achieve true and lasting gender equality without ensuring the safety of diverse Indigenous peoples,” Ien said, adding that community organizations saw an increased demand for support during the pandemic.
The project’s focus is on improving economic participation of Indigenous women, increasing leadership in various sectors and preventing and eliminating gender-based violence.
Other northern Indigenous organizations who will receive funding include the Yukon Aboriginal Women’s Council and the Whitehorse Aboriginal Women’s Circle.
What an organization like this really excels at is its mastery of the progressive lexicon toward the furtherance of its most important goal, existence in perpetuity.
Here is an example:
Kudloo said: “funding is meant to help address the intersectional barriers to equality that many communities face…. We cannot achieve true and lasting gender equality without ensuring the safety of diverse Indigenous peoples.”
Incredible, such beautiful language… very impressive abstractions, like art. Dare we ask the media or Pauktuutit to interpret for us (you know, reify, right)? Or will we expose ourselves as the troglodytes we clearly are by speaking up?
Best not to take the risk..
Which is too bad because I suspect the use of abstract language operates a bit like a moat, or barrier, preventing serious questions from being asked, all behind an illusion of extreme seriousness.
I would be interested to see a breakdown of funding, expenditures and outcomes on this. How, for example, does this funding aim to address those “intersectional barriers”? Will they create “resources” (pamphlets, literature…? Which is about all I can see in their latest annual report.
“Leadership” says nothing about causation or objectives. It’s just slush money.
There are seldom problems in a society warranting this kind of slush where people of both sexes are educated, skilled and gainfully employed in rewarding work.
There’s been a role reversal in Inuit society with many excessively assertive women now filling the “leadership role” that men used to fill.
Education for Indigenous peoples fails male youth even more than it fails female youth. That accounts for the superior employment opportunities for women, the role reversal, and the marginalization and frustration of many Inuit men.
I agree the violence in Nunavut by Inuit women is shocking but no one wants to talk about it. Time to start having those conversations and take responsibility for what you can change.