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First up, my spirit name is Mnido Giizis Ogichidaa: A Moon Spirit Guardian.

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And one of my fasts, I was given a message

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that there's too many of our women's hearts on the ground.

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and the death of a nation is when our women's hearts are on the ground.

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And that shortly after that fast, I ended up speaking in the parliament of Canada,

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debating the laws on sex work.

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And I was in a room filled with politicians and lawyers

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and everybody with fancy pieces of paper,

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and I was there with my eagle feather.

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And I was talking about

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how 500 women to us,

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is equivalent to 25,000 women in any other community.

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If another community lost 25,000 women,

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I'm sure people would be up in arms.

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They would be organizing.

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They would not sit down and live in silence.

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Um, at Maggie's, our project is the first of its kind in our country.

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And this is years after the Stolen Sisters report.

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I want to acknowledge that 60% of the women found on the pig farm

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were First Nations women.

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That their families had to lobby the police to investigate their crimes.

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Sex workers are mothers,

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they're fathers,

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they're brothers and sisters,

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they're Two Spirit,

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they have other things,

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other than being a sex worker.

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Sex work is their job.

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It's not OK to kill a sex worker.

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It's not OK to kill an Aboriginal woman

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or Two spirited person.

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Um, this is a drum we made at Maggie's,

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it's the first time we did drum-making at Maggie's.

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What we're trying to do with the project

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is we're trying to open the circle

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so that we can include people in our community

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that don't feel part of our community;

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so that we can take them out of isolation and include them in our circle.

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So we're doing that by including them in the sex work community,

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but also reaching out to community organizations

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so that they can participate in community organizing,

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and be OK with saying "Hi, I'm a sex worker".

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Um, shame lives in silence.

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That's been my experience.

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If you wanna get rid of shame,

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we have to start talking.

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You know?

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And it's, this is the remnants possibly of colonialism,

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where we don't talk about sex,

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let alone sex for money.

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So I'm gonna end my speak by acknowledging the spirits that have gone on,

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our mothers, the mothers, the daughters, the aunties.

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That it wasn't because they were a sex worker

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that they deserved to die.

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They did not deserve to die.

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They needed to be honoured,

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they needed to be cherished,

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they needed to be included in the circle.

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So I'm going to sing a song,

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the Seven Grandfather Teaching Song

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on the drum that was made in our sex worker organization,

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for the people who couldn't come here today

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and speak to you about their stories and say "hi, I'm a sex worker".

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And I'm hoping that it can, we can meet people where they are

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instead of waiting til they're healed enough to be in a sweatlodge, or community circles,

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and then maybe we won't have so many vigils.

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[Song begins]

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[others join singing]

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[song ends with cheers]

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Oh, thank you so much for that gift, Maurganne, that was beautiful.