Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just a few comments to my support. Anytime we look at something that would support the elders in whatever fashion, I like to lend my support. I would like to thank the Member from Yellowknife here for bringing this forward to recognize the date of June 15
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to 18
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, I believe it’s Elder Abuse Week, and
also to bring awareness to the elders.
When you read the report that the Member has made reference to, it’s fairly frightening. A lot of the issues that the elders are dealing with, sometimes they think it’s the normal way of how things are
done in the community, or they haven’t really recognized the level of degrees of abuse that they may be suffering or taking on. They think that’s okay or normal for friends and family members to take advantage of them.
Financial, not taking care of them, emotional abuse, or just by using your mouth. A lot of these elders are scared in our communities. A lot of them shouldn’t be like that; however, that’s the way society is operating. That’s how we’re living today.
As Members of the Legislative Assembly, if it wasn’t for our elders, we would have it difficult in our communities. It’s the elders that through the preservation of their strength and courage that they give us advice to keep on going. It’s a sad day in the Northwest Territories when we as legislators think that we know it all and we don’t want to really give that much support to our elders. This is giving some promise to the awareness for our elders, for the prevention, and to really understand our grandparents and understand our people.
I want to say thank you to the Member and hope that one day we’ll have an elders secretariat within the government, that this government here can take some real ownership, like they have with the Women’s Secretariat, and the secretariat can be set up within the future government to say you are important to us, you matter, and abuse has to stop at all levels. No more shall elders be taken advantage of. That is not our culture and that is wrong. That is wrong by all our people. Hopefully our elders can have some level of comfort that this week here will be given to them, because they certainly deserve it. My grandmother deserves it. So do each of the grandparents in this room here.