Rachel Fernandez:
But I do see — with people speaking about what happened to them — I do see a difference that's making. So there's people that are coming and they're asking for help, and they're saying, "What's happening?" And they may have disclosed that it's domestic violence, but with that support and help down the line, we learn about sexual violence that is happening. You know, we learn about all the intersections of that violence. We learn about missing and murdered. We learn about the Child Protective Service, that system. We learn about homelessness and what that plays in everything. We learn about, we learn a lot about like substance use too, because there's such a stigma with that also — you know, that is one of the biggest coping mechanisms. And then you have the stigma of, "They're just using drugs. They're just using meth. You know, they're drinking their life away." Hello, I've done that because I didn't have the coping skills, I didn't have a support system. So we're seeing that play into everything when it comes to historical trauma, intergenerational trauma, but with more grassroots and nonprofits organizing and having gatherings and events that will help our community. I see a light at the end of the tunnel, whereas early on in my career, I didn't. I used to be a facilitator for batterers intervention, and when I would go into the jail, I would do assessments, and I would say every male had some kind of violence happen to them. And then you see them perpetrating violence. So we need more men to speak up in a safe space. We need people to acknowledge that and not judge, and not put a stigma on that either — we need more support for them. We need more support for our Two-Spirit, LGBTQ community, because I did a search with one of my friends, and she was telling me about some of the statistics she was looking up with LGBTQ, and there was a lot that weren't reported for missing and murdered. And so I'm thinking about here, of like, "Why don't we talk about that? Why don't we talk about some of the things that happened here?" There's a lot that plays into it, and that's the shame, judgment that people fear because we are so close-knit. When things happen, you know, we're close-knit — everybody knows, or they think they know. And so that adds onto that shame for that victim and survivor, like, "Do I even say anything?"