Kahnawake launches a new service for victims of crime

Members of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community of Kahnawake – west of Montreal – who are victims of crime can now access a crime service through the Kahnawake justice system.

Defence attorney and Mohawk Council of Kahnawake Chief, Tonya Perron, says “I would have members in the community that would be victims of crime, who would sometimes call me up and ask me – ‘do they need a lawyer?’ ‘What can they do?’ ‘How does this work?’ And so I would often refer them to the external victim of crime services.

“More often than not, people from my community were not comfortable going through that [provincial] service,” Perron adds.

Called “We Are Listening,” the service through the Kahnawake justice system addresses gaps encountered by the Indigenous community in Quebec’s Centre d’Aide aux Victimes d’Actes Criminels – by providing culturally appropriate care.

“What it comes down to is a difference in the social structure that makes Kahnawake different, makes it its own. There’s an element where we understand each other. We understand how the community is set up. We understand what we’ve been through as a collective. We understand our history,” explains victims advocacy worker, Iris Montour.

Being from Kahnawake herself, Montour says “we’re adding layers of trauma – the effects of multi and intergenerational trauma – and there are societal effects that are the results of all that.”

Community advocates say having a safe space to vent has left victims of crime in Kahnawake with a sense of relief.

“If every Indigenous community could actually have that service available to their community members, I think it’s something important that they should start looking at,” Perron says.

“People are happy to have somebody from town that they are able to divulge their situation to,” Montour told CityNews, adding “there’s a lot of emotions that are pent up and to have somebody right there that you can just tell what happened – what is happening, what are the problems, what are you afraid of, who else is impacted – that’s making a huge difference for a lot of people.”