FW: KKKanadian genocide: child prostitution

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: John Shafer [mailto:wy430@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 3:34 PM
To: warriornet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: KKKanadian genocide: child prostitution



   Natives need help to escape sex trade
   Listening to aboriginals who got out
   is essential, Save the Children report says

   DANIEL LEBLANC
   Tuesday, December 5, 2000 Globe and Mail

   OTTAWA -- A former prostitute offered an unprecedented look yesterday
   into the world of native youths who flee their homes and enter the sex
   trade, arguing that racism in Canada and low self-esteem are at the
   heart of the problem.
   "It's in every community," said Cherry Kingsley. "We need to move on
   this issue . . . because it's a form of slavery, one of the worst
   forms of exploitation and abuse. I have survived this issue. I know it
   to be true."
   Ms. Kingsley and Melanie Mark wrote Sacred Lives, a report released
   yesterday by the non-profit organization Save the Children Canada.
   Ms. Kingsley and Ms. Mark decry the "overrepresentation" of native
   youth in the Canadian sex trade. In Manitoba, for example, 90 per cent
   of the prostitutes working the street are aboriginal, the report said.

   In their report, Ms. Kingsley and Ms. Mark say solutions developed for
   non-native prostitutes cannot help aboriginals.
   They say Canada needs to appoint a board of government officials,
   native leaders and youth who have been involved in prostitution to
   draft a national strategy.
   The hardest-hitting part of the report is the collection of quotes
   from 150 native youth involved in the sex trade.
   They talk about how they were dragged into this world -- their past
   abuse, their low self esteem -- and how they feel they could be saved
   from the sex trade.
   "I grew up feeling I had no worth. I didn't put any worth on myself
   because I wasn't worth anything. I'd given it free for how many past
   years of my life, so that's how I went about it," said one girl in
   Vancouver.
   Another female prostitute in Winnipeg said: "I lost my virginity to
   rape, and I was consistently abused by my mother. I was ashamed of
   myself, who I was, what I looked like and when I met this man he was
   the world to me. He said, 'Oh, you're so pretty,' and I fell for it."

   The solution, according to the young prostitutes, is simple: Getting
   help from other natives who have gone through similar experiences and
   know how to get out.
   "You don't want to go some place and have a suit sitting there saying
   'Come over here and talk to me, I'll fix you'. You know what? I'm just
   going to walk out the door and never come back . . . [Suits] have
   never been on the streets to the point where they're dirty and gross
   and smelly and stinky and hurting," a Vancouver female youth said.

   Senator Landon Pearson, who has worked on the report and is advising
   the government on youth issues, said one of the biggest problems
   facing native prostitutes is racism.
   "Whoever the customers are, they find it easier to commodify these
   kids, instead of someone who reminds them of their daughter."
   Ms. Pearson said the federal government is willing to offer money to
   help solve the problem, but that the solutions must come from within
   the native community.
   Matthew Coon Come, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations,
   said the report shows discrimination has had a tremendous impact on
   the self-esteem and vulnerability of aboriginal youth.
   The Canadian Alliance said the solution is not to spend more money at
   Indian and Northern Affairs, but rather to invest more on drug and
   alcohol rehabilitation centres for all young prostitutes.




References

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