[Resource Booklet] the grandmother SPIRIT PROJECT

This resource book is intended to help raise awareness of issues of senior abuse in the lives of senior Aboriginal women, their families and communities. It is meant to help promote the safety and well-being of our seniors and Elders, both women and men, and to honour them as they would be traditionally. Developing a safe community for our Grandmothers and Grandfathers requires the efforts of all community members, from our little ones to the Old ones. We all play a role in ending senior abuse and making our communities safe, for this generation and for generations to come.

BACKGROUND:

NWAC’s Grandmother Spirit project was undertaken to raise awareness about issues of senior abuse, safety and well-being for senior Aboriginal women in Canada. The project was based in the belief that Grandmothers (senior Aboriginal women) hold tremendous life experience and wisdom, that should guide work not only about issues of senior abuse, but also about what needs to be done to help ensure that senior Aboriginal women are safe and well in their communities generally. This honours the spirit of our Grandmothers – of the roles our Grandmothers held prior to colonization, and the need to restore recognition and respect of these roles in our communities and Canadian society today.

The project was guided by an Advisory Committee composed of Elders, community members, service providers and academics, and included youth participation. The Committee directed a broader vision of exploring issues impacting safety and well- being for senior Aboriginal women, since, as Grandfather Grafton Antone stated, Aboriginal ways of knowing do not focus on what is bad, or wrong, but look and move towards what we want to see. The Advisory Committee served to ensure this project was carried out in a good way by helping to develop the approach to research, and consulting on issues of ethics, sampling and how to share the knowledge gathered.

The Grandmother Spirit project used an Aboriginal approach to research, gathering together Grandmothers across the country in research circles to gather stories and learn from their life experience and wisdom. Research circles are based in the practices of traditional sharing or teaching circles – for example, that no one is more or less important than anyone else in the circle, that everyone has something to share and something to learn, that there is no beginning and no end, and that we are all connected. A handful of Grandmothers participated in individual interviews instead of circles.

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