On the mission and goals of IWO

We hope to not just get women involved in outdoor recreation; we want to see them succeed within the industry. We provide a lot of training to get Indigenous women that knowledge, that experience, to become hiking guides or weather forecasters. Whatever they want within the outdoor industry itself. We’re not only focused on them enjoying themselves now — which is very important to our mission — but we also want to see them succeed in the future with employment within the industry. 

For example, with the hiking program that Myia is running this summer, it’s very focused towards individuals who want to get their hiking guide certification. And, through this, getting more Indigenous representation into the outdoors. We can then influence the space, because culturally as Indigenous people we’re very connected to the land — we are the original land stewards. We took care of the territory, our territories. If we have more representation within the industry, I feel like we’ll be able to put that message out there ourselves, as our own people. I feel that will help in the preservation of our planet, our forests and everything that we have that we love so much.

And it’s not just for us, it’s for all BIPoC, all LGBTQ+ people. It’s for everybody. I hope that the change that we’re starting to see within the industry is going to influence more people to try and actively get into these positions, like snowboard instructing. It’s a stepping stone to get others into the outdoor industry.

On the importance of building up Indigenous women 

Our culture was based on a matriarchy. The women were very important. They had very important roles within our communities, but with colonisation that changed completely to men being the main influences in our communities. With a lot of that, women were dehumanised, especially Indigenous women. We weren’t seen as people, so there was a lot of abuse.

We feel that together, as Indigenous women, we are very powerful. If we can lift each other up, hold each other up, then we have it in us, in our bloodline. We are very strong and we are very resilient. That’s why we have women, and people who identify as women, as the focus in our programming. We get asked this quite often as it’s seen as us only reaching out to half the population. But it’s because we need to, we need to influence these women to come into the roles they used to be. They need to be strong leaders because that’s what we were.