“Silence equals violence.”

That was one of the main messages keynote speaker and journalist Angela Sterritt had for the participants in the second accountability forum for MMIWG2S+ in the Yukon on Monday afternoon.

Sterritt, a well-known broadcast journalist and author previously with the CBC, spoke intimately of her experience growing up under what she called a “colonial” system that taught her many of the painful lessons Indigenous people, especially women, have learned.

She found herself living largely on the streets at the age of 14 after her father, who was Indigenous, was less than supportive to her struggles.

She considers herself a victim of child abuse, one of many in the system she was raised in.

Sterritt said he told her either to leave the family home or find her own help through social services. She chose the former route, and it was only a gift for writing that brought her out of that existence.

She penned what amounted to a suicide note while living in a group home.

Much to her surprise, one of the people working at the home spoke in flattering terms of her writing talent rather than just pleading with her not to carry out her intentions.

That caught her attention, and Sterritt turned her feet onto a new path that carried her into the future.

“That suicide note taught me I could write, and it taught me that I could tell stories of power.”

In the process, she said, she found that her efforts to highlight the struggles of Indigenous women largely rejected and scoffed at.

“It sends a message that we don’t matter. The importance of belonging was stripped away from us,” she told the rapt audience. “But it taught me the power of speaking up and of narrative.”

Needless to say, Sterritt kept pushing.

“We absolutely need to speak up,” she said of Indigenous women and other marginalized groups.

“Our women live in fear they might not make it home alive,” Sterritt said. “We are 12 times as likely to go missing or be murdered.”

Indigenous women are also far more likely to be victims of serial killers, she added.

Child abuse of Indigenous youngsters is also rampant, Sterritt added, as she knew first-hand.

Ignoring it made it seem as if it was a normal thing, she continued.

Still, she praised the efforts of Indigenous families to shine a light on the epidemic of missing and murdered people of Aboriginal ancestry.

“Those families have shown the world that we do matter,” she told the audience.