About Us
Sisters Walking Together is a team of Indigenous and settler women living in the Vancouver area, committed to walking alongside incarcerated and recently-released women no matter what their situation as they transition and re-integrate.
Within our team, our members have experienced the realities of 60’s scoop, the foster care system, incarceration, substance abuse and recovery, among other things.
Our Story
During the past 2 years a small group of Indigenous & settler women began to pray, weep and dream together about a possible new work of transformational relationships with incarcerated Indigenous women as well as justice advocacy with and for incarcerated Indigenous women.
To build trust and become a team, we shared meals, listened well to each other through cultural differences and honestly addressed conflicts, and learned from wise, experienced Indigenous and other local leaders about incarceration, trauma, and the Canadian systems that work together to funnel Indigenous women into prison.
From Our Team
Sandra is a Cree-Métis Indigenous woman with disability, from The Pas, Manitoba — a survivor of the 60s Scoop who grew up in Winnipeg. She moved to BC in the mid-1980s and is a proud mother of four and grandmother of one.
Sandra served nearly nine years as a Support Worker at Union Gospel Mission, aiding women facing addiction, mental health issues, poverty, homelessness, and Indigenous people with disabilities. With lived experience of domestic violence, she has offered GBV training with Battered Women Support Services.
She serves on the Board of Directors for the Aboriginal Women Action Network (AWAN), the Disability Foundation Canada, Inclusion BC, and BCPF — and is a member of DAWN Canada and the Hummingbird Feminist Disability Coalition. She runs her own business, Lil’ Kokum’s Corner.
Martha Kahnapace's Story
What We Do
Support incarcerated & recently released Indigenous women in their Creator-given cultural and spiritual identity.
Nurture communities of support & transformational relationships so women can experience renewed connection with the Creator, the land, and the nations who have stewarded these lands.
Personal and interpersonal healing:
Without societal justice to end systemic oppression, the harms will continue. The Sisters address unjust systems of incarceration as well as current societal structures which funnel Indigenous women into prison.
"The Spirit of Creator has come to rest on me. He has chosen me to tell the good story to the ones who are poor. He has sent me to mend broken hearts, to tell prisoners they have been set free, to make the blind see again, and to lift up the ones who have been pushed down — to make known that Creator's Year of Setting Free has come at last!" Luke 4:16–19, First Nations Version
To support incarcerated & recently released Indigenous women in their Creator-given cultural and spiritual identity, and to advocate for justice in the prison system.
