Natives lack interest - activist

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Lack of interest in the building of a federal women's prison here has a local activist frustrated.

Anita Hunt, a former inmate of Kingston Prison for Women, sits on the citizen's advisory committee for the future Edmonton facility for women. She is upset over the lack of Native representatives in community meetings about the proposed penitentiary.

"I think it's a shame that nobody shows up to speak for Native women," Hunt said. "We need to show that Aboriginals do care, that there are supporters. Maybe not of the prison itself, but of the women inmates," she said.

Having experienced the isolation of being an inmate at Canada's only prison for women, Hunt is committed to the building of an alternative facility in Alberta. Shipping women across the country, leaving many thousands of kilometres from family and children, is wrong and destructive, she said.