Dorothy Hayes chose to stand.

“I stand here today because I have a lot of family that are gone and lost,” she said Tuesday at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls , when asked why she decided not to tell her story sitting down.

“I stand for all the elders across Canada, around the world. I stand for all the women, men, young boys, young girls. I stand for them all who have missing family.

“I’m standing up here for all the people that are unable to have the strength and force to stand up and tell our story.”

Hayes, who testified alone, told the commissioners that her father was extremely abusive, and that both her parents survived residential school.

“I’ve been dragged around by the hair, kicked, beat up, strung up on the refrigerator by the neck, with a butcher knife in (my father’s) hand and I fought back,” said Hayes, who is a candidate for chief of the Liard First Nation.

“The abuse we suffered, just is unbearable,” she said.

Hayes counts several family members among the missing and murdered. Her older siblings, Gloria and Georgie, died young, but she doesn’t know how.

Another aunt was shot dead after a two consecutive abusive relationships, said Hayes. She believes the RCMP didn’t do a proper investigation.

Her mother, siblings and many women relatives experienced domestic abuse and other forms of violence.

Hayes said she recognizes that her father’s violent behaviour stemmed from his turbulent childhood.

He was passed from foster home to foster home. He lived through residential school in New Brunswick. His name might not be his real name.

Still, said Hayes, “no matter what you grow up in, don’t inflict it on the next generation.”

Hayes demanded justice for the torment she and her eight siblings endured. She told the commissioners that she reported her father to seven RCMP officers before one finally took her case.

The eighth told her, “No one would give me a story like that unless it was true.”

Hayes was 27 years old when she took her father to court. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison – but didn’t serve the full term, she said.

Testifying was scary, said Hayes, but relieving. That weight wasn’t hers to carry, she said.

“I did nothing wrong.”

Hayes’ was one of countless stories of strength and courage that emerged during the hearings in Whitehorse.

She hopes the national inquiry will illuminate the resilience of indigenous people, who persevered despite Canada’s efforts to eliminate them.

“They’ve survived this long, and to see them even come here and tell their story, where I know people can’t even talk in public or in class, and they have done so to the world, I think that is absolutely awesome,” she told the Star Thursday.

In an interview this morning, Jeanie Dendys, the minister responsible for the Women’s Directorate, said she was in awe of the inquiry participants in Whitehorse.

“Indigenous people in this country are so very, very resilient,” she said.

“People have been waiting a very long time to tell their stories and to give their loved ones a voice.

“It was certainly an honour to sit there with them and hear their stories and to honour them in the way that they should be.”

Over the three days of hearings, Hayes saw a marked change in people after they shared their stories.

“They’re much brighter afterwards,” she said.

“You can see that the weight has been thrown aside and lifted off their shoulders because it’s not theirs to carry,” she said.

But to make a better future for indigenous people in Canada, the commission needs to do more than just hear stories.

Hayes called for improvements to the education system. No student should graduate without knowing how to read, write, use a computer and count money, she said.

The lack of housing in the North must also be addressed, she said.

After everything she’s been through, Hayes never imagined Canada would want to hear her story.

“Would I have ever have dreamed in my life that this would happen? Absolutely not,” she said.

“I would never, ever have dreamed, and here it was reality.”