Innu community in Quebec signs deal to take back control of child welfare services

 GOOD NEWS

The Canadian flag on the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 2, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

By The Canadian Press|   Jul 10, 2026 

An Innu community in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec has signed a deal with the federal and provincial governments to officially recognize its jurisdiction over child and family services.

The agreement signed today allows for the implementation of a new law establishing a governance framework designed by and for the Uashat mak Mani utenam community.

The law will go into effect in September, replacing the provincial Youth Protection Act in the community’s jurisdiction.

The federal government said in a news release that the law will ensure that decisions about children’s welfare are made by the community in accordance with their customs, language and values.

Today’s signing marks the first Indigenous community in Quebec to enter into a three-party agreement under the federal framework of the Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families.

Ottawa has also committed to investing funds through 2030 to support the Innu community’s assumption of responsibility for child and family services.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 10, 2026.

LINK:

https://halifax.citynews.ca/2026/07/10/innu-community-in-quebec-signs-deal-to-take-back-control-of-child-welfare-services/ 

Sixties Scoop Survivors call for more support in reconnecting with families

STORY: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/its-been-a-painful-journey-sixties-scoop-survivor-recounts-difficulties-finding-biological-family/

“I always knew I was adopted, I always knew I was Indigenous, but I didn’t know what my connection to the community was,” she said. 

In 2015, Strongwind put in a request for her birth certificate, which had her biological mother’s name listed. Katherine Strongwind at four years old. (Handout)

Sixties Scoop Survivor returns home

A Manitoban taken from his family during the Sixties Scoop has returned to Manitoba for the first time in decades. CTV’s Joseph Bernacki reports.

 

Hooker, who has lived his life in New Zealand, was never able to locate his birth mother, until now.

STORY: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/its-pretty-amazing-sixties-scoop-survivor-returns-home-to-manitoba-50-years-after-being-taken-from-his-home/

Tracking Wildfires in CANADA

 

                AUGUST 4, 2025

Read: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/wildfires-tracker-canada 

The smoke has reached us here in western MA.  Air Quality Alerts are posted HIGH until midnite tonite... Trace 

(AFN) 2025 Progress Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) Calls for Justice, Highlighting Human Trafficking Crisis

PRESS RELEASE: https://afn.ca/all-news/press-releases/assembly-of-first-nations-afn-releases-2025-progress-report-on-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls-mmiwg-calls-for-justice-highlighting-human-trafficking-crisis/

“We call on the Government of Canada to act now to ensure full implementation of the Calls for Justice, not only on human trafficking, but also policing, corrections, the impacts of resource extraction, and interjurisdictional and cross-border coordination,” said National Chief Woodhouse Nepinak. “We know what’s possible when governments and institutions act with political will. That same commitment is needed now for every First Nations woman, girl, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ person across this country.”

The report is available here: 2025 Progress Report on Breathing Life into the Calls for Justice: Thematic Analysis on Human Trafficking.

Support is available. The Hope for Wellness Help Line provides immediate mental health counseling and crisis intervention to all Indigenous people across Canada.  This toll-free service is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  To talk with someone, please call 1-855-242-3310. Phone and chat counselling is available in English and French.  Phone counselling is also available in Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuktitut, upon request.

Data shows number of Indigenous kids in foster care is going up

 NEWS VIDEO

‘The bond is broken’: StatCan

Sep 21, 2022

The Canadian Press | Fraser Needham |  

Indigenous population is on the rise, housing still an issue.

A Winnipeg mother says she was scarred for life when her first child was taken away at birth by social workers, who told her she was unfit to parent her newborn daughter because she was just 17 at the time.

“I don’t know how one could fully heal from that trauma,” said the woman, now 41, whom The Canadian Press has agreed not to identify because of her family’s involvement in the child welfare system. “Having a baby taken away from birth the bond is broken.”

Statistics Canada says 2021 census data shows Indigenous children accounted for 53.8 per cent of all children in foster care.

This has gone up slightly from the 2016 census, which found 52.2 per cent of children in care under the age of 14 were Indigenous.

At the time, only about eight per cent of kids that age in Canada were Indigenous.

More than three per cent of Indigenous children living in private households in 2021 were in foster care compared to the 0.2 per cent of non-Indigenous children. Nationally, Indigenous children accounted for 7.7 per cent of all children 14 years of age and younger.

Statistics Canada says because of difficulties in collecting census data on First Nations and other Indigenous communities, some caution should be exercised in comparing census years.

In recent years there has been a significant push from Indigenous leaders and child welfare advocates across the country to address the myriad systemic issues contributing to the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care.

But experts say factors like colonialism, chronic underfunding of child welfare systems, discriminatory practices and poverty remain.

READ

Meet Indigenous podcasters who are decolonizing the airwaves

CBC Radio · April 9, 2021

On Unreserved, Indigenous people are decolonizing our podcast feeds with four great projects. Host Falen Johnson's dog, Reg, enjoys each one equally. (Falen Johnson/CBC, podcast covers submitted)

Unreserved

More and more Indigenous creatives are turning to podcasting as a way to share stories. On Unreserved, we're talking with Indigenous podcasters who are decolonizing the airwaves. 

In 2021, former CBC host, Waubgeshig Rice, sent out a tweet.  It read, "So...who'd be interested in a podcast about Indigenous literature?"  That tweet got more than 8,000 likes, and was enough to support the creation of the Storykeepers Podcast.  The podcast, launched in March in 2021, is hosted by Waubgeshig Rice and writer Jennifer David and is all about Indigenous literature.

Connie Walker was on CBC's airwaves for more than 20 years. Her most recent work focused on telling the stories of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women. Her latest podcast, Stolen: The Search for Jermain, is available through Gimlet Media. 

Glenn Wheeler, a member of the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation, serves as host for the podcast called Mi'kmaq Matters. The podcast was Wheeler's way of keeping in touch with his community despite living in Toronto.

Dene Talk is a brand-new podcast from Cassidy Villebrun-Buracas, who describes it as Indigenous people talking about a wide range of topics. Guests have included writers and burlesque dancers, to psychologists and birth workers.

Kina Gbezhgomi Child and Family Services celebrates 30 years serving First Nations

By Michael Erskine |  MANITOULIN ISLAND

WIIKWEMKOONG – Many of the milestones that have passed over the past year-and-a-half would have been recognized by large gatherings of celebration, but were forced to move online due to COVID-19. The digital venue did not deter nearly 100 attendees of the 30th Kina Gbezhgomi Child and Family Services annual general meeting, however, as board members, staff and parents gathered to mark the organization’s transition 30 years ago from an ad hoc grassroots group of concerned parents and teachers into a major force in the care and protection of Indigenous youth and families.

The meeting was opened by Kina Gbezhgomi Child and Family Services chair Kevin Mossip who introduced the 86 attendees before turning the microphone over to elder Gerry Kaboni for an opening benediction in Anishinabemowin. Drum group Down to Earth then provided a welcoming song.

One of the founders of Kina Gbezhgomi Child and Family Services, elder and retired educator Marion Pitawanakwat recalled the beginnings of the organization and provided a window into what the world was like for Anishinaabe in the early ‘60s when she began her career.

“In 1962 the Indian agent approved me to supply teach,” she recalled. She spoke of her mother, who owned a store at the time and was one of the few employers available in Wiikwemkoong. Her mother would send some of the women who came seeking employment to Ms. Pitawanakwat. “I would write a note for them for what they needed from the store,” she said. It was usually Klik and bread. Ms. Pitawanakwat spoke of how the women coming to her were terrified that their children would be taken away from them. This was the time of the infamous ‘60s Scoop.

“The teachers in the provincial schools were always watching the Native kids,” she said. If the children came to school without a proper lunch or their clothes not clean and tidy, a visit from the child protection agency, Sudbury Family Alliance, would soon follow and the children whisked away, almost certainly to a white foster home. “Very few people in the community had jobs back then,” she said. “Many of the men only had seasonal jobs.”

Ms. Pitawanakwat recalled how, when a non-Native person would come into her classroom, the children would cower beneath her desk. “They had been taught to fear white people, they were always told to hide when they saw white people,” she recalled. Their terror was so real that she would not make the children come out until the white individual had left. That terror was not unfounded. 

“When the truant officer from Indian Affairs would come to the school, they were not interested in anything other than the registry book,” she said. If a child had missed too many days for being sick, notes were taken and soon after the children would be seized from the home.

Ms. Pitawanakwat went on to teacher’s college in 1974 and began teaching full-time. In 1975 she was promoted to principal.

She became involved in the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre at Anderson Lake (just outside Espanola). She recalled how the women would cook for the workers constructing the centre. “That was when I met women from other reserves, places like Cutler, Sagamok and Birch Island and other Island people—especially from Wiikwemkoong.”

In talking to women from other communities, Ms. Pitawanakwat soon learned that she was not alone in what she was seeing in child care and protection services.

“All of the women whose children were in the provincial schools were afraid of losing their children,” she recalled. “We got together and formed a committee. Leona Nahwegahbow was one of the women, she was teaching Kindergarten at the time. We decided we couldn’t keep losing our children like this.”

The group eventually became a formal institution, filing as a non-profit so that they could access funding sources. “We found we could get funding from INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada),” she said. Despite some initial cynicism, the group was delighted when they heard the news. “We got it!” said Ms. Pitawanakwat.

That was just the start of the long battle for recognition and support.

“We asked the chiefs to come to a meeting,” she said. The initial meeting at the high school saw only two chiefs come. “Leona mentioned that maybe we should reach out to the Grand Chief of the Union of Ontario Indians (now the Anishinabek Nation).” With the grand chief on their side, the next meeting saw a much greater take-up. (That grand chief, she noted, went on to pass the bar exam and become a lawyer.) “We were his first job,” she laughed. “To this day I don’t know if we paid him enough.”

From there things took off, with the United Chiefs and Councils of Mnidoo Mnising later taking over the helm. Despite that support it still took many years before Kina secured the role of child protection agency for Northern Indigenous communities.

Receiving recognition for five years of service were Ginger Radey, Heather Corbiere, John Ferguson, Kendra Makitalo, Kora-Lyn Paulin, Mike McCormick, Wendy Debassige, Shanah Pitawanakwat, Dawna Lee Chartrand and Anita McGregor-Aelick.

Receiving recognition for 10 years of service were Denise Morrow, Scott Madahbee and Miranda Corbiere.

Retiring board member Maureen (Tish) Manitowabi was recognized for her 15 years of service to the organization and singled out for special acknowledgement. 

“Chi-miigwetch for letting me be with the board,” said Ms. Manitowabi in an emotional farewell. “It was hard,” she said of the challenges that were faced, but added she was “glad we supported each other.”

Whitefish River First Nation elder Leona Nahwegahbow was recognized for her years of service as a board member, since 1989, and the key role she played in ensuring the success of the organization and ongoing support. Mr. Mossip was cited for his 11 years as board chair and his key role in governance support.

The new community representative board members for Kina Gbezhgomi Child and Family Services are Ogimaa-kwe Patsy Corbiere for Aundeck Omni Kaning, Ogimaa-kwe Linda Debassige for M’Chigeeng, Chief Andrew Aguonie for Sheguiandah, Chief Dean Roy for Sheshegwaning, Chief Shining Turtle for Whitefish River, acting Chief Tom Ominika for Wiikwemkoong and Chief Irene Kells for Zhiibaahaasing.

The closing song was offered by Thunder Earth Drum Group.

 

It’s long past time for our country to apologize publicly for what it did to Native people

 Ed. Note: It's time Native People correct the his-story, our-story, and that won't be easy. TL Hentz

 

A dozen long years ago, we led the congressional effort to issue an official apology by the U.S. government to Native peoples. Now it's time for the U.S. president to make good on that sentiment and say it publicly.

It’s time — long past time — to officially acknowledge what our country did and to speak an apology. Not only for taking children from Native families, but for the broken treaties and the carnage visited upon First Nations people by U.S. government policy. Without this necessary step, the healing process our community desperately needs cannot truly commence, and we cannot repair the resentment that stems from our troubled past.

GOOD READ: Opinion | It’s long past time for our country to apologize publicly for what it did to Native people - The Washington Post

 

Still a Problem, Finding Bodies and Unsolved Murders #adopteevoices

Last week it was discovered that they are forcibly putting in IUDs into Native kids under 10, this week they discovered 215 bodies of Native kids under a school. These are issues that are person to me and so many of us.

It's so dangerous just being a Native child.

— Lucas Brown Eyes (@LucasBrownEyes) May 28, 2021

 

the government of Canada 🇨🇦 covered up the death and murder of those 215 children in that government run school, a school only 60 km from where I grew up, if I was born one generation earlier I would have been forced into that school! My father was a residential school survivor

— Kanahus Manuel (@KanahusFreedom) May 28, 2021

 

The long history of discrimination against First Nations children Learn more about how Canada repeatedly chose to not act on solutions to stop the harm to, and deaths, of children and why it is still a problem. https://t.co/7CnMuImGyH

— Cindy Blackstock (@cblackst) May 28, 2021

 

We Need To Talk About Adoptee Suicide, Now | InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) #adopteevoices https://t.co/n4cEmyLGOH

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) May 28, 2021

 

It would also be really beneficial if when suicide deaths are recorded, that the adoption status of the person is included in the data.

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) May 28, 2021

 

Remains of 215 children found buried at former B.C. residential school, First Nation says

CBC News · Posted: May 27, 2021

The former Kamloops Indian Residential School is seen on Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation in Kamloops, B.C., on May 27, 2021. The remains of 215 children have been found buried on the site, the First Nation said. (Andrew Snucins/The Canadian Press)

 

 

Headlines: Indian Country Today #MMIWG

 Please support and read HIGH COUNTRY NEWS concerning Indian Country. It's fantastic!

The everyday violence of Indian Country’s ‘bordertowns’ In ‘Red Nation Rising,’ violence in the communities abutting reservations illuminates colonialism’s continued presence.

The Arrow Lakes Band is one of many Indigenous communities bisected and disrupted by a border about which they were never consulted.

Supreme Court of Canada affirms trans-boundary Indigenous rights   🠟🠟🠟 #MMIWG

Tribes unveil landmark missing and murdered Indigenous person response

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes worked with federal agencies to complete a first of its kind plan to address the crisis.

By Jessica Douglas

Two years ago, on a February evening, Ellie Bundy attended a tribal working group in Arlee, Montana, on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Surrounded by local and tribal law enforcement, tribal members and families, Bundy listened as people told stories about loved ones or community members who had gone missing. “What if that were my daughter?” Bundy said. “We say that a lot, but really, what if it were my daughter? What if it were my sister? What if it were my cousins? It is a visual you just can't get out of your head.” The meeting was one of four hosted by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to encourage discussion and come up with local community responses to the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Bundy is now a councilwoman for the Salish and Kootenai, as well as the presiding officer of the Montana Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force. For the past five months, she and other tribal officials have participated in a series of working groups with federal, state and local law enforcement and community organizations. On April 1, at a press conference at the tribal headquarters in Pablo, Montana, the Salish and Kootenai joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in announcing the completion of the first Tribal Community Response Plan to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people. As the first plan of its kind to be developed, it will serve as a model that tribal governments across Indian Country can adapt to meet their own specific needs. It marks a critical milestone in the effort to resolve the crisis, something that advocates say must be led by tribal nations and supported by the federal government. The new plan comes at a unique time nationally, after the passage of federal legislation including Savanna’s Act and renewing the Violence Against Women Act, coupled with executive-branch initiatives, such as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s new unit in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was created specifically to investigate crimes involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Read more

Where is my buffalo robe? #60sScoop

 As I see theft of Indigenous identity, I'm left to forge myself from scraps

Crystal Semaganis · for CBC News ·Jan 06, 2021 

 

A survivor of the Sixties Scoop, Crystal Semaganis is working to piece together an identity that was torn away from her by government policy. (Submitted by Crystal Semaganis)

When I see the cultural appropriation and identity theft of Indigenous people — the Latimer situation and others like it — it stirs something ancient in me, that resonates deep like the heartbeat of Mother Earth herself.

I was part of the Sixties Scoop. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, it refers to the tens of thousands of Indigenous children apprehended by the government to be assimilated and raised in non-Indigenous homes. In my case, the AIM (Adopt Indian and Métis) program of Saskatchewan from the 1960s and 1970s placed me permanently in a white family in small-town Saskatchewan.

I am part of the national Sixties Scoop settlement which seeks to compensate those wronged by the erasure of our cultural identity and birthright.

Now, five decades later, that loss echoes in all that I am and do. I make my home in Témiscaming, Quebec on the beautiful Ottawa River. I remain an activist on Indigenous issues, but the recent spotlight on Indigenous identity, race shifting and cultural appropriation tears at the core of me. I find myself sitting wondering, where is my buffalo robe?

The buffalo robe I speak of is my Indigenous identity (Plains Cree) and I am one of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people displaced by centuries of Canadian government policy, left to forge my Indigenous self from scraps left by politicians, capitalism and exploitation. That's why these issues strike so deeply for Indigenous people.

My buffalo robe is my identity. It is my jingle dress on the pow wow trail. When I dance, the spirits move me and I dance without tiring, without shame and with great pride. Pow wow is a ceremony: flying ribbons, eagle feathers, all the colours of the rainbow moved by the resilience and humility of my people — a glimpse of that sacred buffalo robe on my shoulders.

Traditional Knowledge

SOURCE: MFNERC’s blog

I first heard the term Traditional Knowledge when I lived up in the Northwest Territories. I lived in a small community of about 500 people called Fort Good Hope. The majority of people are Dene, and probably about a third of them speak their traditional language, Slavey.

Elders are keepers of much Traditional Knowledge

A friend of mine, who worked for a land use planning board, told me about Traditional Knowledge and gave me some literature to read when I asked her for more information. While I was reading I became frustrated because I still couldn’t really figure out what it was. This is mostly because, as I came to learn, it is not something that is easy to specify or categorize. Yet, in today’s world most people like things to be definable. Modern influences compel us to put labels on everything. But reading about Traditional Knowledge, this wasn’t the case and I ended up with many more questions.
I was very lucky to be actually living in a place where I could ask people about Traditional Knowledge, people who lived it in their day-to-day lives. So I didn’t really need a dictionary definition to further understand it, I could just walk down the road. I visited with community members who were living off the land. One Elder took me on many boat rides down the Mackenzie River and hikes in the nearby rocks to teach and tell me stories about the history and geography of the area. Another friend, the Chief of Fort Good Hope at the time, was a very gracious man who was so willing to share much information with me – particularly regarding the seasons of the river, and the importance of the drum. He was also a residential school survivor who practiced compassion and took part in ceremonies in order to heal, and was not afraid to speak about it to those who were eager to listen. Through these different experiences and interactions I came to learn that Traditional Knowledge is something one does, rather than simply something one knows. It is a process, and a way of living that is deeply connected with the land. It is a personal relationship with Creation and the natural world. It isn’t linear, but should be viewed as a circle.

As Deborah McGregor says in her 2015 article from American Indian Quarterly entitled “Coming Full Circle”:

Traditional Knowledge cannot be separated from the land

Building on prior learning and traditions is never a direct or linear path. Instead, Indigenous science pursues a rather meandering path around things and over obstacles, a roundabout way. In the Western mindset, getting from point A to B is a linear process, and in the Indigenous mindset, arrival at B occurs through fields of relationships and establishment of meaning, a sense of territory, a sense of breadth of the context.

Relationships are key when it comes to Traditional Knowledge, relationships with the Creator, the land, and other people. For those who are interested in learning more about it, the question should not be, What is Traditional Knowledge? It should be, Am I ready to receive Traditional Knowledge?

[please visit their blog for more, including books on this topic]

**

Coming to Manitoba

(Courtesy of bandwidth digital releasing ltd.) Movies! Movies! Movies! Created by Hollywood actor Adam Beach, bandwidth is a mobile movie house releasing Aboriginal and mainstream ‘first-run’ Hollywood feature films in Canada and the United States. And three communities in Manitoba will soon be experiencing bandwidth first hand: Norway House, Brokenhead and Sandy Bay First Nations.

How do we heal trauma suffered by Native communities?

BY GABOR MATE’ SOURCE

It is not enough that the Attawapiskat First Nation has declared a state of emergency over the epidemic of suicides and suicide attempts among its youth. Our entire country should declare a state of emergency about the appalling health status, physical and mental, of First Nations and Inuit communities. Would we not have already if, instead of Nunavut or Attawapiskat, it was, say, the teens of Westmount, Forest Hill or Kitsilano who were killing themselves at 10 times the national rate?

I am often asked to visit First Nations communities across Canada to speak about addiction, stress-related illness and child development. The ordinary Canadian citizen simply has no idea, cannot even begin to imagine, what misfortunes, tragedies and other kinds of adversity many native young people experience by the time they reach adolescence – how many deaths of loved ones they witness, what abuse they endure, what despair they feel, what self-loathing plagues them, what barriers to a life of freedom and meaning they face.

At the core of the suicide pandemic is unresolved trauma, passed almost inexorably from one generation to the next, along with social conditions that induce further hopelessness. The source of that multi-generational trauma is this country’s colonial past and its residue in the present. The march of the history and progress Canada celebrates, from which we derive much pride and national identity, meant catastrophe for natives: the loss of lands and livelihood and of freedom of movement, the mockery and invalidation of their spiritual ways, the near-extirpation of their culture, the corruption of their intra-familial and intra-communal relationships, and finally, for nearly a hundred years, the state-sanctioned abduction, rape, physical abuse and mental torture of their children.

The questions we must ask ourselves nationally are very simple. How do we as a country move to heal the trauma that drives the misery of many native communities? What can be done to undo the dynamics our past has dictated? Some may balk at such inquiry, fearing the discomfort that comes with guilt. However, this is not a matter of communal guilt, but of communal responsibility. It is not about the past. It is about the present. And it is about all of us: When some among us suffer, ultimately we all do.

To begin, native history must be taught fully and in unsparing detail in our schools. All Canadians should know, for example, that 50 years ago it was not unheard of for a four-year-old girl to have a pin stuck in her tongue for the crime of speaking her mother language and later endure serial rape by teachers, religious mentors. Such were the antecedents of today’s drug use and suicidal anguish. The resonant values, brilliant art, stories and wisdom culture of First Nations people should be introduced in Canadian schools. Canadians must be helped to see their First Nations peers in their fullness, which includes their humanity, grandeur, unspeakable suffering and strength.

We must renounce any political, economic or social policy that reinforces the colonial trauma of disempowerment, loss and dispossession. Not another square centimetre of native land must be disturbed, not a blade of grass cut, not one more drop of water diverted, not a millimetre of pipeline laid without First Nations agreement.

Institutions and individuals interacting with native people must become deeply trauma-informed. Judges, teachers, law-enforcement personnel, nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, public employees, policy-makers all must understand what trauma is, its multiple impacts on human mentality and behavior, and how to address it. Without such information, as I have witnessed repeatedly, the best-meaning people can unwittingly re-traumatize those who can least bear further pain and loss. Practices that devastate families must be stopped, such as the frequent apprehension of children without restorative and compassionate family-building support.

Alternative forms of justice must be developed, aligned with native traditions and in consultation with First Nations. The implicit racism in our law-enforcement institutions must be openly acknowledged and cleansed. Powerfully beneficial traditional healing practices must be researched, taught, encouraged. We need to celebrate the First Nations cultural renaissance, a tribute to human resilience, now taking place.

Economic and social conditions that engender despair must be addressed, with the utmost urgency. If we could spend more than $15-billion on our self-declared mission to help the people of Afghanistan, surely we can find the resources in our rich land to help redeem people whom our history continues to victimize.

(Gabor Maté is a retired B.C. physician who specializes in addiction.)

Truth and Reconciliation Commission BIG STRIDES to #TEACHTRUTH

Commission chairman Justice Murray Sinclair, centre, and fellow commissioners Marie Wilson, right, and Wilton Littlechild discuss the commission's report on Canada's residential school system at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 2, 2015. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

TRC findings on residential schools to be used in Yukon classrooms

'This is Canadian public history,' says TRC commissioner about making materials public domain

CBC News Posted: Sep 27, 2015 

Students in Yukon will be learning more about residential schools this year.

Yukon schools will be using material prepared by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Commissioner Marie Wilson said the recordings made by the TRC  belong to all Canadians, which is why the TRC is putting its material online and in the public domain.

"This is Canadian public history and is really essential," she said.  

Anyone can reproduce the material, make physical copies of books or create publications with survivors' stories.

Different publishing houses are already adapting the TRC's material

"I think the point of it all is that there's no one publication that tells the whole story," Wilson said.

Making the material available for free also saves money, Wilson said. "In Ottawa we had 500 copies of things that we prioritized in sharing out with survivors who were there," she said.

"We can't say that we've provided enough copies for the 70,000 survivors that are alive today, not for all the schools."

In Yukon, the department of education has already worked with the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation to produce a hard copy book called Finding Our Way Home.

MORE:

The Department of Education says it will use TRC materials in classrooms this year. The department established a Grade 10 Social Studies unit on residential schools last year.

The book Survivors Speak and other titles can be downloaded for free from the TRC website.

A sense of relief and a sense of accomplishment is how Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus described the mood in Ottawa as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 recommendations on how the country can move forward after residential schools.

Judy Gingell, an executive elder for Kwanlin Dün First Nation and a former Commissioner of Yukon, says she agrees with the TRC panel's recommendations and says education is essential to true reconciliation. (CBC)

Now that the truth is out, it's up to Canadians to take on the role of reconciliation.
"All Canadians have a personal responsibility to learn about this time in Canadian history," she said in a statement. "Before reconciliation can truly move ahead, we all need to know the truth of what happened."

It's estimated between 3,000 and 4,000 Inuit from Nunavut attended residential schools.

Therese Ukaliannuk of Igloolik, Nunavut, says her 6-year-old daughter was taken to residential school while she was in the south with tuberculosis. She never saw her daughter again, or learned where she was buried. (CBC)

"We still have much grieving to do for this time in our lives and our families and our history, and must continue to work to find ways to heal and move on to healthier futures," Towtongie said.  

In a news release, the Makivik Corporation said it is pleased with the TRC's work and its final report and recommendations.

"Now we have been given the whole story and a blueprint to recovery. Let's do it," said Jobie Tukkiapik, Makivik Corporation president, in the release.

Therese Ukaliannuk, an elder from Igloolik, Nunavut, who now lives in Iqaluit, told her story to Igalaaq host Madeleine Allakariallak in Inuktitut.

Ukaliannuk's six-year-old daughter was sent south to residential school while she herself was in the south receiving treatment for tuberculosis. The little girl never returned.
Her mother never learned where she is buried.

• Truth and Reconciliation report brings calls for action, not words
• Truth and Reconciliation: More stories, analysis, photos, videos

Related Stories

• Yukon looks to add residential school curriculum
• Northerners react to Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report
• Canada's residential school story to be taught in classrooms this fall
• Residential school survivors to teach students in Cape Breton

Debby Poitras: First Nations Siblings Unite

Debby's photo

My friend Debby Poitras-Precius from Toronto contributed to the book TWO WORLDS and CALLED HOME, two ground-breaking anthologies of Native adoptee narratives.

Please read about Debby's remarkable reunion with her siblings.

http://www.mjtimes.sk.ca/News/Local/2011-06-21/article-2600941/Siblings-unite-and-visit-mothers-grave/1

‘We found you in a catalogue of Native children’ #60s Scoop

CLICK ‘We found you in a catalogue of Native children’

I also want to share this link to a recent post on my Lara blog about adoption>>>here

Victory for First Nations could cost Ottawa billions

Ottawa spends $3 million to battle First Nations child welfare case

Heather Scoffield,              October 01, 2012

 

OTTAWA - The federal government has been billed more than $3 million for its unsuccessful attempts to keep a high-stakes battle over First Nations child welfare out of the courts.
Invoices obtained through Access to Information show the Justice Department, acting on behalf of Aboriginal Affairs, paid out at least $3.1 million for legal services between 2007 and June 2012.
Government lawyers were trying to quash claims from First Nations child rights advocates that Ottawa is short-changing native communities by funding child welfare services at 22 per cent below provincial levels.
The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations launched a human rights challenge that dates back to 2007.
They say the federal government is discriminating by not providing the same level of child welfare support to First Nations children as other children in Canada receive from provincial governments.
Ottawa has challenged the advocates with legal technicalities at every step along the way, arguing that the case does not belong in the court system.
After much back and forth, and more than $3 million later, the Federal Court rejected the government's arguments, ordering a full hearing at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
"They've spent that trying to avoid this hearing on the truth," said Cindy Blackstock, the society's executive director.
"That really raises the question of what they're trying to hide. All we've wanted from the get-go is a factual hearing on whether they're discriminating or not."
Indeed, last week, the tribunal decided to set aside several weeks of hearings on the issue in February and March.
"I'm expecting Canada to really drag it out and use about any tactic they can to drag it out," said Blackstock.
Blackstock obtained the federal invoices through an Access to Information request and provided the documents to The Canadian Press.
At stake is far more than federal funding for child welfare.
If the First Nations advocates win the day, the case will put pressure on Ottawa to increase child welfare funding, as well as to match provincial funding in other areas of First Nations services, such as schooling, special education, policing and health.
Already, First Nations have started legal action on special education and policing in Ontario, using similar arguments to the child welfare case.
Victory for the First Nations could cost Ottawa billions.
"We think that after these cases go through, the federal government's programs for First Nations people will need a drastic overhaul in order to deliver services equal to what other Canadians receive," said Kent Elson, a Toronto lawyer who is involved in the policing and special education challenges.
But if the government wins, recently won powers for First Nations to launch human rights complaints would be severely restricted, the acting head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has said.
"We think this is one of the most important human rights issues this decade," Elson added.
Aboriginal Affairs officials said Monday they don't intend to speculate on how much the case will cost at the end of the day, but spokeswoman Genevieve Guibert said in an email that the government hopes the tribunal will dismiss the complaint, putting an end to litigation.
The government has increased the funding from $449.5 million a year in 2006-07 to its current level of $580 million, Guibert said.
A spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said last week that the federal government does not believe the courts are the proper forum for differences over child welfare.
"We believe that the best way to ensure First Nations children and families get the supports and services they need is by working together — with First Nations, provinces and territories — and not through the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal," Jan O'Driscoll wrote in an email.
"Our commitment to supporting First Nations children and families is clear."
O'Driscoll said funding for family services has "significantly increased" and the quality of such services has improved to focus on preventing the problems that jeopardize the welfare of native children.
"As this matter is before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment further."
But Blackstock said she and the AFN worked for 10 years behind the scenes to negotiate a compromise with the government, before turning to legal action.
"The bigger question is, do we want to be a country where racial discrimination is a way that we save the government money? This case is fundamentally about the type of Canada we want," she said.
"It's not a legitimate fiscal restraint measure."
First Nations children are dramatically over-represented in the child welfare system, mainly because of poverty, overcrowded housing and poor parenting linked to substance abuse and neglect, research shows.
Recent census data shows there were nearly 30,000 children in foster care in Canada on a given day. Other research suggests about 70,000 children pass through foster homes at some point in a given year.
Up to 40 per cent of those children are First Nations kids, Blackstock said.
Last week, the United Nations committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child took Canada to task over its treatment of aboriginal, immigrant and disabled children.
When asked about the criticism in the House of Commons, Conservative parliamentary secretary Bob Dechert lashed out at the UN committee rather than address the child welfare matter.
"The sad reality is that Syria is a member of this committee," Dechert said.
"Syria, a country whose rulers are stealing the innocence of an entire generation of its children, is criticizing Canada. Imagine that. This is no doubt to distract from the atrocities that Syrian children are currently facing every day."

© The Canadian Press, 2012

Read it on Global News: Global News | Ottawa spends $3 million to battle First Nations child welfare case

Court victory for First Nations child welfare

Archive photo: Cindy Blackstock 

Link: http://www.causes.com/causes/2181-first-nations-aboriginal-rights/actions/1644003?causes_ref=email&template=activity_mailer%2Fnew_activity&utm_campaign=action_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes

The Federal Court has handed First Nations groups and child-welfare advocates a victory.

In a much-anticipated ruling Wednesday morning (on April 18, 2012), the court has rejected the federal government's attempts to prevent First Nations groups from arguing for better funding for child welfare on reserves.

The ruling means First Nations and the federal government will have a full-blown hearing about whether Ottawa is treating native children unfairly.

"It's a real victory for all the children who have waited so long for this," said Cindy Blackstock, who heads the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and spearheaded the legal challenge.

First Nations groups say Ottawa is discriminating against native kids because the support the feds provide for child welfare on reserves is much lower than what kids off reserves get from provincial governments – even though the need is greater.

Blackstock figures the federal government should be spending about $200 million a year more, in order to just match the level of service the provinces deliver to non-aboriginal children.

But the federal government has tried to block the case on technicalities, saying it was not fair to compare federal services to provincial services.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal initially sided with the apples-and-oranges argument from the government, and rejected the case without hearing substantive arguments. But today, the Federal Court disagreed, and has ordered the tribunal to hold a new hearing, under a completely new panel of decision-makers.

"It's a real slap to the tribunal. They have to go back to the drawing board," said Carolyn Bennett, the Liberals' aboriginal affairs critic.

Ruling opens door to challenges
Officials in Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ruling opens the door to similar challenges on federal funding to First Nations for education, policing and health, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The ruling from the judge, Anne Mactavish, said that in day-to-day practice, the federal government frequently compares its own child welfare services to services delivered by provinces. "The tribunal erred in failing to consider the significance of the government's own adoption of provincial child welfare standards in its programming manual and funding policies," she writes.

The prevalence of First Nations children in child-welfare system across Canada is far higher than for non-aboriginal children. There are far more native children in care now than at the height of the residential school system.

A recent study of maltreatment of First Nations children found that children on reserves are far more likely to be living in a problematic situation than non-aboriginal children. The national study found that First Nations children are eight times more likely to be subjected to neglect, and 4.7 times more likely to be exposed to violence.

For years, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada as well as the Assembly of First Nations have argued that the federal government would be better off funding prevention services and supports for families, rather than paying for foster care.

"The difficulties facing many of the families involved in these First Nations child welfare investigations may require programs offering longer-term, comprehensive services designed to help them address the multiple factors – such as poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence and social isolation – which pose chronic challenges to their abilities to ensure the well being of First Nations children," the report concludes.

The federal government has recently started moving in that direction, but slowly.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/04/18/pol-first-nations-court-welfare.html

Toronto Birthmother story

I had to share this. A birthmother wrote in response to this: http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2011/04/red-road-documentary-from-canada-60s_11.html

I am so happy that this lost spirit has found his roots after living a life of not knowing where he fit in! I have never given up the hope that one day my son who was taken from me at birth will somehow find his true family. I just hope that it isn't too late for us to join each other. I have always believed that my son is out there someplace and he will come home soon. He was taken from me on October 17,1976 from Toronto General Hospital. I was told that he died at birth. I never was asked if I wanted to see or hold him. To tell him how much his mommy loves him. I was just a young mother with a child of 11 months at home and a baby that I so wanted to bring home. I never was told where or when he was buried never laid eyes on him ever. I felt that something wasn't right but I was to with drawn from the loss that I just couldn't bare the loss. To this day the thoughts of it burns at my insides. I never knew about the 60's or 70's scoop until just with-in the last few years. That is when I got my answers to what happen. I believed that my baby boy was more then likely one of the native children that was scooped that day. I hope that this man isn't bitter towards his true Mom for what he went through. May the Creator bless him with true happiness in his life now that he has found his true identity as a Proud Native Man. From this story of this man it gives me the added hope that my son to will find me some day.
Signed BM (which means birthmom)

Remember this adoptees - closed adoption was used as a weapon! First Nations Families, please start your search now...If you need my help, email me... Trace (tracedemeyer@yahoo.com)