“I remember them taking me away from my mother and my step father. I could hear them telling my mom that it was the best thing for me and not to worry, that I would be looked after. The next day I woke up with hundreds of total strangers, my size, my age, not knowing what they are doing with all of us here…That’s where my whole life really started to change because I got strapped, beaten up for speaking my own native tongue…”
“In the early 1970s, when my two sisters and I were very young, we were taken away from our biological parents and placed in foster homes. We were adopted into a non-Indigenous household in Ontario, three thousand miles away from our homeland, our people, our language and anything vaguely familiar to our Cree culture. Life was difficult in our new home; we dealt with isolation, racism and sexual and physical abuse for many years. All three of us had run away by the time we were fifteen-years-old. Eventually we all found our way back to Alberta.”
The quotes I shared above are true experiences of just two Residential School and “Sixties Scoop” survivors. There were children taken from their homes even before the age of five, but most had to be as tall as a metre stick when the “Indian Agent” was determining who would be taken to Residential School. As a result of being forcibly removed from their home communities, their ability to develop a clear sense of self was hindered. However, when the Residential School era came to an end, the Sixties Scoop still continued and custom adoption continues today in another form, hence why I put “Sixties Scoop” in air quotes. Indigenous children are overrepresented in the child welfare system today. They are taken from their homes and put into a mainstream foster care system, which in turn is detrimental to a youth’s identity; no longer being exposed to their traditional ways of knowing.
Intergenerational trauma is apparent in First Nations communities and the systemic removal of children from their homes by the foster care system further hinders the whole life cycle wheel (Pg. 14) and most definitely does not help mitigate the effects of the intergenerational trauma that is so deeply experienced amongst community members. First Nations children should be provided adequate child-care and mental-health programs in their communities. However, many children are being denied care in discriminatory ways through not receiving the equivalent health services as other Canadian children. This increases the likelihood of Indigenous children being placed in foster care outside of their home communities. Thankfully, there is effort being put forth to change this, and more people are becoming aware of the issues amongst First Nations youth in Canada, including the suicide epidemic in Northern Ontario, and the prevalent low-self esteem and self-worth that these youth carry, fuelled by and interconnected with the lack of care and services provided on reserves.
I could continue with statistics pertaining to this situation. I know I still have a lot to learn and become aware of and some things I may never know. I simply hope that whoever reads this has learned something new about the Indigenous people of Canada and its current relationship with the government. I also hope that you would not merely read this but you would tell others about what is happening here in Canada. When more people become aware, it enables more change to take place. A child should have a right to their own agency. Stripping a child of their culture prevents them from truly knowing themselves, who they are inherently meant to be, and diminishes their self-worth. No one deserves to feel or be devalued, isolated, or forgotten.
Let us listen, and let us recognize.
“That is the frontline face of systemic discrimination in this country. It happens again and again. We lose children literally every single day due to a lack of services and supports that other children and families would take for granted,” said Angus, whose riding of Timmins-James Bay includes First Nations communities along the James Bay coast that are also struggling with suicide epidemics among their young people. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/01/19/wapekeka-first-nation-feared-suicide-pact-says-they-were-denied-help.html
Please visit the links below for further information on what is being done to provide health services for First Nations communities and their children:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/urgent-action-needed-to-address-indigenous-suicide-in-canada-committee/article35384932/
http://theturtleislandnews.com/index.php/2017/06/28/feds-fund-mentorship-network-support-indigenous-health-researchers-2/.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/unicef-canada/first-nations-children-equity_a_22584226/