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- First Nation's children and families failed by a Child Welfare System in crisis.
- Just how many Indigenous children are currently
in the welfare system across this country?
- These Federal programs are so underfunded that Indigenous
parents actually have to give their children away.
There's something fundamentally wrong.
First Nation's youth are five to seven times more likely
to commit suicide than non-Indigenous youth.
- This is where reconciliation requires collaboration,
consultation with not just the provinces and
territories, but with First Nation leadership.
- Indigenous children are vastly disproportionately
overrepresented in the Child Welfare System.
Why hasn't something been done sooner?
How did it get to this point?
- They have to ask themselves the question, is there something else
that could be done other than apprehending this child?
There are 48,000 children
in the Canadian child welfare system today. Indigenous children
comprise 29,000, making up 52% of all Canada's children under care,
a shocking statistic given that Indigenous children
make up only 7.7% of the total population.
The numbers speak for themselves, especially in western provinces
and northern territories with the rates going well above 90%.
It is a humanitarian crisis.
- Good morning Tribunal members.
What a great honor to stand on the lands of the Algonquin Nation and
to have the very sacred conversation blessed by the Elder this morning.
This very country is named Canada, and it means village.
But for far too long, there's been two villages
in this great nation, one for all other
children, and one for the First Nation's children
who have called this land home for thousands of years.
Children are the keepers of the possible
and they are also experts in love and fairness.
And they are the ones who will often call us up
to be better people than who we thought we could be
and a better country than we think we are.
- Home shapes us, it's a place where our grandparents were,
it's a place where stories and our languages, and our cultures
were set for millennia, because too many First Nation's
children have grown up not knowing the great traditions of
their people, not knowing their languages and their cultures.
For our too many First Nations children, their clearest
memory of childhood is a day that they were taken away.
This case, this moment is for the children.
- Identity is one of the key factors in healing, because identity grounds
who you are, understanding where your roots are, and where your culture is.
But because of some of the simulated practices that were put in place by Canada,
the specific intent was to break some of those cultural
or identity issues, where a huge effort was made
to ban our traditional cultures, practices, and ban the language.
So a lot of our people were lost for generations.
- One of the really bedrocks of colonialism
is what Robert Williams, the Native American
scholar, calls the Savage Civilized Dichotomy,
- Indigenous peoples are kind of cast over here
as the savages and the European kind of culture is cast as the civilized.
- We were not taught anything about the Indigenous people.
There was no talk about the culture, the traditions, the richness of the culture,
nor did we talk about some of the terrible things that we did as a people.
One of the biggest threats to Indigenous
cultures that is still felt today is the creation
of the Indian Act that granted the Government of
Canada sweeping powers over First Nations identity,
political structures, governance, cultural practices and education.
In 1920, Duncan Cambell Scott, head of Indigenous
Affairs made clear what his intentions were.
I want to get rid of the Indian problem.
I do not think, as a matter of fact, that the country ought to
continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone.
Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada
that has not been absorbed into the body politic,
and there is no Indian in question and no Indian
Department, that is the whole object of this bill.
Subsequent amendments led to First
Nations children having to attend Residential Schools.
The Residential School system was implemented
by the Federal Government and administered by various churches.
Over 130 Residential Schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996.
It is estimated that 150,000 children attended these schools.
Innocent Aboriginal children were extracted
from their homes, separated from their parents, siblings and communities.
Once at the schools, their hair was cut; they were stripped
of their traditional clothing, and forced to wear uniforms.
In many cases, they were assigned new Government-approved names.
Christian missionary staff criticized, and denigrated Indigenous spiritual
traditions, even forbidding children from speaking in their native language.
The schools were poorly built and badly ventilated,
causing severe tuberculosis and influenza outbreaks.
Smallpox, measles, typhoid, pneumonia and whooping cough were prevalent.
Many Indigenous children died as a result,
and some were laid to rest in unmarked graves.
No loving embrace from their parents, whom for
a majority had no knowledge of their passing.
Countless children were physically, emotionally and sexually abused.
With no hope of seeing their families, some students attempted to escape,
even going so far as burning down the schools.
The horrors continued for 99 years.
It is clear that the Federal Government, and the
Churches' intent was to eradicate Aboriginal culture
in Indigenous young people and arrest the passing
of the culture from one generation to the next.
The Residential School system is commonly considered a form of cultural genocide.
- Alcoholism got the best of me and I was getting worse.
I start shooting up and covering up the pain
of First Nation school, strap, physical abuse, sexual abuse, everything about that.
Survival, I call it survival.
50, I believe, I went to Residential School,
black fancy car, priests and Government workers.
And they tell my grandfather, if he doesn't go to school,
we're going to put you in jail and we are going
to take that $7 a month family allowance away from you.
Father tell me to stand up, I stood up.
"Do you speak your native tongue?"
"Yes, I do."
I was happy.
"Roll your sleeves back."
So I rolled my sleeves back.
The first time I ever got strapped in my life from the sting
and burn, got to the point where I was having seven
on each hand, strap burn, but I never lost it, I still kept it with me.
My children were in, and I couldn't get to see them,
because Social Service was giving us a hard time because of my alcoholism.
So I respect that.
I'm glad they did that.
They never see me messed up then.
You know, I was in Duncan, I happen to bring, I
bought a bunch of booze, because I was working.
So I went out, I've got a rope, put in a garage in top, a block, here on my neck.
I was ready to kick the block off.
A lady opened the door,
"Roy, what are you going to do with all the booze you bought?"
"Oh, yes."
I was taking out the rope, and that's when I really, some
people don't want to do it, but it happened so quickly.
I couldn't take it out, I just leave that.
I was lucky I didn't kick that block off to take my...
Grandfather's trail.
He made this rock.
Our grandfather's trail.
He made this water.
Our Grandfather's trail.
He made Mother Earth.
Okay.
- Today we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong,
has caused great harm and has no place in our country.
The Government of Canada sincerely apologizes
and ask the forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples
of this country for failing them so profoundly.
The majority of Elders born before
1965 have all gone to Residential Schools.
The pain they endured is widespread.
- It's a sad part of history that happened
and children that were in Residential School for six years,
seven years, eight years never got to see their parents
or their parents were turned away when they came to the school.
So, you know, a lot of children didn't return home.
That's devastating for families and for children growing up.
The devastation was harrowing.
As Residential Schools began to close, the Federal Government invited provincial
Child Welfare Systems on reserve to take their place.
In 1959 less than 1% of children in foster care were Indigenous.
Within 10 years, that number skyrocketed to 40%.
The term '60s Scoop was born, referring to the practice of taking, or "scooping up,".
Indigenous children from their families and communities.
Between the 1960s and the 1980s, over 20,000 Indigenous children were removed
from their homes, primarily due to socioeconomic conditions
and placed for adoption in Canada, the United States,
and the United Kingdom, often without parental consent.
- This is a special adoption program.
For the past five years, the number of children in care of the
Department of Welfare has been increasing by approximately 180 a year.
While we have had reasonable success in placing white children for adoption,
we have had great difficulty in placing Indian, and Métis children.
It is a well known fact that this can never take the place of an adoption home
where the child takes the name of the parents
and becomes a full member of the family.
- When we first came to work with Mi'Kmaw Family, we were working with the province,
and so we were kind of doing joint services, there was only 23 of us in staff.
And there was only, I think there was like, six or seven of us Social Workers.
And it was heartbreaking for us because we sat there.
I read all the files, and it took months to read them.
And we'd sit there and cry, you know, because we knew these families,
and there was very biased statements or comments that were in the files.
And really, you know, we've seen that, we've seen that there was no visits.
Mom didn't know where the kids were.
There was no contact.
Children were not seeing their parents.
They were not seeing their siblings.
They weren't told their rights.
There were no visits between families.
We had siblings living in communities that didn't even know their siblings.
And so we see that and we know what the impacts are on separation.
- I believe that that what we need is a new focus,
understanding that the most important thing
is for kids to stay with their family, with their loved ones.
It's not enough to just move ahead, and support
the healing from the Residential Schools.
We need to reckon with what's happening now, and keep families
together, keep children with their families and their communities now.
The dire need to focus on keeping
families together is a collective community need.
Across the country, Indigenous leaders are working hard
to focus on prevention, rather than separation in order
to keep children at home in their communities.
It's a way of cleansing your mind, your body,
just prove that it, if you don't practice just bring, at least bring a prayer,
bring some kind of ritual into your home.
- I see you.
I see me.
He does the first thing we all have to do,
we have to take that first step to help ourselves
and he could pass on his other senses, and he feels a way in the dark.
Oh, what is that?
It's a crow.
- I can see.
- The children are asking for the stories, they desire for that identity, who am I?
In fact, many of us older individuals still ask ourselves,
"Who am I?"
And those stories hold sacred truth, sacred laws, universal laws, love.
We've all come from love.
All people from this planet have come from love although sometimes we forget.
- As First Nations, we weren't considered humans, so we couldn't have games?
And it was against us, a law for us to gamble or practice witchcraft.
So they took all this away from us.
But it was all underground.
I remember my grandmother.
She died in the '70s.
She had one, and it was even cracked here.
But every time a car would come over, she said.
"Hide it, hide it."
And that was even in the '60s, we still hide it.
It's very important to teach the kids,
because it has everything to do with exercise.
You're exercising your body, your hands, your mind, everything.
And it's teaching you how to count.
And it's teaching you to get along with people.
Sitting down, playing with no man, it's hardly ever seen today, right?
Our people are so scattered and there's so many of them that don't speak Mi'Kmaw.
And even to say that they're not Mi'Kmaw and they
said, "Oh interesting, here, you know, they talking,"
you know, they don't even want to know what you're talking.
I only went to work to help the kids because
we had kids coming in and we're teaching them
to be proud of themselves, showing them games,
there's so much stuff there, and to educate people off the reserve.
They still ask us, do you live in Wigwams, do you live in Tipis?
They ask all these questions, what they read in books,
and I guess from their family, they bring it to us.
And some people don't even come because of that, because they don't really know us.
When I left Membertou, most of the people I grew up
with spoke Mi'kmaq but after me, like my brother,
he's only two years younger than me, he spoke English.
So all the kids in Membertou mostly speak English.
To be proud, you have to be proud of where you've been, and who you are.
You can't forget that.
And I always tell them, "Speak your Mother Tongue,"
I said, because if we lose it, Chinese can
go China, and learn it, French can go France.
If we lose our Mi'kmaq language, where do we go?
This is it.
We can't go home.
This is home.
And I said, "Once we lose our language, then we're White."
Our language has been watered down
since colonization, and is now considered an
English version of the Mi'kmaq language, which is
the key reason we are losing our mother tongue.
As we ourselves learn, we will in turn teach our kids
and anyone who is interested in our proud heritage.
- What we've been teaching our children for the last
number of years is an English version of Mi'Kmaw.
I don't know how a 54-year-old woman could not know her own history.
I'm a Leader, I'm a Chief, and I'm just learning it.
This is about, like teaching our children our proud,
proud heritage, because right now they don't know it
about how our people were engineers, they were doctors.
They were out in the water and they were fishing walrus, like it's all there.
It's all there hidden in our beautiful, beautiful, Mi'Kmaw language.
I feel so strongly that if we can unlock our
language, then our children, they will be prouder,
they will flourish because when they go to
other places, they can say, "Hi, I'm Mi'Kmaw."
- When I was taken away, when I was real young,
it was at a time when my mom had actually,
she attempted suicide, and I had found her.
Because my mother also was in the system.
It just kind of like we kind of repeated itself.
I felt like it was like Residential School, when I learned about Residential School,
when you got taken away, we were cleaned, we were, hair was cut.
There was an actual sexual abuse that happened while I was there.
So now for me in my life, it's affected me as a mom
in a way that I'm constantly afraid, even if I know I'm doing the right things.
I still am constantly afraid of the fear that someone could even take
my kid, or that I don't have power to speak on behalf of my children.
It actually has made me a really dominating parent.
That was one thing that was never going to happen in my life.
And my babies were going to stay with me, and forever than will be.
Growing up, me and my friends had seen a group come down to Lennox Island.
It was the first time I ever seen an actual drum.
It was like, what is this?
The one thing that I always can say that comes back
is about culture and how much that has brought,
started bringing peace back to my soul almost,
into my spirit and saying that I belong somewhere, and I'm a part of something.
Our culture is beautiful.
It heals people.
- Well, it's all about prevention, right?
And it's all about like communities taking ownership
of our own children and saying to the Federal
Government, because really, what's wrong here, right?
It's a money thing, to me.
Like really, like help the family, do the preventative
medicine and stuff, for all that stuff in the family.
Like, why take a family, take a child out of there
and then pay someone else to look after that child?
Support the family.
It's not the Mi'Kmaw fault, it's not anybody's fault that the people are poor.
We have had no access to our resources.
All of our traditional ways were suppressed.
So no wonder we're fucked up.
- First came news, from the Attawapiskat First Nation
in Northern Ontario that 11 people had tried to commit suicide in one day.
This is the fifth state of emergency
Attawapiskat has declared in the past 10 years.
Others were due to flooding, overcrowded housing, and poor drinking water.
Exposure to the chemicals in large quantities
over time can increase the risk of cancer.
Tonight, Attawapiskat's Chief said the crisis is all consuming.
All you have to do is call the-
Then you see the black. The black is all mold.
The black is all mold.
At a community forum, young people pleaded for help.
The spiral brought on by isolation, family breakdowns,
overcrowding and the rest of the challenges facing most isolated reserves.
- I commit to action now, I commit to lasting
action, for the people of Attawapiskat.
I touch it, I touch it, I touched it, I touched it.
- It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how the unacceptable reality,
or as many call it Third World living conditions,
contribute to an environment that is, you know,
is not supportive of children and young people.
And that to me, is not an individual failure
by any means, it's by far a systemic failure.
- So the problem with the water in the community is that our THM levels
are quite high, and they've been slowly rising over the past several years.
So that has created a lot of very serious worries
in a population, because when you have such high levels,
you have to really limit your contacts with this sort of water.
If you're taking a shower with it, you have to have short shower, five minutes.
Same if you're washing dishes with your bare hands,
you should not be washing your foods that you're going to cook.
You should not cook with it because cooking,
boiling water concentrates the chemicals, and makes it even worse
and then it evaporates into the air and you're breathing it in.
- Me, me. - Once, just like that, now you look.
You see, it is red.
So now it's recording.
Yeah.
Who is the fastest?
Three two one, let's go.
- I was able to learn about the language, and learn about hunting.
And my siblings ended up in foster care, all of them,
and we didn't see each other too much later.
We didn't really know each other, because we spent so much time apart as kids.
I came back in 2009 with my family and came home to no housing,
like the housing shortage, backlogged for like 15 years.
Without a house, you can't rest.
You don't feel safe.
It starts to take a toll on you mentally, and everybody's crowded.
You know, it just wears you down, you know, you start to get worn out.
- The biggest challenge that this country faces in my view is First Nation's poverty.
Our people are too poor, simply put.
There's a housing crisis in First Nation communities.
It's a serious crisis, and we need to do something about it.
- I thought it was just normal, and then when I got older, and
then when I left the community to the South, for High School,
I thought, "Well, you know, how come everyone else has access
to clean water, and certain opportunities, and we don't."
- Now you think about what we do in terms of non-Indigenous youth.
We make sure that they have free public schools,
we make sure that they go to high school.
We hope that they will go on to college or university.
But all of this education is set up for them.
The same thing applies to healthcare,
the same thing applies to clean water and the housing.
These are not social programs, these are not charity.
These are the building blocks of a strong economy.
It's one we recognize for ourselves.
It's time we start to recognize it for the youngest
and the fastest growing segment of our population.
- The dream of having a midwifery program
here took a long, long time to come together.
I started working on this in the '90s actually.
Midwifery was legislated in Ontario 1993.
And there was a large portion of these consultations
that were on Indigenous midwifery and they have the
right to decide what kind of midwives they want,
what kind of training they want the midwives to have.
So in bringing midwifery back to Attawapiskat,
it was always very central that we bring back Indigenous midwives.
So we want Cree-midwives in this community.
We used to have Cree-midwives, they were erased from this map.
And now we are rewriting history.
When I came here, I was just appalled that how women were treated.
And I really believe that it was a woman's right to decide,
according to her reality, what's her family situation,
who's her support system, who are going
to be here with her children if she has to leave.
And she has to take all of this into account
to make a decision as to where is the best place, for her to give birth.
We always are very careful to position our bodies lower
than the laboring woman, because she is giving
birth, and she's in her full woman's power.
And we always ask permission before we touch.
May I?
And we wait for her and people are sometimes going, "What?
Like, I'm being asked to be touched."
And I'm always very mindful of that
that maybe I am the first one who asked permission to touch.
I think it's an important piece in a woman's healing journey also.
I think at the beginning of my practice, I'm not sure if women
were using less, or if they confided less, because we come
from the understanding that the drug addiction,
it's not the addiction to the drug that is the problem,
it is the trauma behind what makes you need to numb that terrible voice in the back.
You need to numb it up, however.
So we try to approach that instead of the drugs.
Addiction is a problem of disconnection.
You have disconnected, because you can't stay connected to that.
- Attawapiskat really made headlines about a week ago because it declared a state
of emergency after 11 people attempted to take their own lives in one night.
- Over the last few days as the cameras, and the politicians left,
there were more attempted suicides by young people in Attawapiskat.
- I don't know, because they just don't have enough activities here.
I mean, they're building their youth center,
starting kids, I don't know disproved in this town,
because they buried everything here.
Every time I'm on Facebook, I always see these depressed quotes, quotes, statuses.
There's nothing really in this town, like nothing fun for the kids.
- The issue is we can't be self-satisfied,
and we've got to recognize that this is not a one shot
and then you think about something else.
You're talking about the youngest, and the fastest growing segment of your population.
What you've got to really do is to make sure that they succeed.
If that generation succeeds, then I think there will not be any back sliding.
But the important thing is to make sure that in fact, we continue to progress.
- We're resilient and a lot of us are trying our
best to improve our lives and continue to heal
and making sure that our kids are going to have a positive legacy.
One of the biggest, biggest mineral finds in the entire world is right up the river.
You know, it's part of the treaties, how do we find a way to maximize those things
that were given to us, but do it in a way that's responsible?
Like the wind, because wind never stops year-around.
You know, green energy, that's, I think of right away.
You look at the James Bay, the waves.
You can generate hydroelectricity through ways, and there's so much potential.
When I look around here, sometimes it's hard
to see all the good, because you're just blinded by your tears.
- My mom died in 1988, I carried guilt.
That night my mom left my granny's house I was
there, and she asked me to go with her at first.
But then she said, "Just wait for me."
Then she went missing, and they found her body in the lake.
I used to think maybe if I went with her, she would still be alive.
I never found out what happened.
But I've learned to live with that, I've learned to accept that.
Out here during that time, it seemed, there seemed like there was no help.
Like there was nobody to turn to.
So I felt stuck.
So that was my way out, was to drink because when I drank, I didn't care.
I didn't feel anything.
When I knew it was getting bad, my drinking was getting bad,
I asked CFS for help, and that's how they got involved in my life.
"You're a mom, you need to be strong for your kids."
Oh duh, that's what I'm trying to do, because
they would say, "Well, this is all for the kids. This is all for the kids."
But it really wasn't.
If they would have said, "This is all for the money,"
that would have been the truth, because my
kids were getting hurt when they were in care.
They were in care for six months.
The last time I got pregnant and she said, "Are you sure you're going to be
able to take care of your kids and to take care of this baby by yourself?"
And that's when the abortion, because there was that thing,
if you don't want to lose your kids do what we want.
I went through the abortion and how am I supposed to keep it together after that?
- The youth protection system was in support of an intervention based system.
So there was plenty of funding for workers to go in
and intervene in a family, and potentially remove their family.
But there was not a lot of resources in place
to help a family before it got there.
So how do we start putting those programs in place for it?
And I think it's creativity and the hard part
that we're working on and we're making progress on
is allowing the community room to think outside the box.
What can we put in place?
What kind of programs can we put in place to allow that?
- There will come a point in your life when you're
going to have to choose which path you want to take.
All of the ceremonies that used to be here,
that used to be practiced by my mother's family,
the Pipes, the Ceremonies, the Sweat Lodges, the Sun dances,
all of those things, the spirituality of our people.
And we've really taken that time to learn our culture,
to learn our ceremonial ways, to learn some of our language.
And that, I think, has been one of the
contributing factors into how we have managed
to change the impetus of this organization, the Center,
to reflect who we are as individuals, and to transfer that healthy lifestyle,
that healthy outlook so that we can make that change,
that needs to happen in all of our communities,
to make it better for our children,
our children's children so that they don't have to experience what we've experienced.
Manitoba has among the highest rates of apprehension in the country.
Indigenous children account for almost 90% of
the 11,000 children in the province's system.
- That had a tremendous toll on, particularly
the family structures within the community
and, of course, because of that you got the despair, alcoholism was on the rise.
Domestic violence is on the rise because of alcohol use.
Its breaking that cycle.
"I said, So how do we do this?"
And I'm like, "Well, hold on, wait a second."
No one owns property on reserve.
So these houses technically belong to the Chief of Council.
So, legal counsel, I need you to draft me a
VCR that authorizes our workers who can remove
any person causing a child to be need of protection
from the residence, but that person has to come
and meet with our workers within 48 hours, and then after that, there'll be decision
as to whether it to happen, continue to be moved from there,
or they sit down in a circle meeting,
and they start talking about how to keep this family unit together.
- I know they're coming home.
Nobody has to tell me that.
I said, when they come home, I know that I'll be ready to take care of them.
And when they came home, I took them everywhere
I went because I had to earn their trust,
because it's easy to say, I'm sorry to anybody,
but to earn that trust again and to show somebody
that they can trust you, especially your own child,
it takes a lot of work.
My youngest one brought a drum home for me one day,
because I had a drum, I was told that I had to go get it blessed in a sweat.
So I went, I had to go.
I don't know how to sing, I don't know anything about this, but they taught me.
The women taught me.
And I think that Medicine is very important
because the physical, the mental, the emotional
and the spiritual, it helps all four parts of a human being.
Launching off their canoe from the shores
of Washington state, the youths from Kwùmut Lelum Child
and Family Services in British Columbia make their way to Lummi Island.
It is a moment where they can reconnect with their people,
water, land and their Ancestors, building the strong
foundation needed, for their own journeys in life.
- You are my friend, you are my family.
For the generosity, for the lords that allow we are
grateful, we are humble, and we get to be your guest.
But now it is time for us to carry on, so we
ask humbly for permission that we may carry on.
- All these kids that I paddle with were all kids in care.
So we barely know who we are
and we don't know where we come from, and where our roots are.
And its the same question every year, where are you from?
Who's your grandparents, who's your parents?
And then just that little bit of information,
we can travel way back to our Ancestors, and we can figure out who we are.
There's no words to describe how I feel because I feel it in the moment,
going through my own battle, being in the system.
So this year, I'm just here, and I'm trying to get over a rough patch.
It's crazy how one year can change one person, even in just a few months.
- These are children in care, so there's a big void there.
People feel it many various different ways, but I
believe this is the proper way to do it, with culture.
It's a lot, it's a lot of happiness,
it's a lot of tears, a lot of anger and for a big thing
and it's a big break from all the hurt, and pain that we feel at home.
So for here, it's just a big relief, and just be on the canoe and feel so connected
with the water and connected with ourselves.
- A lot of these kids aren't as exposed to culture as they should be.
It's just where we come from, it's what has been happening on these lands
for thousands of years, when that really hits you
and you fully understand what's going on, it's a very special moment.
You know, I thought I was the toughest 14-year-old around,
but there was lots of moments where I was
absolutely balling my eyes out, doing protocol,
doing the drumming and the singing, and all that kind of stuff.
I was a troubled kid.
There's many different ways that could have gone.
If I didn't experience that at that tender age,
I don't know where I would be right now.
I don't even want to think about it.
And that's really what the journey is about.
It's a healing journey.
Indigenous people have faced a lot of
hardships, so this is where we come to heal.
- This experience isn't in my everyday life.
Every year, I find new friends and meet new people,
and I don't even see them until the next year.
For a certain amount of time, it's a little bit of a goodbye until next year.
Our Elders are our teachers.
They know our teachings, and they pass it down to us.
So us, as youth and kids, for the next generation
of our people, I found my voice on journeys,
I figure out who I was on journeys.
And for me, it's something that I crave every year
and something I need for myself to help me.
It's my medicine.
I get healing out of it.
For a child in care, it's a good way to find identity.
We're all supposed to be one paddle, one mind and one heart.
Even if it's just one paddle that stops, I can feel that.
How do you say, "I love you"?
Again.
- When we first went to cultural camp, we do this thing where we introduce ourselves
and say where we're from, and what clan we're from.
For the longest time, we were saying we were from Frog Clan.
And then one of our family members that we ran into at culture camp actually told us,
"No, you're not, you're Bear Clan, because
that's where your Mom and your Grandma are from."
And from then on, we're like, "We're Bear Clan."
That's Christine and Bradley.
That's our youngest brother.
That's him there, too.
- He's not here right now, he is downtown living his life.
He just got off a probation, so he is living.
- These are some pictures and memories
of when we were living in the group home.
They built for us, Carrier Sekani made it just for us.
- Carrier Sekani, they built a house.
All wasn't built.
It was just they bought one for all of us to live in there
as a family because they didn't want to separate us.
- I remember we got dropped off at this group home,
and my parents told us that they'd be back in
two weeks, and it just never really happened.
Were you waiting for them?
Yeah.
What should we get?
You choose.
Well they don't have Dr. Pepper, so that's out of the question.
Ooh Dr. Pepper, gross.
- Canada Dry.
- We were told that they were sick, for the longest time
until we were old enough to understand why we got taken away.
It was because they're drug addicts and alcoholics.
We were abused quite bad.
- It was like three-years-old when I first got hit.
I remember it because it was over a burger,
I didn't eat my whole burger, I only ate like two, or three bites.
I was freaking three-years-old.
I didn't have a big stomach so my dad, he kind of got mad.
He grabbed the coffee table leg and smoked me in the head.
Got bunch of scars in the head because of it.
- We would go to school, and then we would be at
school, and we would cry because we didn't want
to go back home because if we went back home,
we would either get hit or we wouldn't eat food,
or we wouldn't even be able to drink water.
So I mean, my sister would drink water out of, like, an old hair spray bottle,
like squirt each others' tongues, like, three times.
What day is it today?
29th.
- We should be fine, right?
It's good.
We told each other that we're not going to end up like our parents.
We're not going to end up like the stereotypical native person that ends up
on the streets or as a drug addict or an alcoholic.
We learn to reach out.
- There's been times when we are like we haven't been,
so close, but we just kind of have to push through that-
- Yeah, go through our own little thing.
- At the end of the day, there's only us that we have.
- Yeah.
For the longest time, growing in and out of care,
up until year nine, we were separated a lot of the time.
So Kristine and Sheldon would always go and Foster Home with them.
And then I would either, like, be by myself or with Bradley.
- Stay positive, that's all, you know.
You don't, my parents, they're drug addicts.
It gets really hard.
You just, you just want your parents, you know.
- Family is very important.
Being together is way more important, because you don't have anybody else, right.
And if I think that if we were all separated,
we probably wouldn't be as good as we are.
- Because we know so many youth
that were our age a little bit younger, and they aren't doing well at all.
There's only a few of us, a few handful of us that made it out well, you know, and
some of the kids that we went to camp with, we see and it's pretty hard to see.
- That's correct.
Samantha Metcalfe and Cailyn Degrandpre,
11-year-old Inuit Throat singers from the Ottawa Inuit Children
Center will now come forward to share their music with us.
- Throat Singing is traditionally done by two women,
or girls, whoever laughs or messes up first loses.
It's very important to us to stay with our culture,
even though we're down South compared to up North.
Ottawa has one of the biggest Inuit communities
around Canada then other than up North.
And it's just very important, so the kids
down here can learn about their culture too.
The reason why we Throat Sing is because back in Residential School times,
Throat Team was banned and now we're proud to be bringing back our culture.
We're Inuit and proud.
- I was a co-Founder of the Inuit Specific Healing Center here in Ottawa.
So one of the things I came up with was
implementing Inuit history as a therapeutic tool.
I was born on the land, born in the middle of winter, and my members are wonderful,
because you're surrounded by adults that really care
for you, not just your mom and dad, but the
whole camp would kind of look out for the child.
So that's where my world began.
When I was about six-years-old, my family
from this peaceful existence was forcefully moved by the Government.
It must have been a horrible day for our parents.
They lost a lot.
They were not allowed to bring anything of their personal possessions.
Somebody tried to go back to their original camp
and they found everything was demolished.
They also lost their means of transportation.
The dogs that were slaughtered,
dogs were their friends, their guide and protectors.
When they were slaughtered, I think it really damaged our men.
Life just changed so drastically that I think we're still
trying to figure a lot of things out for us.
I did go through identity crisis as a young person.
I had to find me and I'm proud to be an Inuit.
That's who I am.
- I described Nunavut often as a place where time stands still.
We're at the top of the world and when you come here,
if you're willing to stop and listen, there is
so much life and so much good in the community.
I am Inuit.
I grew up in Nunavut, lived and worked most of my life here.
We have one of the most extreme environments, probably in the world.
We are quite close to the North Pole.
So if you can imagine how we live here in wooden houses,
but yet we're in today, it's minus 30, minus
40, maybe even colder with the wind chill.
Sometimes the health of our children is at risk.
They're born with conditions that require specialized care,
and we don't have all of that in Nunavut.
So a lot of our children with high medical needs
often are needed to be placed in medical foster homes in the South.
In a year, we'll have about 70 to 80 children placed out of territory.
In a small community, we don't have victim support,
we don't have addiction services in every community.
There is so much that a community needs to build within their services.
What's missing is the resourcing, and it relies heavily on the Government of Nunavut
and so there are several departments kind of eying on the same pots of money.
- For me when I go on the land, just the solitude I feel, it's insane.
I don't even feel alone when I'm alone, because I know like,
spirits are with us always, culturally teaching.
Our culture is not only important to healing, but it's also important
as, like, being more proactive than reactive to stuff that's going on,
because if you're getting the youth out there, and doing
things culturally, they are just taking their mind off
of doing things negative, you know, like, there's
almost nothing to do in our isolation here.
- I had read about ice roads before.
I had read about some of the remote areas of the country,
but it's one thing to read about it, it's another thing to go there.
- That remote reality can be very challenging.
Yes, it's more expensive to get materials there, to build there.
But I would also say the Federal Government benefits
from out of sight, out of mind mentality,
where a lot of Canada doesn't know that reality,
and sometimes, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to care.
In Nunavut, nearly a quarter of all deaths have been
by suicide, which is one of the highest rates in the world.
- We had about 35 suicides through our 26 communities in the span of a few months.
I lost several of my best friends, cousins, close family members.
I have a tattoo going up my arm that has the owl feather
and the owls, like our spirit God to our next life.
And I have owl feather with birds coming out of the feather and all
those birds represent my friends, and family that I've lost to suicide,
but I gave up filling my arm, to be honest because there's too many,
I didn't want a reminder every time I was getting a tattoo done.
I left, to be honest, I couldn't stand being in the North
and I moved to Ottawa, and I stayed there for a few years.
When I came back and... we need Government help really, and we don't get that.
I don't even know how to explain.
We have beer and wine stores opening that are making millions of dollars a year
off our people, but we still don't even have an addiction treatment center.
- I tell people when you're looking for discrimination,
it's not just what you see, it's what you don't see.
When you walk into a First Nations community
where there's been the ravages of multigenerational trauma
from Residential Schools and people are using addictions
to self-medicate, then where are all the addiction services?
Why are all these fancy treatment centers only available to people off reserve?
There should be the best culturally based treatment
in those communities, and it's not there.
- Hi from Nunavut, Canada.
While I have your attention, I just want to bring to light the fact that Inuit
are nine times more likely to commit suicide
than non-Indigenous people in Canada.
- The way my girlfriend was doing things on TikTok, it works.
Social media is what's keeping us connected, and
I feel like the more you know what's going on
with other people, the more we can relate, and the more we can help each other.
- We keep losing our people and I just want you guys
to know Indigenous make First Nations you are not alone, and you are loved.
- I want our people to be able to prosper.
It's kind of a weird reference, but you're like,
you know, have you seen the movie "Black Panther"?
You know, if the Wakanda being like the sacred gem of Africa?
I kind of want Nunavut become like the Wakanda of Canada.
I want us to be like a sacred gem
of empowerment where they're able
to help all their people in need.
- It's a way of life.
We're only as strong as our weakest link.
So it's about our most vulnerable.
Some people weren't given the right chance,
and so that's what it's always been about,
is our community is most vulnerable.
- Despite the advancements and there are many
and there are successes, I also hear that things
are getting worse, because as the population
grows, as there are more young families,
the demands on a system that is broken are increasing.
And so what I hear is that housing is getting worse.
The lack of support for post-secondary education
is getting worse because the challenges are growing.
And more often than not, the Federal Government
is continuing very similar policies
and not actually working with communities the way
they need to and not funding communities
the way they need to actually make a difference.
- Children are the keepers of the possible,
and they're also experts in love and fairness.
And they are the ones who often call us up
to be better people than who we thought we could be
and a better country than we think we are.
It's for all the children who are in foster
care right now and the ones who grew up there.
I think it's important that we say here that
there are some children that need to be removed
from their families because of safety in their homes,
but not at the overrepresented rates we see now, for
First Nation children, they're more likely to be removed
to six to eight times a rate, for reasons that we can
prevent, poverty, poor housing, and substance misuse.
The number of First Nations children entering a child welfare
care between 1995, and 2001 increased to staggering 71.5%.
Now, that sounds like a big number.
But when I hear it, I think of only the little kids that those things represent.
You see, together, it meant that they had spent
over two million nights away from their families,
away from their teddy bears, away from their language and away from their culture.
- Because of all of the inter-generational trauma caused
by Residential Schools, the number one reason
why kids were being taken away by Social Workers is because of poverty.
We've had a crisis for a long time now.
Imagine we're 4% of the population, but 50% of all kids
in foster care in this country are Indigenous.
And then think of the percentage of those who go murdered and missing.
- To Manitoba now, where report into the death
of Tina Fontaine was released earlier today.
She is the 15-year-old whose body was pulled from Winnipeg's Red River in 2014.
The report says Tina was let down by the very system
of services and supports that were supposed to protect her.
It was a grizzly discovery that sent shock waves through our community.
- Her murder, you know, was a point in time that I believe really created an earthquake
of sorts in our country around the issue of missing, and murdered Indigenous women.
Two days after Tina's body was discovered,
thousands of people marched in memory of the slain teen.
- Not much do our people ever get justice.
We're in the middle of a national crisis.
- It was like every other day there is a new story
about an Indigenous woman, girl or Two-Spirit person who was missing.
Body was found, search is still happening those kind of things.
But no one was talking about it because it
had been, so normalized, oh, just another one.
So if you're a Serial Killer or even if you're not a
Serial Killer, you want to kill women, who are you going to target?
You know, they found her in a car 15-years-old with some strange man.
They didn't check to see her age, they
didn't check to see, she was already on list.
- All the systems that were to protect Tina failed her.
- We love Tina, and we will show her how much we love her.
- We all feel it because it could have been our
daughter, it could have been our granddaughter.
We don't want this to continue, we want it to stop.
Justice.
- - Tragic violence that Indigenous women, and
girls have experienced amounts to genocide.
- Their killings have mobilized many.
They've made it clear that there is no reconciliation without justice.
So today we call for love, for Tina; for justice for Tina.
And we call on the Federal Government to commit
to fundamental change so that no Indigenous woman
and no Indigenous man go missing or are murdered ever again.
- Change has occurred because the Canada was forced
to change through a Human Rights decision.
That opened up doors of acknowledging that the System is not working.
If we're not dealing with the community change
that's necessary, all of our people are just going to be continually moved out.
That system needs to change.
Let's have our own system.
And to me, that's true self determination, you know,
that's really us deciding how do we want to care, for our children.
And it's not up to Quebec or Canada to do that.
It really is up to our own nation.
- For a century now, based on discriminatory policies
of Government, we have been taking children away from their families.
It started with Residential Schools, it continued in the '60s Scoop
and still today, children are being taken from their families.
And this legislation marks a turning point to say no more.
- Prevention in the truest sense of a word, meaning that
children do not ever enter the Child Welfare System.
So if our goal is to not only keep children in communities,
but to keep children from entering the Child Welfare System at all, communities
must have the right to Self-Determine what that looks like for them.
Mary Teegee from Takla Nation has been
an advocate, for Indigenous rights for over 20 years.
She has worked to advance self-determination, and self-governance.
The importance of culture at the forefront of her mission.
And now, for the first time in colonized history,
under bill C-92, Indigenous communities
across the country have the opportunity to develop, and implement their own laws.
- I am Gitxsan, and I am a proud Bear Lake Gitxsan.
In order to know where you're going, you have to know where we've been.
So if you think about pre-contact times, how we used
to take care of our children, we took care
of our children in community, the whole old saying,
of course the saying, it takes a community to raise a child.
Well, we live that, we lived by our Ayook, we live by
our Potlatch Laws, and that's what maintains balance.
We had holistic balance, pre-contact.
And I think I always say this, one of the first impacts
of Residential School is heartbreak.
It is not your fault.
It is not our fault for all the atrocities that
have occurred and how the societal ails that,
all of the issues that we're dealing with, it's not our fault, may not be our fault,
but it is our collective responsibility to fix that, to heal from that.
- And when we talk about those Ancestors, we will be the
Ancestors of those not yet born, because we are going
to be taken back our rightful place as the decision
makers in our children, and families lives long overdue.
And that's what we're celebrating today.
When we blow those feathers in front of the Federal
Government, in front of the Provincial Government,
in front of all our leaders, it is with the best intent,
it is for our children and those not yet born.
- And so today, after all the decades of fighting,
as of June 20th, a Federal enabling legislation
was passed so that we can assume authority of our own children and families.
No longer will you be under the Provincial Child
and Family Community Services Act.
What you're going to be signing today is a historic document that's going to state
that you are going to make your own Gitxsan laws,
and that will be the law of the land.
- No longer will a child be ripped away from their family,
their clans, their community, and their lands
where they have the right, the innate the God given right to be.
So long from time from now, 100 years from now,
they will remember this day and they will say remember them,
remember those Ancestors of days gone by that
fought, for our children that fought for us
so that we can grow up in the warm embrace of our culture,
of our land, of our families, where we rightfully belong.
That in this day we're starting today.
Funding is absolutely critical.
And along with that is ensuring that again, it's a First Nations led process.
Anything that is directed by the Federal Government is not what communities need.
We have a history of the Federal Government saying
that they know best when it comes to First Nations, and it's a dark history.
This isn't about charity, help rescuing First Nations kids.
This is about co-creating a society where every kid counts.
Every kid is worth the money, and we're all richer when everyone's differences
are not overcome, but they're celebrated.
Recognize their skill base, recognize their understanding.
And when you do that, the can take it, they take it over
and you succeed because it's their program, not ours.
I think this program is wonderful to bring them
and get them away from that environment
and show them something else and give them a chance.
Give them a fighting chance because that's all we're about, giving them a chance.
This river, this land is what's going to teach them.
We got to bring them.
We got to bring them, maybe kicking and
screaming sometimes, but we got to bring them
because it's all about knowing who you are, and being proud of who you are.
Justin Trudeau made the announcement from
Rideau Cottage, Friday, saying the initiative will result
in fewer kids in care and will reunite Indigenous families.
- Our Government is investing $542 million to Indigenous communities
to exercise full jurisdiction over Child and Family Services.
This is vital to moving forward on our promise
to address the unacceptable injustices that too many
kids and families have faced in the care system.
- Just the history of who First Nations people
are, and what we've suffered is not known.
So that alone trying to get that out there and say,
"No, there really was attempts at assimilation. This is what happened."
When we don't face those truths, it's hard then to make concrete change.
- Indigenous people have always said that whatever you do,
your actions, you must think seven generations down, it will carry on.
But there's also the power of healing through
different actions and different experiences
in your life where you can actually clean up some of this all schmuck.
- If there's ever a key in prevention, it truly
is teaching our ways, and then it's okay to be Mi'Kmaw,
it's okay to be Cree, it's okay to be Mohawk.
That we are just as important as anyone else in this world.
It is the children that count, and they rely on us to ensure
that they have all the opportunities to reach their full potential.
I want to see them not growing up and having
to recover from their childhoods,
that being First Nations doesn't hold them back,
that it's a foothold of them being successful
in whatever that dream is.
- We have to open this up to the world, we have to.
When we are proud and our kids, then our kids
will see that and the kids will be proud.
- The more efforts that we can do in support filming,
radio, books, knowledge, having dialogues in the Senate,
when you have a First Nations person stand up
or a non-First Nations person speak Mohawk in the middle
of Parliament, which had never happened before.
- Those kinds of efforts bring awareness.
And the more awareness we can have, the greater
chance we have of actually realizing change.
- Are we where we should be?
No.
But have we made huge strides and better than most?
I think we have over the course of the last
number of years, but we've got a long way to go.
It is not just about reducing the number of children in care.
It is about creating healthy communities that support everyone.
Giving them equal access to health services, a safe home, and culture.
In order to do this, we must ensure that funding
in the future is secure and approached holistically, for generations to come.
- So that these families
and these children can grow up safely together
and deal with the challenges they have,
but in a way where they really honors who they are, that's magic.
- We can't say how we feel other than grateful,
because at one point, the Government was trying
to take this away from us, trying to take.
As it's worded, it's trying to take the Indian out of us.
So we're grateful that we even still have our culture,
and we still have our languages,
and we still have our songs, and we still have our people,
because our people went through a tremendous battle just
for us to be here today and to have our culture.