For Love (2022) - full transcript
Indigenous people of Canada share heartbreaking stories that reveal injustices inflicted by the country's child welfare system.
How do you say "I love you"?
Again.
Again.
- 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.
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.
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.
Again.
Again.
- 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.
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.
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.