Child Welfare, Indigenous Children and Children's Rights in Canada/Bem-Estar da Crianca, Criancas Indigenas e Direitos das Criancas no Canada.
| Autor | Stevenson, Allyson |
In recent years, Canada has been taken to task both nationally and internationally for the poor conditions that Indigenous children experience. (1) As an advanced industrialized nation, for decades Canada has promoted itself as a humanitarian leader and human rights advocate in the world. Closer to home, Indigenous children and communities still want for basic access to water, sewer and schools, while poverty rates among on-reserve Indigenous children are a shocking 60%. (2) Saskatchewan has the second highest poverty rate for Indigenous children in Canada at 69% as compared to poverty rates settler children at 13%. (3) The studies, newspaper articles, and reports provide evidence of the marginalization of Indigenous peoples and communities in Canada, and reveal a stubborn apathy on the part of the government and public for addressing a blight on the nation's reputation, and the suffering of Indigenous children within its borders.
This current historical moment in Canada is rooted in the colonial relationship between the Canadian state and the Indigenous peoples of "Turtle Island," the Indigenous term for North America. This paper looks specifically at the emergence of adoption programs in the United States and Canada during the post-war period following 1945 to identify the roots of the current child welfare crisis, and reveal the deliberate creation of campaign of public education for ignorance around Indigenous transracial adoption. (4) In the 1960's and 1970's, First Nations and Metis children were increasingly apprehended by social workers and made wards of the provincial departments of Social Services. (5) Termed "the Sixties Scoop," Indigenous children across Canada and the United States were fostered and adopted by non-Indigenous families in turn losing their culture, language and connection to families and communities.
The term "Sixties Scoop" originated from a passage in Patrick Johnston's 1983 book (6), Native Children and the Child Welfare System. According to one social worker, the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the child welfare system stemmed from the ethnocentrism of individual social workers. Armed with a middle-class value system and goal of ultimate assimilation, social workers "scooped" up Indigenous babies and children from communities for adoption into white homes. (7) The perspective of social workers was and is rooted in Euro-Canadian cultural superiority and lack of knowledge of Indigenous culture and kinship systems. Testimony from a former B.C. social worker:
[A]dmitted that the provincial social workers would, quite literally, scoop children from reserves on the slightest pretext. She also made it clear, however, that she and her colleagues sincerely believed that what they were doing was in the best interests of the children. They felt that the apprehension of Indian children from reserves would save them from the effects of crushing poverty, unsanitary health conditions, poor housing and malnutrition, which were facts of life on many reserves. (8) On the surface, this quotation pointed to the well-intentioned desire on the part of individual social workers to rescue children from devastating material conditions. However, it also illustrated the lack of understanding of the historical factors that led to those conditions in this first place. Additionally, this quote identified one of the ways in which Canada, and Canadians more broadly, have failed to uphold the basic rights of Indigenous children. By removing Indigenous children (allegedly for their best interests) Indigenous child removal logic operated against meaningfully addressing the economic and political conditions that made families vulnerable, and caused communities struggle to provide the necessary elements for healthy children and families. A remedy to this harmful logic lies rooted in a rights-based approach. By approaching the issue of Indigenous child removal from a perspective of Children's rights outlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in conversation with United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), a meaningful framework for simultaneously addressing the systemic child welfare issues, and addressing the underlying factors can emerge. (9) By undertaking a new approach rooted in recognizing Indigenous children as bearing both children's and Indigenous rights, Canada must be compelled to act accordingly. In Canada, Indigenous children have remained outside human the human rights regimes as meaningful righters bearers. It is now time they were brought in.
In the small rural province of Saskatchewan, like elsewhere across the country of Canada, Indigenous children make up a disproportionate percentage of children in the provincial child welfare system. (10) The ongoing crisis of Indigenous child removal is a clear violation of Indigenous children's human and Indigenous rights, as children who are removed often lose connection to their families, culture and communities. Saskatchewan has the second highest rate of out of home care of Indigenous children, with 80% of children in the system being Indigenous, while making up only 25% of the total child population. (11) Although from the 1980's onward, First Nations in the Canadian context have taken on a greater role in the provision of child welfare services to Indigenous families and children, the funding of Indigenous child welfare remains inadequate, and has been found to be a violation of Indigenous children's human rights. (12) Some scholars argue that overrepresentation of Indigenous children is in part due child neglect rooted in factors that include poverty, poor housing, domestic violence and substance abuse. (13) However, one of the driving factors that have led to high rates of child removal is the deliberate underfunding of services to Indigenous families on Canadian reserves.
In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights tribunal found the government of
Canada guilty of discriminating against First Nations children on the basis of race for inequitably funding on-reserve Child and Family services. Former social worker, and University Professor Cindy Blackstock and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society argue that the cumulative impact of the decades long funding gap has led to children removed from their family homes and communities, living indefinitely in foster care, an outcome that mirrors the disgraced residential schools system of years past. (14) Recently, the Minister of Indigenous Services, Jane Philpott has characterized this overrepresentation as a national "humanitarian crisis" and vowed to devote increased resources to prevent apprehensions of Indigenous children. (15)
In 2015, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) published its final report on the disgraced Indian Residential schools system in operation in Canada between 1876 and 1996 and with it, 94 Calls to Action. (16) For the TRC Commissioners, the reconciliation of past and current harms of the residential schooling system hinged on the implementation of a number of contemporary policy and legal changes to address the unequal position of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Recommendations include allocation of proper funding to Indigenous Child Welfare, Education, and Justice and education of Canadians about the systemic and individual acts of violence that were part of the day to day operations of the residential school system. In addition, the commissioners called for a repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and terre nullius (Article 45, TRC Calls to Action, 2015) (17) that justified state-based subjugation of Indigenous peoples and the institution of UNDRIP in their place. Most importantly, call to Action 43: under the heading Reconciliation states: "We call upon federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation." (18)
In 2015, the newly elected Liberal government under leader Justin Trudeau platform that promised a renewed relationship with Indigenous peoples, based on a nation-to-nation relationship. (19) The following year, on May 10th 2016 Canada's Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Carolyn Bennett officially, endorsed the UNDRIP. Between 2007 and 2016, Canada's had been a permanent objector to several articles in UNDRIP. Initially Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand opposed UNDRIP, however, by 2016, Canada remained the lone objector. (20) UNDRIP spells out a wide range of Indigenous rights to self-determination, consent to development, culture, political expression, language and child-rearing for Indigenous peoples globally. It also outlines state obligations to ensure that Indigenous rights are protected and fostered, formally recognizing an Indigenous order of governance that exists world wide, despite the emergence of nation-states rooted in seventeenth century European colonial ventures. Thus, the responsibility shifts from that of Indigenous peoples to that of nation-states to acknowledge the limitations of their power with respect to Indigenous populations within their borders, and, if necessary, bring legislation and policy into alignment. UNDRIP signals a fundamental change to the relationship between Indigenous peoples and national governments based on the recognition of Indigenous collective and human rights.
Adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2007, UNDRIP is the culmination of a decades long process to recognize Indigenous rights in international law. (21) UNDRIP articulates and codifies a range of Indigenous rights distinct from those they may or may not possess in the nation states in which Indigenous peoples reside. The Declaration preamble begins with a series of statements that position Indigenous peoples relative to nation-states with recognition of their historic experiences of colonization emerging from the...
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