Indigenous Writes

by Chelsea Vowel

  What about inclusion of Indigenous topics in K–12?

  Surely, there are no mandatory Indigenous Studies courses because these topics are already a “primary focus of social science and history classes from kindergarten on”?

  In October 2015, KAIROS (Canadian churches working together for justice and peace) took a look at how much Canadian students are actually learning about Indigenous peoples in elementary and secondary school. They issued a report card on provincial and territorial curriculum using the TRC’s Call to Action 62.1.22 They examined whether or not curricula include the four elements identified: residential-school legacy, treaties, historical contributions, and contemporary contributions.

  KAIROS also looked at whether these elements are mandatory, and at what grade levels they are offered. Further, public commitment by provinces and territories was measured against actual implementation.

  It turns out that no provinces or territories received top marks for their public commitment to Call to Action 62.1. Only the Prairie provinces received a passing grade; all other jurisdictions have so far failed to make significant public commitment to integrating these topics into the general-learning outcomes. That means most places in Canada aren’t even issuing empty promises to follow the TRC’s recommendation!

  In terms of actual implementation, seven of the provinces and territories have one of the four elements included in their learning outcomes, and only Saskatchewan can boast teaching more than one of the four elements (though not all). In our most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, none of the four elements is adequately covered in the curricula.

  In seven of the eight provinces that cover at least one of the recommended topics, this learning is mandatory in only a few grades. Saskatchewan outperforms all other provinces and territories in Canada and still does not even come close to K–12 integration of mandatory coverage of the four elements recommended by the TRC.

  It seems that anecdotes do not translate into actual Canada-wide learning outcomes. Maybe those mandatory Indigenous Studies courses at the postsecondary level are necessary after all, at least until K–12 curricula are revamped.

  Remember, the TRC did not call for only the residential-school legacy to be taught to all people in Canada. Learning about the treaties and the historic and contemporary contributions of Indigenous peoples is also vital if Canadians are ever going to achieve a base level of knowledge necessary to enter into any form of “new relationship” with us. Education like that envisioned by the TRC would make books like this obsolete – something that would bring me endless joy.

  You can start this process now.

  I’ve provided a number of resources to get you started. You have complete access to the entire TRC report, and if going through all six volumes is too daunting, please at least make it a priority to read the executive summary. If you’d rather listen to it, check out the “Read the TRC Report” videos. Canadians have been coming together in their respective communities to help one another through this difficult material, so see if such a group exists where you live. If you have children, or work with children, educators have identified a number of books that are appropriate for kids under 12.23 Most of all, please do not push this learning aside as unimportant. If there is ever going to be change in this country, it will come because individuals made it happen.

  NOTES

  1.Dennis Saddleman, “Monster,” CBC Radio, accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/apr-3-2014-1.2908353/monster-by-poet-dennis-saddleman-i-hate-you-residential-school-i-hate-you-1.2908356.

  2.Marie Wilson, Commissioner, TRC of Canada.

  3.With the additions of a summary and many documents, the TRC Report now actually exceeds six volumes.

  4.Eyaa-Keen Healing Centre, “Historic Trauma Transmission,” accessed December 26, 2015, http://eyaa-keen.org/resources/historic-trauma-transmission/.

  5.Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” 2015, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Exec_Summary_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2016, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=890. All reports are available in complete form, for free, online: http://nctr.ca/reports.php.

  6.Indian Affairs and Northern Development, “Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan,” 1997, accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/gathering-strength.pdf.

  7.“Into the West,” TV mini-series, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409572/.

  8.Government of Canada, “Statement of Apology to Former Students of Indian Residential Schools,” June 11, 2008, accessed December 26, 2015, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649.

  9.Indian Residential School Settlement, official court website, accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/english_index.html.

  10.Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” 2015, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Exec_Summary_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf.

  11.Zoe Todd, “Read the TRC Report,” YouTube video, June 7, 2015, accessed December 26, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW4lQfOfl3I&list=PLxPr_RIsvg9JJWoiRx2kl2v24r_pu7JbR.

  12.Elizabeth McSheffrey, “Trudeau Promises Full Federal Action on Final TRC Report,” National Observer, December 15, 2015, accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/12/15/news/trudeau-promises-immediate-action-final-trc-report.

  13.TRC, “Summary of the Final Report,” 234.

  14.Nancy Macdonald, “Required Reading: Making Indigenous Classes Mandatory,” Maclean’s, November 19, 2015, accessed December 26, 2016, http://www.macleans.ca/education/making-history-2/.

  15.This section of the chapter was first published in a modified form by CBC Aboriginal, accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/debunking-myth-canadian-schools-teach-indigenous-peoples-1.3376800.

  16.Josh Dehaas, “Why Indigenous Studies Shouldn’t Be Mandatory,” Maclean’s, February 23, 2012, accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/why-indigenous-studies-shouldnt-be-mandatory/.

  17.Lauren Southern, Twitter post to âpihtawikosisân (Twitter account), December 10, 2015, accessed December 26, 2015, https://twitter.com/apihtawikosisan/status/675143351042228225.

  18.Here is the social studies curriculum for grade 11 in British Columbia: https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/pdfs/social_studies/2005ss_11.pdf. World War II figures prominently; and it does again in grade 12.

  19.See note 10.

  20.Heather Steele, “University of Winnipeg Approves Mandatory Indigenous Course for All,” Global News, November 20, 2015, accessed December 17, 2015, http://globalnews.ca/news/2352776/university-of-winnipeg-approves-mandatory-indigenous-course-for-all-students/.

  21.In the northern Territories, with the highest per capita residential-school participation in the country, a mandatory new course for all high-school students has been developed. Co-created with residential-school survivors, the course covers the northern residential-school story, as well as the history of northern colonization, treaties, and modern-day Indigenous-led governance.

  22.“Report Card: Provincial and Territorial Curriculum on Indigenous Peoples,” KAIROS Canada, October 2015, http://www.kairoscanada.org/what-we-do/indigenous-rights/windsofchange-report-cards.

  23.Chantelle Bellrichard, “10 Books About Residential Schools to Read With Your Kids,” CBC News, September 26, 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/10-books-about-residential-schools-to-read-with-your-kids-1.3208021. Those books are: Nicola Campbell, Shi-shi-etko (Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2005); Nicola Campbell, Shin-chi’s Canoe (Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2008); Michael Kusugak, Arctic Stories (Winnipeg: Pem
mican Publications, 2015); Peter Eyvindson, and Sheldon Dawson, Kookum’s Red Shoes (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 2011); Christy Jordan-Fenton, and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, Fatty Legs: A True Story (Buffalo: Annick Press, 2010); Christy Jordan-Fenton, and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, A Stranger at Home: A True Story (Buffalo: Annick Press, 2011); Sylvia Olsen, No Time to Say Goodbye: Children’s Stories of Kuper Island Residential School (Winlaw: Sono Nis Press, 2002); Larry Loyie, As Long as the Rivers Flow (Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2005); Shirley Sterling, My Name Is Seepeetza (Toronto: Groundwood Books, 1992); Julie-Ann André, and Mindy Willett, We Feel Good Out Here = Zhik gwaa’an nakhwatthaiitat qwiinzii (The Land Is Our Storybook) (Markha: Fifth House Publishers, 2008). A longer reading list for all ages can be found at Where Are the Children, http://wherearethechildren.ca/en/resources/.

  21

  Our Stolen Generations

  The Sixties and Millennial Scoops

  If you’ve ever heard the term Sixties Scoop and thought it had something to do with ice cream in the old days, I’m here to enlighten you.

  I prefer the term Stolen or Lost Generations because the scooping I’m about to discuss did not end in the 1960s. In fact, many argue that it didn’t end with a single generation, either, and perhaps hasn’t actually ended at all – hence, the title. Similar policies were put into place in Australia with equally unhappy results.1

  You could delve into this sordid history and lose many hours uncovering details, but I’ll provide you with a brief outline and enough resources in the endnotes to allow you to do that digging if you wish. This is an ongoing chapter of Canadian history that has yet to receive attention comparable to that finally given to the residential schools, but it is slowly leaking into the public consciousness due to the efforts of advocates and adoptees.

  In short, Sixties Scoop is the term used to refer to the adoption of First Nations and Métis children here in Canada, beginning in the 1960s and continuing up until the mid-1980s. It is not a specific policy, but rather a series of outcomes of various child-welfare practices. The 1960s saw the largest number of Indigenous children being adopted out in this way, in too many cases without the consent or even knowledge of their families or communities. Some of these children were adopted out internationally.

  Adoption as cultural annihilation

  It is important to remember many of the services Canadians take for granted – such as education, health care, and social-welfare programs – are mainly designed and administered by the provinces and territories.

  However, the federal government has been asserting its authority over “Indians, and Lands of the Indians” since 1763.2 While it still remains unclear whether this includes all Inuit, Métis, and non-status Indians, it is true that status Indians must turn to the federal government – not the provinces – for many services.

  Canada did not spring from the skull of Zeus fully formed. The development of social programs and services has been incremental. Before the mid-1960s, there was no organized federal child-welfare system.3 The provinces each had their own system, but nothing was in place for First Nations people.

  In the mid-1960s, agreements started to be formed between the federal and provincial governments to provide some child-welfare coverage in First Nations communities. To be brief, the approach was “take first, ask questions later (if ever).”

  The similarity to tactics used during the height of the residential-school system is eerie. Aboriginal children were taken en masse from their families and adopted out into non-Indigenous families:

  Child welfare workers removed Aboriginal children from their families and communities because they felt the best homes for the children were not Aboriginal homes. The ideal home would instill the values and lifestyles with which the child welfare workers themselves were familiar: white, middle-class homes in white, middle-class neighbourhoods. Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal parents and families were deemed to be “unfit.”4

  Research has shown that in British Columbia alone, the number of Indigenous children in the care of the child-welfare system went from almost none to one third in only 10 years as a result of this expansion.5 This was a pattern that repeated itself all across Canada.

  There is evidence that at least 11 132 status-Indian children were removed from their homes between 1960 and 1990. However, it is clear the numbers are, in fact, much higher than this, as birth records were often closed and status not marked down on foster records. Some estimate the number, which included non-status and Métis children, was close to 20 000.6 Across the country, 70 to 90 percent of Indigenous children were placed in non-Indigenous homes.7

  Being from an Indigenous family was often enough to have a child declared in need of intervention. This process resulted in thousands of Indigenous peoples being raised without their culture, their language, and without learning anything about their communities. Reclaiming that heritage has been a painful and difficult journey not only for the adoptees, but often also for their families.8

  The Sixties Scoop picked up where residential schools left off, removing children from their homes, and producing cultural amputees.

  Child-welfare reforms not working

  In the late 1970s, it was recognized that the approach up to that point was inadequate, and an Indian Child Welfare Sub-Committee was struck to address the problems and provide recommendations. The working committee was a joint effort by federal and provincial governments, as well as the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood.9 There were efforts made to turn more power over to First Nations themselves and to keep children in their communities rather than being adopted out across Canada, into the United States, and even overseas.10

  In 1982, Manitoba Judge Edwin C. Kimelman was appointed to head an inquiry into the child-welfare system and how it was impacting Indigenous peoples.11 He had this to say:

  It would be reassuring if blame could be laid to any single part of the system. The appalling reality is that everyone involved believed they were doing their best and stood firm in their belief that the system was working well. Some administrators took the ostrich approach to child welfare problems – they just did not exist. The miracle is that there were not more children lost in this system run by so many well-intentioned people. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, and the child welfare system was the paving contractor.12

  Nor was this his strongest condemnation of the process, and he made it clear in his report that the system was a form of cultural genocide.

  Unfortunately, by 2002, over 22 500 Indigenous children were in foster care across Canada – more than the total taken during the Sixties Scoop and certainly more than had been taken to residential schools.13 Indigenous children are six to eight times more likely to be placed in foster care than non-Indigenous children.14 To ignore the repeated attempts to annihilate Aboriginal cultures and instead place the blame solely on “dysfunctional Native families” is to take an utterly ahistorical and abusive view. As Valerie Galley wrote in a 2010 paper prepared for the Saskatchewan Child Welfare Review panel:

  [This] over representation…is not rooted in their indigenous race, culture and ethnicity. Rather, any family with children who has experienced the same colonial history and the resultant poverty, social and community disorganization…may find themselves in a similar situation.15

  Systemic discrimination and underfunding

  On April 18, 2012, an important ruling came down from the Federal Court.16 This case was a judicial review of a decision made by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT), which had used a technicality to dismiss allegations that the federal government racially discriminates against First Nations children by chronically underfunding child welfare on-reserve.17 The Federal Court sent the human rights case back to the CHRT with the instructions to give it a full hearing. The original case, launched in 2007 by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations, is still ongoing.

  Study after study has shown that child-welfare systems on-reserve are fun
ded at levels far below those available to off-reserve populations, which inevitably leads to lower levels of service. As a result, less focus is put on helping families before children are removed, or on reuniting families once removal has taken place. In 2008, then Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, noted the rate of foster care for children on-reserve is eight times that of non-Indigenous children.18 When the original CHRT complaint was filed, the federal government was spending about 78 cents for child welfare on-reserve for every dollar spent by provinces for children off-reserve.

  Also troubling was the way in which Cindy Blackstock, president of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, faced retaliation and intense monitoring by the federal government after the human-rights complaint was filed. Her personal social media was spied on by federal officials and she was surveilled during public appearances.19 In June 2015, the CHRT ruled in favour of Blackstock on the issue of retaliation and awarded her $20,000.20

  The millennial scoop

  No situation involving children in need of protective services is a happy one. Many of the stories, regardless of the background of the child, will chill your blood, and rightfully so. However, when only 21 percent of children in a province like Manitoba are Indigenous, yet account for 84 percent of children in permanent care, something is deeply, and terribly, wrong21 – something that cannot be chalked up to just bad parenting.

  Despite the fact that changes to the child-welfare system have been made, and Indigenous communities and families certainly have more control and input than was the case during the height of the Sixties Scoop, the number of Indigenous children being placed out-of-home does not seem to be decreasing. The trend is to place Indigenous children in group or institutional care – some at shockingly young ages.

  Recently, Cora Morgan, Manitoba’s First Nations family advocate, raised the alarm on the seizure of Indigenous infants, stating social workers are removing an average of one newborn a day in that province, despite not having adequate facilities or caretakers to deal with the influx of infants. Morgan pointed to one case where a three-day-old boy was taken from his mother simply because the mother had been a ward of Family Services until she was 18.22 If anything, this seems like a stunning indictment by child-welfare workers of the child-welfare system itself; if it is assumed children passing through the system are incapable of becoming adequate parents, then that system is failing them utterly.