Wall apology for Sixties Scoop would have ring of hollowness

It’s too late for a meaningful Sixties Scoop apology from Premier Brad Wall.

He’ll be in office for a few more months, but that isn’t time enough to stop or undo the harm his own policies have inflicted on Indigenous people who still suffer the effects of that culturally genocidal practice.

What is the value of “sorry” from a person who doesn’t stop hurting the recipient of the apology?

It would be easy for Wall to apologize for previous governments that ripped children away from their parents, families, communities, culture and language.

He could acknowledge that too many of them, now adults, still struggle to overcome the disadvantages of starting life as outsiders, often without meaningful human connections.

It would even be a feather in his cap to say he had.

Many non-Indigenous people would like to forget the past and pretend it has no bearing on the present.

An apology is something they could point to and repeat their mantra of “Get over it.”

An apology on Wall’s record would give a false impression that he cares about the needs of people affected by the child welfare system.

In 2015, he said he was willing to apologize, but not with any sort of cash payment.

He wanted to “move forward and deal with the ongoing issues that exist,” he told the Globe and Mail.

“We want to make sure there is a broader knowledge about the Scoop,” he said.

Yet, while Wall seems to have knowledge of the issue, Saskatchewan Party policies have made life harder for people struggling with the effects of the provincial government’s ongoing project of removing Indigenous children from their families.

Former children’s advocate

Bob Pringle has said almost 80 per cent of children in care are Indigenous.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Indian Residential Schools laid bare the ugly government-sanctioned foundation of so much of today’s social dysfunction.

It laid out the path toward healing and change.

Like the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People (RCAP) before it, the TRC used its findings to say how policies must change: instead of dictating Band-Aid fixes, governments need to listen to the people — listen, and then step back, allowing Indigenous peoples the space, authority and consistent, adequate funding to address their issues.

Governments need to work with First Nations family services instead of picking jurisdictional fights with them.

Brad Wall has failed to answer the calls to action and pretends he can’t see the connections between his policies and the deeper poverty and growing social ills they engender.

Access to addictions programs is so bound in red tape that for many, the moment when they feel ready for the challenge of change slips by while they wait for treatment.

School and social servicesbased family wraparound programs have shown promising results, but have shut down for lack of stable, ongoing funding.

Sixties Scoop expert Jackie Maurice, who used her own lived experience in gaining her PhD, has said being in foster care is a great boot camp for homelessness.

Wall’s government has so restricted funding the Lighthouse shelters that most of the people seeking a safe place to sleep are disqualified.

The RCAP found 95 per cent of Indigenous jail and prison inmates had been in foster care.

How many are like the 43-yearold man, whose sentencing hearing I covered, who never knew his birth family and was moved from one foster home to another, as he became increasingly difficult to reach and who spent his life in jails and prisons, his petty crimes escalating over time to aggravated assaults and sexual assaults?

The TRC called on governments to eliminate the over-representation of Aboriginal people in jails and prisons by 2025 and to monitor progress toward it in detailed annual reports.

Instead, the Saskatchewan Party defunded the native court worker program and restorative justice programs at Saskatoon Mediation Services.

Nor has he provided operating cash for Str8 Up, which helps people escape gangs, addictions and criminality, and whose clientele is heavy with former foster children.

The program offers a supportive alternative, yet it often lacks the money to even visit Saskatchewan’s jails and federal prison.

I’d rather have an apology from a leader who actually stops worsening the harm and works with the people to make things better.