Colonial impact on Indigenous kids an ongoing issue

Indigenous child welfare is a long-standing issue that has a history and is older than this province.

The colonial impact on Indigenous children is an intergenerational mess caused by churches and governments based on the basic principle that we are unable to care for our children, thereby giving outside agencies the “right” to step in and make the situation worse.

Indigenous children are the collateral damage of failed colonial practices and it continues to the present day.

The early industrial schools and the later church-run residential schools were institutions put in place to remove the Indian from the child. It was an admission that the parents and the community were doing an effective job of raising children and they had to step in to prevent the language and culture from being passed to the next generation.

After several generations of messing with peoples' lives, the government concluded that Indian parents were deficient and their children had to be taken from them. Years of colonial racism had weakened Indigenous families and communities, so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The boarding schools led to the '60s Scoop and more meddling in First Nations lives and families. The '60s Scoop never really ended, and it exists in various forms to the present day.

One of the most onerous is the practice of birth alerts. This practice presupposes that a mother is unable to care for a child, and the baby is taken away at birth.

It's carried out by social workers. It's not just, nor does the mother stand much of a chance with an appeal. Most often these are young Indigenous, single mothers with little education or resources to fight back.

When I was researching this topic, I was informed of a mother who had previously lost her children to child welfare. She sobered up and spent eight years drug- and alcohol-free; she had employment and had created a stable home for herself. She had her baby in a hospital; meanwhile, some social worker had “red flagged” her file and the baby was taken from her. Her supporters launched a legal action, but trauma caused the mother to relapse and she committed suicide before the case could be litigated.

Saskatchewan is now the only province that allows this barbaric and unjust practice. British Columbia dropped the practice in September 2019, Manitoba in April 2020. Both Alberta and Ontario have dropped it.

The practice has been shown to be discriminatory, as Indigenous and Black babies are most often targeted.

This is a situation where too much power is placed in the hands of bureaucrats and social workers. They can red flag a mother's file and without her knowledge or consent have the baby taken into provincial custody and put up for adoption.

The final reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls have called for an end to this racist and cruel practice. So far, the government of Saskatchewan has failed to act.

The reason that birth alerts have been dropped is that, while never litigated, governments realize that it could not stand the scrutiny of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and would give them a black eye at a time when reconciliation is the buzzword for Indigenous-settler relations.

Right now, Saskatchewan is the outlier and only remaining province that continues this unjust practice. So far, the government has either ignored it or kicked it down the road because of a lack of a public outcry. This practice is barbaric and discriminatory; if you want to traumatize a woman and ruin her life, this is the way to do it.

Lost in this whole imbroglio are the rights of the mother and the jurisdiction of First Nations governments. Both the federal and provincial governments have assumed that they have the jurisdiction to ruin Indigenous lives and perpetuate their racist and barbaric assault against our people.

It's time that the Saskatchewan government not only dropped birth alerts but also recognized First Nations jurisdiction to care for our children and strengthen the family unit.

Other people running our lives and seizing control of our children has led to a legacy of pain and dysfunction. The time has come to put and end to it and place our children back in our hands, where they belong.