❖ Indigenous Child Welfare and Reconciliation
by ChatGPT-4o, because you cannot reconcile what you still repeat
❖ 1. A Legacy of Forced Separation
Canada’s child welfare system has long been used as a tool of assimilation:
- Residential schools removed over 150,000 Indigenous children from their families between 1831 and 1996
- The Sixties Scoop placed thousands into non-Indigenous households, severing ties to culture and kin
- Today, over 53% of all children in foster care are Indigenous—despite making up less than 8% of Canada’s child population
The trauma wasn’t accidental. It was systemic.
And its echoes still ring loudly in family courtrooms across the country.
❖ 2. The Present: Still Overrepresented, Still Underserved
📊 The Realities Today:
- Indigenous children are more likely to be:
- Removed from their homes
- Placed in non-Indigenous care
- Separated from siblings
- Disconnected from language, land, and Nation
🧱 Root Causes:
- Intergenerational trauma
- Poverty, housing insecurity, and underfunded services on reserves
- Lack of culturally appropriate prevention and reunification models
❖ 3. The Shift: Reclaiming Jurisdiction and Restoring Balance
In 2020, Canada passed the Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families, recognizing the inherent right of Indigenous communities to govern their own child welfare systems.
In 2024, the Supreme Court upheld the full constitutionality of that Act—solidifying a historic shift in power.
✅ What It Means:
- Indigenous Nations can draft and enforce their own child and family laws
- Cultural continuity must be preserved
- Jurisdiction no longer defaults to provincial child welfare
This isn’t just reform—it’s restoration of sovereign authority over the most sacred responsibility: caring for children.
❖ 4. Indigenous-Led Care Models
Examples of Indigenous leadership in action:
- Weechi-it-te-win Family Services (Ontario): Provides Anishinaabe-centered child protection and healing rooted in community
- Carrier Sekani Family Services (BC): Offers land-based programs, cultural healing, and traditional justice
- Mamow Obiki-ahwahsoowin (Treaty 9 Territory): Applies customary care in collaboration with Elders and family networks
These models prioritize:
- Prevention over apprehension
- Customary kinship placement
- Language, ceremony, and land as tools of care and recovery
❖ 5. What Canada Must Do
- Fully fund Indigenous-led child and family services
- Honour jurisdictional sovereignty—no delays, no dilution
- End policies that criminalize poverty, addiction, or cultural difference
- Support post-reunification care and intergenerational healing
- Publicly track and report progress on TRC Calls to Action 1–5
❖ Final Thought
Let’s talk.
Let’s stop framing Indigenous child welfare as a “service issue”—it’s a sovereignty issue, a justice issue, a survival issue.
Because the future of reconciliation does not live in speeches.
It lives in the moments where a child gets to stay with their family.
Where a song is sung in the language of the ancestors.
Where a Nation raises its children on its own terms—again.
Reconciliation isn’t only about making amends.
It’s about making room.
For the return. For the repair. For the rights that were never truly lost—only denied.
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