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You’re listening to a frequency podcast network production in association with City News.
Jordan Heath-Rawlings
At long last. Over the past couple of years, Canadians have reckoned with the incalculable damage caused by residential schools. So you would think then, that programs that recreate that experience for Indigenous families would have long ago been scrapped. You’d be wrong. And that brings us to a little girl that we’ll call Mia. Mia ended up more than halfway across the country, hundreds of miles from her territory, from her band, from her closest family. How did that happen? Because of a decision made by British Columbia’s Ministry of Children and Family Development, a government agency taking a child away from her Indigenous family members despite their wishes, and placing her with non-Indigenous caregivers on the other side of the country. The kind of thing we might have thought we’d left behind years ago. Nope. This is the story of what happened to Mia, what is still happening to Indigenous children in Canada, and how Mia’s family and her banned fought back.
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Amy Romer is a journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Narwhal, Reuters and this story in the Walrus. Hi, Amy.
Amy Romer
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Jordan
You’re very welcome. Thanks for writing this story. I wanted to start with the little girl at the center of it. Could you tell me a little bit about Mia? Who is she? And tell me about her entrance in and journey through the foster care system.
Amy Romer
It all began with Mia, which I’ll mention now is a pseudonym for the little girl. And really the story and her journey began when she was only three months old, living with her mother. And what happened was her mother requested that she enter into what’s called a voluntary care agreement, which is an agreement built into the BCMCFD as a way for your child to be in foster care for a limited time. And now it’s voluntary. So this is not due to a child protection concern on the MCFD side, but this is when there is a specific short term crisis which prevents you from caring for your child. And now Mia’s mother recognized that she was struggling and so requested this voluntary care agreement. And according to the MCFD, when a voluntary care agreement is in place, it’s the ministry’s job to reunify children with their families as soon as possible, unless it’s not in the child’s best interest. But through this reporting, we know that there are notes that were taken by the mother’s social worker that showed me his mother was a loving and attentive mother and that she only struggled because she was alone with three children and lacked the financial means to support her family. Now, whether or not at this time Mia’s mother was able to look after her daughter, the problem is that there were numerous family members in the community that were willing and able to look after her, who had gone through proper channels applying for custody, and each time they were denied by the MCFD. And so instead, Mia was placed with a white family in Prince George. And if we fast forward to when she was six, just last year, the foster family decided to retire from foster care. And this is a really key moment in Mia’s timeline, because instead of exploring options on the girl’s mother side, including her mother, who is very much still alive, the MCFD contacted relatives on the father side, her cousins, who live in Ontario. So 4000 km east of the girl’s mother family and her guitar and culture. And so really, the question is around why did they do that? The MCFD declined to comment, but it does seem as though they went to fairly extreme lengths to keep this girl from her community.
Jordan
So how did Mia end up back in Gitxsan?
Amy Romer
Yeah, so, under the British Columbia Child Family and Community Services Act, the CFCSA and Bill C 92, which is the federal act concerning First Nations, May, teen, Inuit children, youth and families, a permanent placement with a family cannot occur unless there is consent from the child’s parents and community. So when Mia’s mother and the Git and Max Band were notified of the MCFD’s intent to permanently place Mia with her cousins in Ontario, they refused to give consent, citing the Cfdsa and Bill C 92. And so this is when it landed in court. Now, without going into too many details about the court case, what soon ended up happening was that the MCFD made a last minute request to the judge to send the girl to her cousins in Ontario for what they called an extended stay until the end of trial, which was a real shock and not a usual process in court. And so the Gitxsan Band and the lawyers and the mother saw this as a major problem because in family law, judges are far more reluctant to move children once they’ve established themselves within a family, which the MCFD are also fully aware of. And so almost immediately after the judge, Okay’d, this extended say, her house group and the Gitxsan Band requested my visit to Gitxsan so they could stay in touch with her. But when we arrived, her collarbone was broken and at this point, she’d been staying with her paternal cousins for two weeks. And now I did get to speak to the paternal cousins and they said that she fell off the bed in the night time. When I spoke to her maternal family, apparently Mia had told them that children at her new foster home can be mean to her sometimes. And the fact is that we will never know. This little girl is six years old. And so I don’t want to dwell on this, but what does concern me is that when the Gitxsan Band requested the MCFD carry out an investigation into her broken collarbone and insisted that Mia remain on Gitxsan territories until the investigation was complete. The MCFD dismissed the possibility of an investigation, stating pretty quickly that they had looked into the case and had no reason to be concerned. Another crucial moment here, because this is when the Gitixsan decided that if the MCFD were not going to listen to their request to investigate her broken collarbone, Mia was going to remain on Gitxsan territories. And as they’d already pre warned.
Jordan
So what happened? And you described this scene in your piece, and it sounds pretty incredible what happened when it was time for Mia to go back into MCFD custody at the end of her visit and presumably be returned to the parental side in Ontario?
Amy Romer
Yeah. So on the day that Mia was due to be collected by the NCFD, members of the house group arranged for Mia to be taken to a safe house in an undisclosed location, where Mia and the house group’s matriarchs would hide out. So when the MCFD turned up to take Mia away, she wasn’t there. Instead, they were met by a large group of Guitar fan citizens, one of whom livestreamed the entire interaction with Tracy Woods, who’s a Git and Max elected chief. Reading from her prepared statement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and Bill C 92, as identified by the Government of Canada, has identified that the historical practice of removing children from their families resulted in the children suffering physical and mental abuse. It is with this in mind that the Gitxsan Band Council takes the position that will remain in the community of Gitxsan located on the Gitxsan territories, until a time that the Gitxsan Chief and Council are satisfied that the Ministry of Children and Family Development have made every effort to work with the Gitxsan Ban Council and the Gitxsan Child Welfare Committee to take all of the steps to establish appropriate arrangements for the child to enable her to remain in territory. The statement basically ended with Tracy saying that the MCFD is not authorized under the law to enter Gitxsan reserve, where they were currently standing for the purposes of removing Mia from her traditional territories.
Jordan
So what did the social workers do?
Amy Romer
So at that point, the social workers were kind of forced to stand down that night. This was a Friday night. They said to the community and to Tracey’s words to the aunt that they would stand down for the weekend and they would return on Monday. When they returned on Monday, again, Mia wasn’t there. And so a negotiation had to happen between the Gitxsan Band, the MCFD and the Wilp or the House group.
Jordan
I can certainly, obviously understand why the band would be concerned for Mia’s safety when she shows up with a broken collarbone. But in the big picture, which your article does get at why were the members of this band so vehement that Mia be an example and she should remain in Gitxsan?
Amy Romer
So I think it’s useful at this point to look backwards. In 1951, there was an amendment that was made to the Indian Act that switched many social services, including child protection, from a federal to a provincial responsibility. That switch did not require that social workers have any training in First Nations material Inuit cultures and wasn’t required to take into consideration what might constitute child protection outside of Euro-Canadian values. So what you see is that between 1951 and 1964, indigenous children went from representing 1% of all children in care across the country to more than one third. And looking at BC, specifically today Indigenous children, most of whom are First Nations, represent over two thirds of children in foster care, despite making up only 10% of the youth across the province. And cultural training is one thing, but we can also attribute this pretty vast number of First Nations children in foster care to be a direct result of the multigenerational trauma caused by the residential school system. What we have is First Nations parents who are traumatized and may have addictions issues to dull the pain of their trauma, giving birth to children who are naturally more vulnerable through conditions such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. And because of the way the BC child welfare laws are set up, it’s often concluded that the best thing for the child is to be removed from the birth family. But for First Nations families, once the child is removed, it’s far more difficult for children to be returned because their families have less access to social services and are far more likely to live in poverty compared to people who are not. First nations. People are going to say that I’m editorializing here, but that sounds a hell of a lot like we’re just repeating the same trauma of residential schools all over again. And that’s exactly what so many members of that community and me as family repeated to me over and over again. They all have connections to the residential school system, whether they attended themselves or they’re a descendant of. It really runs through every single person in that community. And so when you suddenly see this little girl who’s been taken away, they’re basically going to do everything they can to keep their children.
Jordan
Now, what kinds of options do they suggest for keeping their children within the community when the parents are struggling? Obviously, sometimes there is a need for foster care or some other kind of parenting. When the parent is unable or needs help, what does the community want to do?
Amy Romer
So I think a couple of things are important to mention. One is that in Gizan culture, when Left Wings itself, the Wilp or House group acts as its own child protection system. And I’ll mention because I’m aware that folks listening may not have heard the word wilt before. But what I’m referring to is a hereditary house group, which in German culture is matrilineal. So when children are born into their mother’s, welp, they are members for life. And so it’s in this matrilineal system, if the biological parents are not able to care for their child, it’s the wilp that will collectively decide which relative will take on a responsibility. And so it’s very normal in gigs and culture for extended family members to look after one of their community’s children. And so they would say, if this system was acknowledged and honored in Canadian law, we could have avoided years of separation and uncertainty in this particular little girl’s life and so many others. The other thing I think is important to mention, because I think, unfortunately, there are many things that need fixing, is that a report released in 2021 by the MCFD themselves that says that 84% of indigenous children in foster care were there due to neglect. And that’s the term they use, neglect. But neglect from who, exactly? Is it the parent or is it the state? And something that I know my article speaks to, but I think it’s important to say here as well, is something that Cindy Blackstock said to me, which is that the problem is that the child welfare laws treat structural discrimination as a parental deficit. You never find a provincial law that asks the question, what is the actual source of this neglect? The buck always stops with the parents. And an example that Cindy gave me is that if the government were to underfund every service in Toronto for five years, the parenting abilities of everyone in the city with children would decline. And so the problem isn’t their parenting. It’s the fact that they’re getting less than everybody else. So what she’s basically saying is that it’s the structural inequalities, ie. Poverty, housing, access to services, funding for healthcare, all of those things need to be addressed for society to see healthier families and a reduced number of children in care. And so, in other words, parents need to be put in a circumstance where they can actually have success.
Jordan
So what is being done now to address the issue? And why isn’t that traditional child protection system being acknowledged? Right now? We have a federal government that certainly claims publicly to be on a mission of truth and reconciliation. What’s happening?
Amy Romer
Well, last year, we saw a court ordered the federal government to pay $40 billion in child welfare, compensation and reform. So, $20 billion in compensation and $20 billion to reform the system. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal rejected the $20 billion compensation deal, finding a number of issues with Canada’s final settlement agreement, the FSA, amongst which would essentially dissent title victims that had already been determined as deserving of compensation. So we’ll see the government had planned to finalize that deal by the end of this year, but I imagine it’s going to take longer unless they can address the tribunal’s concerns. And then also last week, the BC government published a press release announcing historic changes to child welfare laws lay part to upholding indigenous jurisdiction. They’re saying that these amendments will respect the inherent rights of indigenous communities and provide their own child and family services. This does look brilliant on paper, and I was really excited to see this land on Twitter. An indigenous jurisdiction over child welfare is obviously necessary, but I do think that changes to legislation doesn’t necessarily mean that the policies or the mechanisms to implement those policies and uphold the law are in place or will be in place anytime soon. So, for example, they say that the modernized legislation will support indigenous peoples to reestablish, develop, and exercise child welfare laws for the community members. It doesn’t say how they intend to do this. What we do know is that similar to the federal government, the BC government has funded so many reports about how to address the overrepresentation of indigenous children in their system, but very rarely do we ever see them implementing any of its recommendations. And that’s the fundamental thing that I know advocates and community members will say needs to change. It’s not that there’s a lack of solutions, it’s that there’s a lack of implementation of the solutions, which really has to start at the prevention level, ie. Addressing those structural inequalities, poverty, housing, et cetera.
Jordan
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about literally every issue in Canada doing this show for four years, it’s that we’re really good at writing reports and really bad at doing anything about them.
Amy Romer
Exactly. Yes. I’m sure you’ve seen it time and time again.
Jordan
In the meantime, while we wait to see what, if any, action will actually come of this, what about Mia? Where is she right now? What’s the legal status of her case? Who’s caring for her?
Amy Romer
Yeah, so there is some good news on the horizon, actually. The judge has finally granted three months temporary custody to me as Matrilineal aunt and uncle, which is a normal procedure that happens before permanent custody is granted. And so we’re looking at December for permanent custody, which is really positive news for the little girl. Since leaving the safe house, for nearly a year now, she’s been enrolled at the local school where she attends with her siblings and cousins, who are all learning Gitxsan, which is their language. And as you already know, she’s living with her aunt and uncle, who I know she adores, and she’s also next door to her birth mother and her grandfather. So she really is surrounded by her family, and it couldn’t be a better placement for her in terms of being close to family and culture. And in the meantime, there’s, I assume, many others like her who are separated from their family and culture and are waiting for a process to be returned. That’s right. A happy ending, hopefully, at least for Mia and I guess we’ll get to work on the rest. Thank you so much, Amy. Yeah, no problem.
Jordan Heath-Rawlings
Amy Romer writing for the Walrus. That was the big story. For more from us, you can head to The Bigstorypodcast CA. You can send us feedback by clicking the Contact US button on that page. You know the rest of the ways you can give us feedback, and we’ve gotten a whole bunch of it in the past few weeks since we started responding to it during this part of the show. Some of that feedback concerns guests that we have on the show. Love them or hate them or simply think you have a better person to talk to, that’s fine. So if you’re wondering why we’re not talking about that mean email you sent about a particular guest and this isn’t about a particular guest, I don’t have anybody in mind here. But we’ll never cast dispersions on any guests that we have on this show. In fact, all I’m going to do here is thank them. Because really, I’m just sitting here. They’re the ones that make it happen. You can talk to us on Twitter at thebigstoryFPN. You can, of course, email us hello at Thebistorypodcast CA, and you can leave a voicemail 416-935-5935. The Big Story is an every podcast player, but you know that by now. And if you want to just hear it in your house, ask your smart speaker to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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