The July 19 inst. issue of the
Globe and Mail carried a story titled Alberta’s child-welfare system failed First
Nations youth: report
Here is yet another heart-jerking
story of incompetent and cruel handling of three aboriginal children in foster care
by Alberta’s child- welfare system.
These children died upon their
being returned to their respective parents with histories of domestic violence,
substance abuse and other problems that prompted the child-welfare agency to
remove them from parental care, in the first place.
Sarah was 5 years old when she
died from damage to internal organs, a head injury and multiple bruising.
Anthony was 2 years old when he
died after a cardiac heart arrest and unexplained brain and spine injuries.
Mikwan was 1 year old, when he
died of complications tied to acute blunt head trauma.
I don’t think that I would be far
off the mark to suggest that these three deaths were not the first three.
In all three cases the mothers
were charged in their death.
***
Then again, around the time this
story was published, the Globe and Mail reported on two new youth suicides in a
series of suicides on reserves in Northern Ontario.
While, this utterly and desperately
tragic state of affairs has been and continues to go on, the 17th
inst. witnessed the publication of the modified text entitled Principles respecting the Government of
Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.
On July 19 inst.,Jody
Wilson-Raybould, Minister of Justice and
the Attorney General of Canada, published an article in the Globe and
Mail titled Indigenous reconciliation
requires recognition.
The Honorable Minister’s
observations and comments makes one familiar with aboriginal and treaty rights
and the history of the relationship between the Crown and the aboriginal peoples, wonder why
she was appointed to her present job in the first place, other than the fact that
she is a person of aboriginal ancestry or aboriginal identity.
Among platitudes, and the
reference to the (10)
Principles to which I referred above, which if approved by her, would be
just cause for her dismissal, the
article also contains the following two gems:
She wrote: “To this day many aspects of formal relations between Indigenous
peoples and the Crown [read government] remain based on “denial”. For example,
Indigenous peoples have to prove their rights in court even though they are recognized
by section 35 of Canada’s Constitution. This costs all of use hundreds of millions
of dollars and takes years.”
Even a first year law student
would not utter such an inanity.
Again, she wrote: “For reconciliation
to fully manifest itself in Canada, denial must be ended in all of its aspects,
and recognition must become the foundation of relations. This is how the lives of Indigenous peoples will be improved.” (Italics
mine)
This how the lives of Indigenous
peoples will be improved? Surely, she must be jesting: what does she suggest the
Indigenous peoples should in the meantime?
How many more aboriginal women
and for how much longer should they have to put up with being brutalised, raped
and killed or left for dead? How many more youngster will have to be lost to
suicide? How many more infants have to be killed by their unfit mothers or parents?
Good G-d! The last thing the
aboriginal peoples need is for the national, regional and local Indian chiefs
to carry on politicking around those so-called “Principles”. What they need is
for these to earn their paycheques by getting down to the hard and urgent business
of looking after their well-being.
This means motivating and
mobilising all their resources and the ingenuity of their own people to deal
radically, imaginatively and effectively with all the mental health issues,
alcoholism, drug addiction and the rest of it, with which reserves are riddled.
In this regard, it is also high
time, for the people on and off reserve to stop playing the eternal victims, get
hold of them and assume responsibility for their personal and collective
plights.
Finally, it is also high time,
for the Department of Indian Affairs or whatever it is called nowadays, to
re-allocate existing resources and where critically necessary, to top them up to help the reserve communities
deal with these problems by providing the kind of services that will
enable them to get past the ills that ail them on the explicit and unambiguous
condition and understanding that the
ultimate responsibility for
getting past these ills, rests primarily with the members of the
reserves both at the individual and collective levels.
And, until the aboriginal
communities manage to attain a level of good health, communal well-being and secure
everything else that comes along with
these; develop a healthy social fabric resistant to temporary crises and take control over their destiny and compel their leaders to
spend their time working alongside them and
hold them accountable for their
failure to exercise their leadership
properly, the 10 so-called “Principles” will not be worth the paper on which
they are written ; nor for that matter would
the substitution of the alleged denial by recognition of historical
facts make any difference.
In other words, the aboriginal
peoples need to start their own internal revolution, yes I do mean to say
revolution, to take responsibility for and control of their well-being and
destiny. And towards this end, the federal and provincial governments owe them
to get their act together and discharge fully their respective obligations to
provide them with the necessary services and resources to help make a success
of this revolution for the benefit of all.
The time for this internal
revolution is long overdue and time is of the essence.
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