Feds neglect First Nations children

November 17, 2009 Brantford Expositor

Departing from native heterodoxy may not be politically correct but the last thing we need is another bureaucrat tasked with overseeing aboriginal offenders.

With all due respect to Howard Sapers, the ombudsman for federal inmates, I seriously doubt whether appointing a deputy minister for aboriginal corrections will have a measurable impact on the lives of native prisoners.

If the federal government really wanted to make a difference, it would dig deep to help at-risk native families before their kids are abused or neglected and before they look to gangs for friendships, drugs for solace and violence for misplaced self-respect.

It's horrendous that 20% of our federal inmates are aboriginal, even though aboriginals make up only 4% of the overall population. But as important as it is to adequately prepare native inmates for release and reintegrate them into society, it's a lot easier to help kids before they've seriously messed up.

Just as we failed natives with the horrors of residential schools, we're now discriminating against them in a thoroughly modern context by underfunding child welfare services.

First Nations child welfare organizations receive 22% less funding than provincial agencies and yet the needs of aboriginal children are greater.

The Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society have been complaining about the funding gap for more than a decade.

Nothing has changed.

So they made a formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. A tribunal was supposed to begin hearing testimony in the case yesterday.

But a new tribunal chair has just been appointed and the proceedings have been adjourned until mid-January.

"Every single day there's a delay, it's the children who suffer. They're the ones who are denied ... equal treatment," says Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the Caring Society.

In 1948, there were about 9,000 native kids in residential schools, she points out. Now, it's estimated that there are three times that many First Nations children in state care.

About one in 200 non-aboriginal kids is cared for by the state, compared to seven in 200 Metis kids and a staggering one in 10 First Nations children, she says.

Child welfare funding is supposed to cover a variety of prevention services to keep families intact, including social workers, parenting programs and family counsellors.

First Nations kids are moved into foster homes much faster than troubled non-aboriginal kids because there are almost no services to keep native families together.

"We can see the impact of this underfunding," says Blackstock.

"There have been lots of studies that have drawn the connection between kids in child welfare care and those who end up in prison."

With additional funding cuts announced by the Ontario government, some Ontario native child protection agencies are in such dire straits that they may have to send out layoff notices next month, Patrick Madahbee, Grand Council Chief of the Union of Ontario Indians, warned yesterday.

"We're really questioning why we're getting nailed like this," he said. "They're not meeting actual needs."

In a 2005 policy paper, the Caring Society noted that aboriginal children are twice as likely to experience neglect as non-aboriginal kids because of poverty and addiction.

They need more services but receive less. It appears we'd rather pay much more to jail aboriginal kids later than help them now.