Melissa Patriquin of the Mnaasged Alternative Care program speaks in Muncey, Ont. in June 2021. (Bryan Bicknell / CTV News)
LONDON, ONT. --
On National Indigenous Peoples Day, a day that celebrates First Nations
culture, there was a major announcement for Indigenous children and
youth in Southwestern Ontario.
The Muncey-based Mnaasged Alternative Care program has secured a foster care license.
It means Indigenous children in the foster system can now find love and
care in culturally appropriate environments, no longer solely under the
care of the Children's Aid Society (CAS).
“The system is old, the framework just doesn’t work, and it’s not
appropriate for Indigenous children and youth,” said Melissa Patriquin,
Mnaasged’s director of Child and Family Services.
The agency will now take direct referrals from the CAS, and will work
to match Indigenous children from First Nations communities across
southern Ontario with caring foster families.
Currently, there are more than 100 Indigenous children in the catchment
area that would benefit from the services of the agency.
Patriqin says the goal is to bring them closer to their cultural identity.
“I don’t think that there’s any Indigenous person who hasn’t been
affected in some way, shape, or form by the inter-generational effects
of residential schools, the '60s Scoop, child welfare. Indigenous people
are so over-represented in the child welfare system right now.”
The agency also has a new headquarters on the Muncey reserve west of
London. It’s equipped with various amenities like a healing lodge,
arbour centres for ceremonies, and a playground.
It will also serve as an administrative and cultural hub for the agency, said Executive Director Mike George.
“This is a really significant piece for us because it helps us
repatriate some of the children who were placed in non-Indigenous
families. It will help us repartriate them back to their communities,
and provide that additional connection to their communities, their
elders, their clans, and their culture.”
Mnaasged is actively seeking foster families. Alternative care
supervisor Kyliegh Alexander said they don’t have to be Indigenous.
Education and training that recognizes First Nations culture and supports children will be provided.
“Like every other child, right? Like they’re just looking for a home,
they’re looking for care and love. They’re going to thrive when their
needs are met and when their care is quality.”
Those interested in becoming a foster family can check here.
From 1830 to 1840, between 70,000 and 100,000 American Indians
living in the East were forcibly resettled by the US Army. Many others
were massacred before they could be persuaded to leave; an unknown
number died from disease, exposure, and starvation suffered during the Trail of Tears as well as on other enforced, long-distance marches westward to Indian Territory.
While the removal policy helped to alleviate the immediate
"Indian problem," as more and more Americans continued to move westward,
they found other Indian tribes living in freedom throughout the
continent. Because these Indians prevented non-Indians from settling in
many desirable areas, and because many white settlers did not feel safe
living amidst the Indian "danger," another new policy was created to
deal with the Indians - they would be confined to a land reserved
exclusively for their own use - areas that came to be called
reservations.
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By Trace A. DeMeyer (Trace Lara Hentz in the near future) PART 2
Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it.
The people who are charged to look after abused and neglected children have an important job. I give them that. We all know some states have very high rates of poverty. Most of those states have Indian reservations and based on statistics, most Native children in foster care live in those states. Foster care doesn't solve the poverty problem by taking children away from their parents! It feeds the system that makes money on children in state care. The amount of money spent on social worker salaries and all the other state jobs: billions per year. Read more HERE about Massachusetts, where I live.
Are these social workers and judges aware of this country's appalling Indian history? Maybe, some.
Children on some reservations do experience poverty. The US government who
created these reservations (some say concentration camps) know this,
too. [On this blog, we have covered how this is affecting many Indian families, when their children are taken away. We have also covered in depth what this does to the child who is adopted out or goes through the foster care system.]
We know "their" job as social workers is to make sure all children are safe. When you have poverty, you have increased rates of all the bad things: not enough food, depression, crime, etc. It's a vicious cycle that sucks in new generations. I have been to enough reservations to know this first hand.
Has the government made life better for Indian people since the Indian Child Welfare was passed in 1978? No. The federal government is too busy dealing with all the other problems it creates. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs has been making life miserable for all the tribes since the late 1700s... Back in those days "overseers" and Indian Agents (up until the 1970s) were just like the social workers of today. They removed children from their parents, citing "poverty." Who created this poverty?
I remember the Eastern Pequot tribal leaders told me they were "handled" by the Connecticut Dept. of Parks and Forests. Some of the overseers reports were kept in the CT state archives. If you wanted to buy medicine or cloth or anything, you had to ask the overseer. I was told the Eastern Pequots would return home from work and their children would be gone (and they never saw them again.) With all the dirty politics in that state, this tribe documented their entire history, only to be denied federal recognition! READ
Remember that Tribes deal with the federal government, not state governments. Treaties were legal, government-to-government agreements between two
legitimate governments - the United States and an Indian nation. When an
Indian nation signed a treaty, it agreed to give the federal government
some or all of its land, as well as some or all of its sovereign powers.
In return, the federal government entered into a trust responsibility
with the Indian Nation in which the federal government promised to
provide protection, benefits, and rights to the American Indian peoples
in exchange for some or all of their land. The trust responsibility
bound the United States to represent the best interests of the tribe,
protect the safety and well-being of tribal members, and fulfill its
treaty obligations and commitments. [Source]
If you read tribal newspapers, tribes have been fighting "states" over their treaty rights and the care of their own children ever since treaties - yet this was never supposed to happen!
The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was instituted and passed to protect tribal children from state's social workers and other groups (missionaries and organized religions) who steadily removed children. If you read the anthology TWO WORLDS, you will read testimony that was presented to the Senate about this horrific chapter of American history.
What changed my life was finding out the US government condoned and funded the Indian Adoption Projects, affecting thousands of Indian children who were adopted out to non-Indian parents for the sole purpose of erasing our identity and terminating our rights as sovereign citizens in our tribes.
