Due to persistent colonial practices and institutional racism that spans several generations, children who are First Nations, Métis, and Inuit are disproportionately overrepresented in Canada’s child welfare system. Although they make up just 7% of all youngsters in Canada, nearly 60% of children receiving out-of-home care are Indigenous. The child welfare agencies in Canada have historically been tools of colonial policies aimed at assimilating and integrating Indigenous people. Residential schools broke Indigenous family care traditions, the 1960s Scoop, and the ongoing underfunding of health services, educational opportunities, and family support for Indigenous people. Also, the current system persists in enforcing Eurocentric standards for child welfare instead of encouraging community-based approaches that are congruent with Indigenous perspectives.
Therefore, the cumulative consequences of many generations of hereditary trauma, loss, and grief affect Indigenous families today. This research emphasizes how the child welfare system is set up to fail First Nations, Métis, and Inuit families. It also emphasizes how self-determination, cultural competency, and culturally safe practices for Indigenous children and families must be at the foundation of any reconciliation changes. Putting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Principles into practice are critical first steps. To radically alter a dysfunctional system and promote fairness and reconciliation for Indigenous communities that endure disproportionate child removals, social workers must push for significant reforms at the legislative, institutional, and practice levels. Respecting Indigenous leadership in creating a new care system based on their traditional ways of knowing is essential to the wellness of Indigenous children.
Historical Background
For millennia, indigenous children have been exposed to coercive colonial regimes that have disrupted traditional family care and cultural structures. Over 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were forcefully removed from their villages when Canada instituted the residential school system in the 19th century. Assimilation and cultural erasure were the stated goals, and the resultant intergenerational trauma persisted until the residential schools were closed in 1996 (Hyslop, 2022). Subsequently, there was the 1960s Scoop, which took place between the 1960s and the 1980s and included the forcible adoption of almost 20,000 Indigenous children by white families.
Notably, these tactics of excessive monitoring and forced family separation for Indigenous children are still in place in today’s child welfare system. Despite making up just 7.7% of all youngsters, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society claims that nearly 52% of Indigenous children in foster care nationwide are in Canada. Manitoba places Native children in foster care at a rate ten times higher than that of non-Native children. The root causes of this crisis are numerous and include mold-infested housing, unsafe drinking water access, inadequate early childhood supports, mold-infested prevention services for Indigenous families, and systemic racism in healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth. In addition, historic policies now require significant improvements in response to lobbying. These include the 231 Calls for Justice in the Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Bill C-92, the Act Respecting First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Children and Families, and the 94 TRC Calls to Action. However, complete implementation is still absent (Douglas, 2022). Social workers, legislators, and leaders of the Indigenous community must apply constant pressure and implement accountability mechanisms to stop the removal rates from rising further.
Literature Review
Current research validates the persistent inequalities and unfavorable consequences that Indigenous children and families encounter while interacting with Canada’s child welfare system. Quantitative analysis effectively demonstrates the disproportionate rates of inquiries, removals, and placements of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children (Douglas, 2022). More research is needed to understand how Indigenous caregivers deal with the system entirely. They have told stories of bias, being judged based on stereotypes, not knowing the effects of intergenerational trauma, and band members prioritizing traditional nuclear family structures over ideas of kinship care.
Through this literature, contemporary realities are linked to the brutal colonial practices and structures that robbed Indigenous peoples of their language, customs, identities, and right to self-determination. According to Bombay et al. (2021), survivors and their descendants of residential schools continue to experience grief, mental discomfort, addictions, and cycles of lateral violence as a result of the profound trauma and loss they were subjected to. When evaluating care situations, state authorities must take into account the accumulated damage that Indigenous families have experienced over time, which is linked to spiritual injury. Besides, ideas such as cultural safety and humility provide counterbalances to the Eurocentric perspective that the system now functions under. To assist land-based healing, language revitalization, ceremonies, and family systems, social workers must become allies in the decolonization process by opening their minds to Indigenous worldviews (Hart et al., 2022). This creates settings where Indigenous children feel empowered by their history and communities take charge of their wellbeing for the community’s youngest members.
Failures and Current Systems
The data that quantify the overrepresentation of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit adolescents in child welfare make the shocking flaws in the system transparent. As previously mentioned, while making up just 7.7% of all Canadian children under 14, Indigenous children account for almost 50% of foster children—a ratio that far outnumbers that of other ethnic groups. Up to 85% of children in care are Indigenous in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. There are inherent biases in the very methods the system uses. Risk indicators derived from white, middle-class norms by structured decision-making systems may lead to the incorrect classification of cultural behaviors related to extended family care as insufficient (Douglas, 2022). Even in cases where economic considerations such as substandard housing play a significant role in the findings, investigations also consistently uncover neglect as evidence for the removal of Indigenous children.
Nevertheless, when placed in non-Indigenous homes, many First Nations children lose their legal status and Indian Act privileges after being removed. Being cut off from their communities makes it more difficult for them to access traditional customs, celebrations, language learning programs, and elder mentoring. Thus, the Millennium Scoop has carried out the assimilationist objectives of past practices (Bombay et al., 2022). These locations fall short of developing robust Indigenous identity self-concepts. The tragic trend of a large number of Indigenous children growing up without care and abandoned, ending up homeless, locked up, or the victims of early death or disappearance is alarmingly correlated with this. Besides, the system ignores the resources and supports found in First Nation, Metis, and Inuit family networks in favor of maintaining the mindset that it must save Indigenous children from inappropriate parenting. Instead of proactively strengthening families to prevent crises, prevalent methods provide a reactive means of rescuing children from potentially dangerous situations (Douglas, 2022). Early childhood education with a cultural focus, immersion programs run by elders and traditional knowledge keepers on the land, multigenerational housing, Indigenous doulas providing prenatal and birthing care, addiction treatment incorporating ceremonies, and investments to make it possible for families, regardless of income, to access wholesome food and active recreation are a few examples of transformative solutions.
Paths Forward and Actions for Reconciliation
Giving First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples the authority to revive their traditional methods of community-based early childhood and family care is necessary for meaningful reconciliation. Prenatal support networks, parenting classes, child development centers, child advocacy organizations operated by Indigenous people, and preschool programs need consistent, fair financing compared to non-Indigenous providers. Respectful partnerships between frontline social workers, child protection investigators, elders, hunters, traditional healers, band leadership, and extended family members who know children’s ancestry are necessary. Hence, to overcome prejudices, identify personal and societal traumas resulting from colonial abuses, and modify practices that were developed without Indigenous input, all provincial ministry employees who work with Indigenous families must complete extensive anti-oppression training (Trocmé et al., 2023). For kids in care to continue developing positive self-concepts, non-Indigenous caregivers of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children must provide immersion teachings on culture and identity from band members. Funding ought to go toward family search programs that reunite foster children with their birth families.
Moving on, reconciliation reforms ultimately need to build the ability of Indigenous communities in a comprehensive way, not just patch up the superficial flaws of an irreversibly broken system. Fighting income inequality and providing equal access to childcare, wholesome food, secure housing, and education that meets Canada’s highest standards are all part of this (Douglas, 2022). Other measures include ensuring clean water access, enhancing healthcare, funding additive treatment programs, offering free post-secondary education, ensuring equitable infrastructure in all sectors, and narrowing the Human Development Index gap separating Indigenous populations from non-racialized groups. Every kid deserves safety, opportunity, respect, and pride in their ancestry.
Recommendations for Social Workers
Social workers’ moral and ethical duty is to speak out for the welfare of the families and children in need that they assist. Regarding the wellbeing of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children, this means vocally criticizing current colonialism practices and audaciously conceiving up alternative systems rooted in Indigenous worldviews. Social workers need to learn from Indigenous protection agencies about trauma-informed care on both a micro and macro level. They should also establish genuine connections with communities and advocate for governments to allocate resources toward family preservation instead of child removal. Also, every evaluation must consider intergenerational trauma. Addiction, domestic abuse, or mental distress are symptoms of hereditary sadness; they do not characterize Indigenous identity or parenting skills. Social workers may empathically provide a place for their clients’ sorrow, which stems from the Doctrine of Discovery (Bombay et al., 2022). Restoration of Indigenous rituals, languages, and elder guidance that Canada’s assimilation strategy purposefully cut off results in healing.
Furthermore, social workers can influence regional authorities to make significant expenditures in early intervention and detection capabilities to support First Nations, Metis, and Inuit families before crises arise. Funding sources for family preservation, kinship placement choices, post-reunification assistance, and aging-out prevention must dwarf money allocated to non-Indigenous programs. Social workers must push Canada to abide by international legislation protecting children’s rights by ensuring that reservation welfare services are evaluated equally with those provided by provinces. Again, through cultural safety training, social workers at the community level must establish rapport and show that they are willing to develop, learn, and face their biases. Relationships and humility are more important than qualifications (Trocmé et al., 2023). Since families suffering crippling intergenerational responsibilities cannot wait, the job requires being honest about racism and privilege, taking the lead from Indigenous child welfare groups on the best routes forward, and bringing passion for action above incrementalism.
Personal Reflection as a Future Social Worker
I have a profound responsibility to support First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples pursuing self-determined futures based on their traditional values of family, community, and sacred relationships to the land as a settler starting a social work career. As I become more knowledgeable about the history and current horrors that colonial systems have inflicted upon Indigenous families, I see how urgent it is to advocate for change and provide healing to these families. Still, I also see how their strengths and resilience have survived genocidal policies. Also, I have to respectfully raise the voices of Indigenous people, assist grassroots care networks established by Indigenous leaders, raise funds for culturally-infused preventative services on reservations, and humbly urge all levels of government to make significant investments in reconciliation through actions such as voting, protests, rallies, and ongoing acts of solidarity, which entails banding up with Frontline Nanaas to protect ancestral hunting and gathering grounds from pipelines. Also, that entails writing to the band’s leadership and offering my time to help in any way I can effectively follow instructions.
Significantly, I need to understand the subtle differences in viewpoints across First Nations, Metis, and Inuit groups; each has experienced decolonization differently, particularly regarding parenting styles. To broaden my consciousness as an accomplice rather than a performative ally, I intend to take part in as many cultural safety trainings as I can, read Indigenous authors frequently across media, establish connections with elders and survivors of residential schools who kindly share their stories, attend ceremonies as a respectful observer when invited, and consistently self-reflect through journaling. Also, the kids we deal with are born into a world with immense injustice and hope. I promise to use my social work ethic to support their pride in the beauty of Indigenous knowledge systems (Trocmé et al., 2023). I will behave in a way that respects the values of empowerment, inclusion, peace, and dignity for the Indigenous families who mentor me. I want to approach a future where communities, sovereign governance, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit youngsters lead the transition process with grace and unwavering determination.
Conclusion
Indigenous children are disproportionately represented in Canada’s child welfare facilities due to a problem of intergenerational suffering caused by violent campaigns of cultural genocide, relocation, and assimilation. After residential schools and the Scoop period in the 1960s, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit adolescents continued to suffer negative consequences because institutions enforced Eurocentric nuclear family conceptions and did not provide funding for early treatments that are preventive and culturally based. The TRC’s Calls to Action on Child Welfare and the MMIWG inquiry’s Calls for Justice on security for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA persons must be implemented to resolve the issue.
Moreover, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples must create, manage, and provide community-based care solutions to preserve families and promote reconciliation. In-depth anti-racism training is necessary for non-Indigenous social workers and government officials to understand intergenerational trauma compassionately, recognize the value of indigenous worldviews, and wisely implement changes recommended by Indigenous child welfare advocates. Enough funding should support multigenerational housing, on-reserve early children services, Indigenous midwifery and doulas, healing initiatives on the land, and community centers that promote the cultural renaissance across Turtle Island. In the vision, children are surrounded by family networks, speaking Anishinaabemowin and participating in ceremonies. They also dance in exquisitely beaded regalia, consume foods that have been foraged for themselves, learn about traditional ecological knowledge, and realize how significant their abilities, gifts, and sense of belonging are. Every kid is entitled to identity security from birth. The way forward is about giving First Nations, Metis, and Inuit families the tools they need to ignite the flame in their youngest kin.
References
Bombay, A., McQuaid, R. J., Schwartz, F., Thomas, M. A., Anisman, H., Matheson, K., & Smylie, J. (2021). The Intergenerational Effects of Indian Residential Schools: Implications for the Concept of Historical Trauma Transcultural psychiatry, 58(3), 320–338.
Douglas, V. (2022). Child welfare: Impact of the Child Welfare System on Canadian Indigenous Communities. LawNow, 47(2), 27–29.
Hart, M.A., Straka, S., & Rowe, G. (2022). Working together to Support Indigenous children and families: cultural safety, cultural humility, and family wellbeing Child & Family Social Work, 27(S1), 3-11.
Hyslop, K. (2022). Manitoba seizes more Indigenous kids and aims to change the system. The Tyee, Sep 14.
Trocmé, N., Doucet, M., Fallon, B., Nutton, J., & Esposito, T. (2023). Child welfare in Canada Oxford Handbook of Child Protection Systems, 88, 90
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