Keeping First Nations kids at home – Winnipeg Free Press

The provincial government didn’t concede defeat in announcing First Nations can return to customary practices in caring for children in need. But it was pretty close.

Generations of provincial child welfare policies have had disastrous effects on Canada’s aboriginal peoples and communities. Nowhere is this illustrated more vividly than in Manitoba. So, First Nations will regain power to manage the care of children in more traditional ways.

Manitoba has Canada’s highest child-apprehension rate. About 88 per cent of the 10,000-plus children in care are aboriginal; most are First Nations.

There are many reasons why we have got to this point. Historically, European-centric policies over Canada’s first people were guided by racist, colonial laws that sought, impossibly, the dual purpose of separation and assimilation. Some would say the goal, in fact, was eradication, that what did not happen through isolation, economic ruin and the cultural war that followed settlement, and then in the residential schools, is happening now by state seizure of children, many at birth.