sa国际传媒鈥檚 premiers will work collectively to address the crisis in aboriginal child care. The decision was taken at their meeting in Charlottetown last week, when a series of brutal statistics were laid on the table.
Countrywide, a quarter of all the children in government care are aboriginal, although First Nations families represent only five per cent of the population. Troubling as that is, the situation in Western sa国际传媒 is worse.
A staggering 80 per cent of Manitoba鈥檚 children in care are aboriginal. On Vancouver Island, the corresponding figure is 47 per cent, and again, aboriginal families are only a sliver of the population.
There is an uncomfortable echo of the past here. In the early part of the 20th century, thousands of aboriginal kids were taken from their homes and placed in residential schools. Many were subjected to all manner of abuse. More than 4,000 died in these sinkholes.
The last school was closed two decades ago, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology in 2008. Yet there are three times as many aboriginal kids in care today as attended those schools at their peak.
No one suggests the two systems are comparable. Government care, which involves placement in group homes or with foster parents, is far more humane.
Yet in one important respect, they mean the same thing. By government order, children are removed from their homes and placed in the hands of the state.
In any circumstances, that is a wrenching ordeal. But when aboriginal youngsters are seized in such hugely disproportionate numbers, disturbing questions arise.
The premiers focused on the social and economic challenges that face aboriginal families. And no doubt there is value in tackling these issues.
Poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse are enormous obstacles to progress. More must be done, sympathetically and respectfully, to combat these hardships.
But there are deeper forces at work here. During our country鈥檚 colonial era, policies were adopted, among them the reserve system, that deliberately marginalized aboriginal people. In effect, they were excluded from the daily life of society.
By these means, at first intentionally, and later through indifference, a chain of causality was forged.
We no longer employ or condone such measures. Indeed, we reject racism. Yet the damage has been done, for the sense of exclusion lives on in the collective consciousness of First Nations.
Breaking down this barrier is the real challenge that confronts us. But how is it to be done?
Part of the task is fact-finding. The appointment in 2008 of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to expose the reality of residential schools was an important first step. When the commission reports next year, its recommendations must be acted upon.
Part of the task is attitude adjustment. The prime minister insists that 1,200 missing or murdered aboriginal women are a law-enforcement matter, plain and simple.
Wrong. The shared ethnicity of these victims was not a statistical fluke. They came to grief because they were living life at the margins. That is to say, because they were aboriginal. If our politicians cannot make this connection, their heads are in the wrong place.
It must also be said that First Nations chiefs don鈥檛 help their cause with confrontational tactics. There are mindsets to be changed on both sides.
Lastly, there is a civic duty on all of us to extend a hand of friendship across this gulf.
Can we succeed? The only acceptable answer is that we must.
Throughout our province, 4,196 aboriginal children are in care, 914 of them on this island. That cannot be allowed to continue.
