Indigenous parents and child welfare: Mistrust,epistemic injustice,and training

Abstract

The settler state's taking of Indigenous children into care disrupts their communities and continues destructive, assimilationist policies. This article presents the perceptions of lawyers, social workers and judges of how Indigenous parents experience child welfare in Quebec. Our participants characterized those experiences negatively. Barriers of language and culture as well as mistrust impede meaningful participation. Parents experience epistemic injustice, wronged in their capacity as knowers. Mistrust also hampers efforts to include Indigenous workers in the system. Emphasizing state workers’ ignorance of Indigenous family practices and the harms of settler colonialism, participants called for greater training. But critical literature on professional education signals the limits of such training to change institutions. Our findings reinforce the jurisdictional calls away from improving the system towards empowering Indigenous peoples to run services of child welfare. The patterns detected and theoretical resources used are relevant to researchers of other institutions that interact with vulnerable populations.

Introduction

In Canada and other settler states, child welfare takes Indigenous children from their families into care at a rate vastly higher than their share of the population. On some views, this disruption of child rearing within Indigenous families and communities continues the destruction done by overlapping assimilationist, even genocidal, policies. The dealings of Indigenous parents with the agencies of child welfare and the courts thus command attention on the part of those concerned with colonization's ongoing harms. In research designed collaboratively with the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal, we asked lawyers, social workers and judges in child welfare in Quebec for their perceptions of Indigenous parents’ experiences with the system and their recommendations for change.

Our participants cast Indigenous parents’ dealings with child welfare and the youth courts in overwhelmingly negative terms. They stressed state workers’ ignorance of Indigenous family practices and the ongoing harms of settler colonialism. Interviews indicated that, in contending with child welfare and the courts, Indigenous parents experience epistemic injustice – wrongs to individuals in their capacity as knowers. This concept and related ones are more present in research in philosophy and social work than in legal studies. As for participants’ recommendations, the most frequent was for more training about Indigenous peoples. But critical literature on professional education, developed in the health sciences, cautions that such training has limited capacity to change institutions substantially. While recommendations focused on adjustments to individual conduct – on the part of state personnel and Indigenous parents – structural, fundamental changes seem necessary. We contend, then, that our findings reinforce jurisdictional calls not to fix the colonial system but to transfer authority over child welfare to Indigenous communities.

Given its location and scope, this article may speak most immediately to scholars of ‘postcolonial’ contexts, Indigenous peoples, social services and the legal system. But it may contribute to broader readerships. The conditions for epistemic injustice and professionals’ recourse to training as a remedy for structural injustice obtain in settings other than child welfare. Our analysis may thus inform researchers of other institutions that interact with vulnerable people internally or externally, such as the military, police and healthcare. Moreover, the article's theoretical resources relating to epistemic injustice and critiques of professional training hold untapped potential for sociolegal researchers.

Research and Legal Context

This project addresses a gap in the research: no empirical study has gathered the perceptions of professionals in child welfare regarding the process for Indigenous parents. It complements the rare studies of Indigenous mothers dealing with the system in Quebec (Croteau, 2019; Soumagnas, 2015; for other provinces, see Bennett, 2009; MacDonald, 2002; on Aboriginal youth in youth protection in Quebec, see Gagnon Dion et al., 2017; Gagnon Dion et al., 2018).

Indigenous children are grossly overrepresented within state care in Canada, including in Quebec. ¹ This situation prevails in other settler states, such as Australia and New Zealand (Tilbury and Thoburn, 2011: 298–300). Materially, the risks propelling the removal of First Nations children from their families are substantially ‘due to social exclusion, poverty and poor housing’ (Blackstock, 2007: 76 [footnote omitted]; see generally Commission of the Pan American Health Organization on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas, 2019). Other present-day contributing factors may include discriminatory practices by professionals who detect children as ‘at risk’; institutional racism or system biases; Indigenous families’ lesser likelihood of legal representation; and discriminatory practices by child-welfare workers (Tilbury and Thoburn, 2011: 295; see also Mosher and Hewitt, 2018; Sinha et al., 2011: 307). The underfunding of child-welfare services in Indigenous communities, including preventive programming, is another (Ariss, 2021; Blackstock, 2016; Monchalin, 2016: 169). ² Rules that are unsuited to the crowded housing and other realities of First Nations make it hard to recruit and retain foster families from their communities (Palmer and Cooke, 1996: 716). ³ Differing conceptions of family play a crucial role. State social interveners and the courts adopt an individualizing, liberal conception of ‘best interests of the child’, one that casts separating First Nations children from their families as ‘natural, necessary, and legitimate, rather than coercive and destructive’ (Kline, 1992: 423; see also Kline, 1994). They may misunderstand and marginalize Indigenous notions of the family – including forms of customary adoption (see, e.g. Baldassi, 2006) – that have preceded Canadian state law and coexisted with it, often centering the extended family (see, e.g. Guay, 2015; Makokis et al., 2020). Such conceptions may nest within forms of constitutionalism and worldviews distinct from those of settlers (see, e.g. Mills, 2018; Simpson, 2017).

These factors operate against a background built by generations of settler colonialism and assimilationist policies. The system of residential schools, run by the federal government with churches from 1831 to 1996, strove to eradicate Indigenous children's language and culture. It subjected children to physical and sexual abuse and they died within it at shocking rates (Monchalin, 2016: 125). Thousands of the system's survivors sued the federal government and the churches, culminating in a class-action settlement and leading to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). Since May 2021, hundreds of unmarked graves have been discovered on the grounds of former residential schools (Globe and Mail, 2021).

Another intervention has been child-welfare agencies’ ‘mass removal’ of Indigenous children for placement in foster care or adoption by white families (Shaheen-Hussain, 2020: 180). Because this ‘scooping’ or removal of children accelerated in the 1960s, it is known as the ‘Sixties Scoop’ – although the ‘ongoing reality’ of Indigenous children's taking into care spurs talk of a ‘Millennium Scoop’ (Monchalin, 2016: 169). A crucial insight is the continuity across these interventions: the ‘forced separation of Indigenous children from their families’ did not end when the residential schools closed (Shaheen-Hussain, 2020: 180). Indeed, such separation may typify how settler colonialism ‘destroy[s] to replace’ (Wolfe, 2016: 33), dispossessing Indigenous peoples from their land and its resources. State interference with Indigenous families denied children ‘healthy parental role modelling’ and resulted in their ‘diminished capacity as adults to care for their children’ (Blackstock and Trocmé, 2005: 15; also Ing, 2006). The result is ‘negative intergenerational cycles of individual, familial, and community adversity and distress’ (Bombay et al., 2020: 64).

For the most part, governmental strategies to improve the welfare of Indigenous children by developing more effective and culturally sensitive responses have failed (Tilbury and Thoburn, 2011: 305). Legislative directives to consider Indigenous culture in child protection seem to have made little difference (Guay and Grammond, 2012). In Quebec, Cree and Innu communities have developed social services under provincial law (Guay et al., 2014: 200–201; Act respecting health services and social services for Cree Native persons). Innu mothers have reported that community-run social services and Innu workers value their parenting practices and prioritize keeping children within the community (Croteau, 2019: 273). The Youth Protection Act has since 2001 contemplated that the government and an Indigenous community may agree that the latter will establish and run child-welfare programs. The first such agreement was concluded in 2018 with the Atikamekw nation (Commission spéciale sur les droits des enfants et la protection de la jeunesse, 2021: 290–291). Such programs must respect the legislation's ‘general principles’ (Youth Protection Act, s. 37.5, paras. 1, 2). Arguably, though, the need is for ‘distinct systems, conceived in response to Indigenous realities’, not ‘Indigenous organizations or personnel applying non-Indigenous laws and regimes’ (Guay et al., 2020a: 260 [authors’ translation]). On this reasoning, First Nations ‘must be empowered’ to substitute their child-welfare services for provincial ones (Kline, 1992: 424). This thrust, which focuses on authority and the space in which it operates, evokes theorizing on jurisdiction (Mant and Wallbank, 2017; Valverde, 2009). It evokes an abolitionist turn from improving the exercise of state power to limiting its space (Akbar, 2020: 1838).

The Parliament of Canada in 2019 affirmed that Indigenous communities’ inherent right to self-government ‘includes jurisdiction in relation to child and family services’ (An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families, s 8(a)). This statute has spurred concerns about its approach, including the lack of accompanying funding, and its framing narrower than the traditional children's laws or family or clan laws of First Nations (Blackstock, 2019a). Regrettably, the government of Quebec has contested the legislation's constitutionality (Guay et al., 2020b).

While the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care has been documented more extensively elsewhere in Canada (Breton et al., 2012: 160), service provision for Indigenous peoples may be especially problematic in Quebec. The Public Inquiry Commission on Relations between Indigenous Peoples and Certain Public Services in Québec concluded that its investigation ‘established the systemic character of discrimination’ in the services under study (2019: 228 [authors’ translation]). The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls dedicated a volume of its report to Quebec, given the province's distinctive political, socio-historical, linguistic, religious, cultural and institutional context (2019: 11–13). The Commission spéciale sur les droits des enfants et la protection de la jeunesse (2021: 292) heard numerous testimonies that application of the Youth Protection Act engenders discriminatory effects for Indigenous families. Despite voluminous findings to the contrary, the provincial executive persists in denying the presence of systemic racism or discrimination, preferring to focus on individual wrongdoing (Cardinal, 2020).

Approach

Research Process

This small-scale, qualitative study was suggested by the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal to one of the authors. Respecting calls for research on or about Indigenous people to be done for and with them (see, e.g. Evans et al., 2020; Windchief and San Pedro, 2019), social workers at the Shelter reviewed drafts of the ethics proposal (REB File #7-0619) and the interviewers’ questions. Rather than aspiring to neutrality, the study aims to support the Shelter's advocacy on behalf of Indigenous women (McHugh, 2020).

The study took an internal perspective, speaking with professional ‘repeat players’ having dealt with numerous families in the child-welfare system and courts (Erez-Navot, 2014; Galanter, 1974), mostly in urban settings, off-reserve. The Shelter proposed interviewing professionals (see similarly Walsh and Douglas, 2011). It hoped to learn more about the ‘settlement conference’ – a process of judicial mediation consecrated in Quebec's new Code of Civil Procedure (Roberge, 2016) – and possible ways to adapt it for Indigenous parents. The choice of professional participants takes up the call to look inward to examine how institutions enact power and discrimination (Gerlach, 2012). It matched the research team's expertise and resources. In contrast, for a study that foregrounded the voices of children or parents, recruitment would be more complex and the vulnerabilities and risks to mitigate, more acute (Summers, 2020; on children's participation in other legal processes, see, e.g. Bala et al., 2010). No member of the research team was Indigenous. While we try to remain reflexively conscious of our settler role in the Canadian context, our positionality ‘may shape the findings and conclusions’ (Berger, 2015: 220; see also Thurairajah, 2019).

In summer and fall 2019, interviews took place with six lawyers, four social workers and two judges. One is from Val-d’Or, the rest from Montreal, Quebec. A social worker self-identified as Métis. Potential interviewees were contacted by e-mail and sent an overview of the study and a consent form. Participants were asked to suggest additional interviewees, and some did so. A self-selection bias may have yielded participants who are especially critical of the state's system. Interviews were semistructured (Brinkmann, 2020) and most were conducted in person, typically lasting 45 min. While we foresaw no major risk to participants, we identify participants only by profession and the nongendered pronoun ‘they’, mitigating the risk of their identification by an employer who disapproved of the study. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for common themes, recommendations and other salient observations. The richness of the interviews led to splitting the results, with a companion article to focus on settlement conferences (Leckey forthcoming in 2022).

This study offers access to the participants’ descriptions and stated impressions, as interpreted by the researchers (Padgett, 2012; Trent and Cho, 2020). The interviews allowed us not only to gather the participants’ perceptions and recommendations but also to learn more about their professional selves. The inclusion of participants from social work and law is a strength, given the potential for epistemological and professional differences between them (Dickens, 2005; Taylor, 2006). Especially significant are points on which accounts overlapped, as well as ‘inconsistencies, contradictions, ambiguities, and ambivalences’ (Gilgun, 2020: 988).

Limits of the study merit mention. Assessing the attitudes and feelings of others is always difficult. Moreover, the interviews do not transparently yield participants’ views on the interaction of Indigenous parents with child welfare. For example, despite the anonymity, participants may have shaped their responses as part of the ongoing management of their professional identity (Seron and Silbey, 2004), including their role in a harmful colonial system (compare Shaheen-Hussain, 2020: 9–10). Given the scale of the study, the geographic concentration and participants’ division across social work and law, the results do not yield generalizable propositions (Webley, 2020: 65–66; on ‘analytic’ payoff rather than statistical generalizability, see Maxwell, 2009). Research with professionals in regions of Quebec, where the number of Indigenous children engaged with state care is higher, would offer a complementary perspective. Due to resource constraints, the study includes no control group focused on non-Indigenous parents. The Director of Youth Protection (DYP) intervenes disproportionately in families that are from visible minorities, living in poverty, or both (Bernheim and Coupienne, 2019: 239–241), and presumably they experience dealing with child welfare as difficult and stressful. Nevertheless, our interviews flag features specific to First Nations and other Indigenous parents, or disproportionately applicable to them.

Theoretical resources

While the project builds on postcolonial theory's concern with ‘forms of social, cultural and psychological practice that survive the formal colonial era’ (Blagg et al., 2017: 346) and, indeed, acknowledges that colonialism and territorial occupation are ongoing (see, e.g. Simpson, 2017), other strands of research inform our reading of the interviews more directly.

Critical, chiefly feminist, work on epistemic injustice helps in specifying the dynamics raised by our participants. Epistemic injustice is not simply a potential unfairness in the distribution of epistemic goods such as information or education. Rather, it is ‘a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower’ (Fricker, 2007: 1; see generally Kidd et al., 2017). Fricker distinguishes two forms of epistemic injustice. ‘Testimonial injustice’ arises when prejudice against a speaker's social group leads to their word being taken as less credible than it ought to be (Fricker, 2007: 28; see also Wanderer, 2017). ‘Hermeneutical injustice’ occurs ‘when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences’: think of someone who suffers sexual harassment in a culture lacking that concept (Fricker, 2007: 1). Testimonial justice will prove relevant, as will the related idea of ‘epistemic entitlement’, which operates when someone unjustly assumes authority to speak on behalf of one less privileged (Manne, 2020: 141; see also Steers-McCrum, 2020). Scholars in social work (see, e.g. Bell, 2014; Bourgault, 2020; Doan, 2017; Iacono, 2017; Lee et al., 2019) have used the concepts of epistemic injustice more than have their counterparts in sociolegal studies (compare, e.g. Lindsey, 2019; Tsosie, 2012). Although theorists still debate how best to identify or characterize the harms of testimonial injustice (see, e.g. Byskov, 2021; Congdon, 2017), these concepts aid in discerning the shared character of the comments we gathered about voice, knowledge and influence and how they reflect systemic inequities.

Furthermore, critical research on professional education in respect of cultural competency, anti-racism and Indigenous peoples is useful. More developed in health and social services than in law, this literature cautions about the risks of superficiality (Shepherd, 2019), of focusing on individual attitudes rather than organizational change (Bendick et al., 2001; Karabanow, 2004) and of severing culture, in a depoliticizing way, from racism, colonialism and other systems of oppression (Acosta and Ackerman-Barger, 2017; Hassouneh, 2006). It helps in assessing the adequacy of participants' recommendations as responses to epistemic and other forms of injustice.

Troubles engaging with the system

The first major theme from our results concerns the difficulties of parents and other Indigenous people in working with the state's system of child welfare. Our participants work in a system that they concede to be broken and harmful (compare a nuanced summary of Innu mothers’ views on Quebec's child protection: Croteau, 2019: 272). They spoke about child welfare's colonial impact and Indigenous parents’ feelings of defeat, shame and mistrust when dealing with it. They commented on the linguistic capacity of Indigenous parents and troubles in accessing interpreters. Obstacles to Indigenous clients’ meaningful participation in court drew attention. We discern distinctively epistemic harms in these factors’ cumulative effects, namely, testimonial injustice and epistemic entitlement.

Widespread Mistrust

Several participants identified a pervasive mistrust on the part of Indigenous parents – one reasonable in the light of the system's operation, especially in the lives and communities of First Nations. Interviews proved consistent with observations that Indigenous families engaged with the system often feel as though their experiences, perspectives and needs are given less credence than those of the state's social workers (Schmid and Pollack, 2009; see also MacDonald, 2002). Lawyer 3 reported sometimes wanting Indigenous parents to ‘fight more, or to present more, or to offer more to the court’. Lawyer 4 expressed the feeling that Indigenous parents are ‘very ashamed of what's written in the reports’; ‘[t]hey feel they’re being judged’ (as non-Indigenous parents might also feel). Lawyer 5 said that despite widespread talk about reconciliation, forgiveness and making amends, mistrust was still present: ‘it's like it's too little, too late’ (for a call to interpret reconciliation broadly, as ‘a decolonizing force’, see Simpson, 2011: 22). They continued: ‘There's a huge mistrust of the white person, there's a huge mistrust of the system, there's a huge mistrust of social workers.’

Mistrust also emerged on the part of potential fosterers. Our participants raised the potential gains of placing children in Indigenous foster families and confiding authority to run child welfare to Indigenous communities. Although ‘plac[ing] a child in a white foster family is terrible’ and may surface ‘the collective Jungian memory of the residential schools’ (Lawyer 5), there are severe obstacles in recruiting foster families from Indigenous communities. Indigenous families and individuals may be reluctant to serve as foster families because doing so involves working with the government: ‘As much as I’m praising the extended family, often they don't want to get involved and … it's a fear of the system. The white guy, they are going to have surprise visits, they are going to have to make reports’ (Lawyer 5). Social Worker 1 reported a similar experience when recruiting: ‘a lot of times people are like, I would love to foster but I just don't want to have the involvement of DYP in my life’.

These attitudinal impediments to involving Indigenous fosterers reinforce legal ones, which may telegraph the state's mistrust. For Lawyer 5, the aim of keeping Indigenous children with their culture demands greater openness ‘to receiving all the families’, even if they are not ‘perfect grandmothers or aunts or stepsisters’. Given Indigenous peoples’ overcriminalization (Chartrand, 2019; Marques and Monchalin, 2020), precluding foster parents with a criminal record eliminates many candidates (noted by Social Worker 1). No distinction is made between convictions for child-related offences and, say, old ones related to drugs. In addition, ministerial guidelines may be ‘set up for white middle-class folks who have lots of space’ (Social Worker 1). Lawyer 5 emphasized the ‘many criteria’ in screening potential foster parents: ‘[Y]ou have to get the plugs in the right place and lamps and locks on the doors, and you can't have a husband who drinks’.

Language troubles

The limited linguistic capacity of Indigenous parents in the colonial languages of English and French and the lack of interpreters arose repeatedly. The few interpreters are ‘overbooked’, running from youth court to meetings with social workers (Social Worker 1). Social Worker 1 added that ‘[a] lot of judges won't wait, which I think is a human-rights abuse’; when the judge pushes ahead although the client needs an interpreter, ‘it further marginalizes folks’. In contrast, Lawyer 6 experienced interpreters as always available for court but thought a lack of interpreters for lawyer–client discussions made it harder to prepare files and resolve situations.

Participants differed in explaining the shortage of interpreters. Lawyer 6 saw a lack of personnel and thought fixing ‘this interpreter problem’ would require tackling a broad range of education and capacity-building needs in Indigenous communities. In contrast, Social Worker 1 saw funding as inadequate and discerned a reticence on the part of communities to become involved with the DYP.

Barriers to participation in court

Scholars have long studied the unequal distribution of access to courts and the variable capacity to participate meaningfully in judicial and other processes of dispute resolution. Factors such as race, social class and gender are salient (Nichols, 2017; Noone and Ojelabi, 2020; Sandefur, 2008). Theorizing on intersectionality helps to recognize overlapping, interlocking layers of disadvantage experienced by Indigenous parents (Crenshaw, 1991; Marchetti, 2008; on identity pluralism, see Sen, 2006), including ones specific to them. For instance, the legal system's double standard of high expectations for qualifying as a good or even adequate mother might bear harshly on Indigenous mothers (Bernheim, 2017; Boyd, 2016; Mosoff et al., 2017).

Nobody opined that Indigenous parents were adequately supported in dealing with the system of child welfare (see similarly Bennett, 2009: 87–89). Lawyer 4 said they feel often that the Indigenous parents ‘don't really know how to testify’ or ‘how to explain themselves’. It was observed that the mothers rarely ‘feel confident enough to explain their point of view’ in front of the judge (Lawyer 4). Lawyer 5 pinpointed ‘shyness of the courtroom forum, of the robes, of the white person, of the white social workers, all this stuff … the state intruding in certain cultures’ life, nobody likes it but it's like frightening to some groups’. Lawyer 1 observed that ‘because of the history’, Indigenous parents experience difficulties in ‘[f]inding their voice’ when dealing with the judicial system and the DYP. Lawyer 3 saw ‘[a] lot more discussion’ with the social worker outside court, while Lawyer 5 noted parents’ problems ‘express[ing] themselves to their lawyers’.

Lawyer 6 underscored the challenge of informing Indigenous clients about the functioning of the judicial system; translation falls short when the destination language has no words for elements of the civil system. They doubted that clients grasp the difference between a judge's mediating function in a settlement conference and the adjudicative role in court. Lawyer 4 wondered how much Indigenous mothers understand the reports that they read or that are read to them. It was suggested that some Indigenous parents might confuse proceedings for child protection with the criminal court (Lawyer 6).

Ideas about improving Indigenous parents’ experience in court varied. Lawyer 4 stressed the need to educate ‘these women … as to what is court, how to prepare, how to testify, what to say, how to say’. Lawyer 3 thought that a court-designated cultural liaison might help. Social Worker 1 indicated that when they have Indigenous clients, they try to contact the Native Women's Shelter to see if someone is available to accompany the person. Relatedly, Social Worker 4, who is Métis, recognized the need for not just Legal Aid ‘but dedicated people in place to explain the court process and accompany’ clients.

Epistemic Injustice

Problems recounted by our participants are distinctively epistemic. Testimonial injustice arises, what Fricker would call a credibility deficit, when Indigenous parents’ knowledge and statements receive less than their fair weight. For instance, Lawyer 3 perceived a ‘defeated’ sense that no matter what some parents said, the government (or courts) would take their child. We see epistemic entitlement when social workers and lawyers speak on behalf of parents. ⁴ In proof of how fraught this terrain maybe, a credibility excess – which may, exceptionally, amount to testimonial injustice (Fricker, 2007: 21) – sometimes harms Indigenous parents. Lawyer 4 thus expressed concern that, while some parents ‘don't want to talk, they want somebody else to do the talking for them’, some judges value the parents’ direct expression of their understanding of a situation or recognition of a problem. If equipping Indigenous parents to speak confidently might be a longer-term goal, the immediate term may require judges to tread a line between weighting the testimony of Indigenous parents too little and too much.

It is helpful to separate the comments on knowledge gaps by their varying scales (Valverde, 2009, 2015). Recommendations for supporting Indigenous clients in court focus on the parents’ potential to conform better to the courtroom's ‘procedural conventions’ and ‘bewildering and even “unjust”’ language (Fielding, 2013: 288). Programs to train and accompany Indigenous parents in court might help; the Innu mothers interviewed by Croteau (2019: 270) wished to know more about the legal processes involving them. It is debatable, though, whether adapting to the settler state's court is fairly the burden of Indigenous parents (on professionals’ duty vs. their clients’, see Gerlach, 2012: 156).

Crucially, since testimonial injustice is not a quality of the speaker but a product of her listeners’ identity-based prejudice (Fricker, 2007: 32–33; compare the social model of disability: Albrecht et al., 2001), focusing on Indigenous parents is insufficient. The idea that the audience in its context generates the credibility deficit directs attention to child welfare's staff, to which we turn now.

Making space for indigenous specificity

The second principal theme bears on the workers in child welfare. Our participants voiced concerns about the paucity of Indigenous employees and the lack of knowledge about Indigenous history and culture, especially family practices. In a way that may reveal their premises about the scope of foreseeable change, they spoke time and again about the need for better education and training for professionals. Critical literature on professional education invites caution in anticipating the extent of change that would ensue from acting on these recommendations.

Composition and Capacity of Personnel

Participants called for more Indigenous personnel, including judges, in the state system. Social Worker 4 pointed to the lack of Indigenous hiring and an underlying mindset in the provincial system: ‘they just didn't have those staff, they weren't trying to make that a priority, they weren't looking at alternative ways of hiring people, they weren't looking at community expertise’. Lawyer 6 thought that having Inuit lawyers and judges would be preferable to more interpreters. Yet the absence of Indigenous personnel in the state system generated mixed views. Lawyer 5 did not assume that ‘social workers of that culture would be more lenient’; they noted that minorities can be ‘much tougher on their own people’ and gave the example of Jewish social workers with Orthodox clients.

The potential for Indigenous communities to run their child welfare drew diverging views. For Social Worker 1, the 2019 federal law ‘put things in the hands of the people’, but the variable capacity of different First Nations to run child welfare was a concern. They said the settler state has in some places ‘marginalized and disadvantaged’ the Inuit to the point that it would be ‘impossible’ simply to say ‘hey, take over your services’. Redressing the lack of capacity might involve changes on multiple fronts. Lawyer 6 described the situation ‘up North’ as ‘like a circle’, with interconnected problems including a lack of education and a concomitant shortage of teachers and other professionals. The levels of service – including an ‘external educator’ visiting a village ‘once every three months’ – led Lawyer 6 to ‘think you are in the Third World. I’m sorry to say that but honestly, we can't even imagine that in Canada there is things like that.’ Lawyer 6 pointed favourably to the Cree Nation's steps to be ‘self-determined’, creating ‘their own DYP system so the lawyer works really for the community, the Cree communities’. They added that ‘all kinds of people from the community, the parents, the family’ attend in the courtroom.

Lawyer 4 distinguished Montreal's English-language system (Batshaw Youth and Family Centres) from the French-language services. For them, the former ‘were really working with the community to try to find solutions’, trying to support the family before removing children. In contrast, ‘a very different point of view’ characterized the latter: ‘it's let's take the kids out, let's work on the things, and let's put them back’. This participant saw the English sector as better respecting the legislative aims, adding they were ‘not the only one’ to think that. This intriguing hint invites further research. The English-language system's leadership and staff might be more connected than their Francophone counterparts to developments in other Canadian jurisdictions. Furthermore, the precarious position of English-language social services in a province where ‘French is the official language of Québec’ (Charter of the French Language, s 1), although the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes English and French as ‘the official languages of Canada’ (s 16(1)), may instill sensitivity to other minorities. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate the complexity of majority–minority dynamics (see, e.g. Bourhis, 2019; Jedwab, 2007).

Calls for Training

It was observed that judges – ‘predominantly white, upper-middle-class men’ (Social Worker 1) – would benefit from several sessions of training about Indigenous peoples (Social Worker 1; similarly, Social Worker 3, Lawyer 3, Social Worker 4). Social Worker 1 doubted whether ‘some judges know the difference between Inuit and First Nations, to be perfectly honest’. They envisaged ‘an Indigenous 101, moving on to 102, and then more complex issues’. Social Worker 1 supposed that better-informed judges would wait for an interpreter when needed. Lawyer 1 stated: ‘Everybody needs to know that a silence doesn't mean the same thing for your typical French-Canadian that it means from an Indigenous person.’ Raising a potential error in assessing credibility, Judge 2 recounted having learned from a social worker that Indigenous people would avoid eye contact because of cultural norms of deference and politeness, not dishonesty (also Lawyer 1; see Monchalin, 2016: 274–276). Lawyer 3 had found training ‘eye-opening’, giving the example of varying conceptions around time, such that tardiness might not convey disrespect. Lawyer 1 pointed to an online three-hour training that gave tips: ‘you know, well, you may want to do this, or things like they want to include the seventh chair in a meeting because that's for the next generation that's not there yet’. Judge 1 did not anticipate resistance to training on their fellow judges’ part.

Lawyer 5 suggested that social workers should adopt a broader ‘notion of the group, the culture, the collectivity and the immediate extended family’. Social workers might take courses about the ‘matriarchal society’, with a view to encourage proactivity in asking mothers about their family and its potential role (Lawyer 5). This participant remarked a ‘lack of understanding by social workers’ of customary adoptions: a mother might confide her child to her own mother, ‘not because she's a bad mother but because grandma is there’. These remarks echo observation of the gap between those Indigenous conceptions of family relevant to Quebec's bold inclusion of ‘Aboriginal customary adoption’ in its Civil Code and those instinctive to lawyers and judges (Leckey, 2018). Relatedly, Social Worker 1 ascribed to a lack of judicial training their failure to persuade the court to keep a child's family record longer than normal. In making the request, they had cited Indigenous children's longstanding removal from their families.

The Limits (and Risks) of Training

Redressing gaps in knowledge, as raised by our participants, has variable remedial potential. Teaching about matters such as how to read an Indigenous person's avoidance of eye contact might help professionals to receive Indigenous parents’ testimony more fairly. But how much would greater knowledge of Indigenous family practices, including the extended family's role, change decision-making?

Social Worker 4 thought that training would help workers in child protection to ‘understand the historical realities, like understanding colonization, the impacts that it's had on the families, how it's led to urbanization, and addictions, and all of these different social issues where people are overrepresented in the systems’. But Lawyer 5 was unsure how historical and cultural sensitization would alter the work of child protection. They acknowledged that sensitization might make the client less ‘terrified to admit something’ to a social worker better informed of the client's background circumstances. They doubted, though, that it would be appropriate to say: ‘OK, so this lady, she drinks but you know it's natural for everyone in Kahnawake to drink, we’ll bring the kids back’. The expectation – in a recorded interview – that training would deliver the ‘drunken Indian’ stereotype of alcohol abuse as ‘natural’ within First Nations may prove training’s necessity. This remark also prompts reflection on what training on subjects such as colonialism and its ongoing structural violence can achieve within the system.

Positively, deepened knowledge of historical and ongoing harms by the colonial state may help decision makers to resist framing parental ‘neglect’ as an individual problem (Caldwell and Sinha, 2020). Perhaps understanding colonial history can foster genuine, informed and humble Indigenous–settler relationships (from social work, see Czyzewski and Tester, 2014). More negatively, though, while better-informed state actors may decide more leniently, they may also set individuals ‘within a “colonial heritage” that places them “at risk”’ of offending (Maurutto and Hannah-Moffat, 2016: 466). For instance, data about the criminal justice system's ‘enormous racial disparities’ may become evidence ‘not of racism’ but of ‘the prevalence of Black criminality’ (Maynard, 2017: 84).

Critical literature from the health sciences and social work gestures towards the limited ability of professional education to rehabilitate an oppressive system. A focus on individuals’ knowledge may evoke a neo-liberal individualizing of responsibility (see, e.g. Rose, 1992). Furthermore, critiques against training on diversity and unconscious bias warn that knowing about bias does not automatically produce behavioural changes, while training for individuals may ‘distract[]’ from attention to ‘embedded, structural disadvantages’ (Noon, 2018: 206). The ‘pervasive structuring effects of racial–colonial hierarchies’ can make curricular innovations ‘complicit’ in reproducing anti-Indigenous racism (Sylvestre et al., 2019: 2, 8). Some doubt that the state's system of child welfare can ever be made ‘culturally appropriate’ for Indigenous people (Blackstock, 2019b: 147–148). Research in medical education adds that training must address the ‘hidden curriculum’ (Hafferty and Franks, 1994), the professional baggage conveyed across generations by words, actions, jokes and even silences (Mahood, 2011: 984). This transmission may include negative stereotypes about Indigenous people (Ly and Crowshoe, 2015).

Finally, it is worth asking about the realistic scope of training in an underfunded, overstretched system. A participant's nod towards a three-hour online module indicates the scale of training that some would envisage for overworked professionals. Workshops risk superficiality and may be ‘unlikely to change behaviour or an institutional culture’ (Shepherd, 2019: 5). It has been suggested that reflexive and transformative forms of pedagogy and practice require ‘decentering ourselves’ in a ‘challenging’ but ‘essential’ way requiring more than a semester's reading and engagement (Sonn, 2008: 164). Promising calls for decolonizing education appear in social work (see, e.g. Choate, 2019; Sinclair, 2019) and law (see, e.g. Borrows, 2016; Mills, 2016). But occasional ad hoc trainings will not realize these ambitions.

Conclusion

Reform-minded readers might distill several recommendations for the state's child-welfare system from our findings:

judges should wait for interpreters where they are needed;

the government should work with Indigenous communities to train and fund more interpreters;

the formal and informal criteria for screening Indigenous foster families should reflect their communities’ realities;

the government should work with community organizations to offer Indigenous parents accompaniment in court;

professionals in child protection should receive training about Indigenous family practices and communicative norms, as well as about the abiding effects of colonialism.

Yet the participants’ comments indicate that such actions’ potential is limited. Recall that mistrust and desire to avoid dealing with the system emerged on the part of parents as well as of potential interpreters and foster parents. Moreover, the epistemic injustice experienced by Indigenous parents has causes beyond the lack of knowledge that training can fix.

Although our participants may have been sincere in recommending training, the (presumably uncoordinated) repetition gave their statements an air of performance. Whether the recommendation conveys their preferences or their calculated sense of their institution's limits, this focus shelters the institutions from fundamental disruption (see similarly the bounded nature of recommended alterations to judicial mediation: Leckey forthcoming in 2022). Indeed, calls for training and increased sensitivity may fit within the ‘seemingly more conciliatory set of discourses and institutional practices that emphasize our [Indigenous peoples’] recognition and accommodation’, while preserving a fundamentally colonial relationship between them and the settler state (Coulthard, 2014: 6 [emphasis omitted]; see also Simpson, 2017: 45–47). Moreover, to what extent will those professionals who staff the system voice solutions that might drastically alter it (potentially disrupting their careers)? We conclude, ultimately, that the reasons for skepticism in respect of incremental improvements within the state's system of child welfare confirm the urgency of empowering and equipping Indigenous communities to manage this critical area (and more research on outcomes from Indigenous communities doing so, contending as they must with intergenerational trauma, will be valuable). Put otherwise, ‘fixing’ the child-welfare system is too narrow.