Abstract
Summary
Drawing on historical constructions of Indigenous peoples, this paper analyses the continued impact of settler discourses of Indigenous families, parenting, and children on child welfare policy in Canada today.
Findings
In this work, two provincial children's Advocate reports on the deaths of Indigenous children in care, Tina Fontaine and Alex Gervais, are critically assessed in order to explore the processes through which these colonial constructions operate to create adverse outcomes for Indigenous people. Through this analysis, a number of contemporary colonial narratives are made visible, including the belief that Indigenous parents are inherently incapable of caring for their children, and the gendered construction of Indigenous men and boys as criminal and deviant and Indigenous girls as sexually exploitable.
Application
These findings suggest that greater critical reflection is needed when working with Indigenous peoples, including greater awareness of the ongoing impact of settler colonialism and the necessity of engaging in anti-colonial work.
Introduction
The child welfare system in Canada, like all Canadian state institutions, is a colonial institution that enacts racial biases in the operation and consolidation of state power over Indigenous families, communities, and children 1 . In 2016, over 50% of children in care in Canada were identified as Indigenous, though Indigenous children represent less than 8% of children in Canada, which is an underestimated amount as Indigenous children are not consistently defined or identified in care (Farris-Manning & Zandstra, 2003; Ontario Human Rights Commission [OHRC], 2018; Trocmé et al., 2018). This overrepresentation is also a notable increase from an estimated 48% in 2011 (Turner, 2016). Notably, Indigenous child removal is most often based on social workers’ beliefs that a child is being neglected and poverty-related concerns such as overcrowded housing and lack of access to essential services (Blackstock & Trocmé, 2005; de Leeuw, 2014). In recognition of the gross over-representation of Indigenous children in care, as well as the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools in Canada, child welfare agencies across Canada are undertaking initiatives to improve services for Indigenous children and families through the introduction of antioppression initiatives and culturally informed service provision. 2
One example of these interventions is The Other Side of the Door, a publication produced for the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies in 2014. This publication, written as an educational resource for social workers in the province, discusses the “colonial period” of child welfare (Richard, 2014, p. 3). This work suggests that this colonial period began in the 1940s and ended in 1985 and that this was “a time when the child welfare field lost sight of their core principles and became agents of state oppression” (Richard, 2014, p. 3). This representation of the history of social work interventions fails to acknowledge that Residential Schools were used by social workers to house Indigenous children who had been removed from their families (Blackstock et al., 2007). At the same time, this perspective obscures the reality that the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care has continued to increase every year across Canada, including Manitoba where in 1985 provincial judge Edwin Kimmelman found that child removal in the province constituted genocide (Kimelman, 1985).
Importantly, the idea that the core principles of child welfare work were lost overlooks the “inherently colonial” nature of social work, which seeks to discipline individuals through institutions where colonialism remains firmly embedded (Saraceno, 2012, p. 251). Saraceno (2012) critically situates “helping professions” within a broader system that sustains privilege by devaluing those who fall outside of the ‘norm’ and seeks to assimilate them into ‘standard’ ways of being (p. 256).
This same report further suggests that the “process of colonization has contributed to a ‘cycle’ of dysfunction within [First Nations, Inuit and Métis] communities,” setting colonialism as an experience of the past (Richard, 2014, p. 24). It also problematizes colonial violence enacted by the colonial state against Indigenous peoples as dysfunction embodied in Indigenous peoples which is passively perpetuated within Indigenous communities. Most notably, the text suggests that “colonialism faded,” indicating that Indigenous peoples are no longer subject to settler rule, and are protected by modern children's rights frameworks (Richard, 2014, p. 34). This approach reinforces the belief that colonialism has ended and obscures the assimilationist intent of past child welfare policies, which were neither accidental nor uninformed, as evidenced by the Joint Submission by the Canadian Welfare Council and the Canadian Association of Social Workers in the 1940s which argued that Residential Schools were failing Indigenous children by not fully assimilating them (Canadian Association of Social Workers and Canada Welfare Council, 1947).
Though these interventions, like past child welfare policies, are well-intentioned, they remain limited in their critical and historical depth. As a result of these limitations, child welfare agencies continue to fail to engage in anticolonial work that could uproot deep colonial biases operating in the child welfare system (Dhillon, 2015). By failing to directly address Indigenous child removal as a function of settler colonialism, the state and wider society risk reinforcing colonial narratives that conceal Indigenous realities and celebrate settler benevolence (Dhillon, 2015).
Colonial discourses of Indigenous people are not intended to represent the world as it is, but instead act to conform perception of the world to serve settler interests, which seek to constantly control and minimize knowledge of colonial violence in our society (Fiske, 2016). Colonial discourses of race are not “haphazard and isolated, but rather part of a deep and complex ideological process” which serves to “explain, rationalize, and resolve insupportable contradictions and tensions in society” (Henry & Tator, 2002, p. 227). Through colonial constructions of Indigenous peoples as lesser and deviant, the reality of ongoing colonial occupation and oppression of Indigenous people is reframed, positioning Indigenous peoples, rather than the colonialism and settlers, as the problem. The notion that the state, by altering the presentation of interventionist policies, can justify the imposition of continued state control over Indigenous families further entrenches the structural violence and epistemic hierarchy that seeks to advance the assimilation of Indigenous peoples through the “guise of youth detention, prison, and child care and protection processes” (Tauri & Porou, 2014, p. 27).
Settler colonialism and child welfare
Settler colonialism is often misunderstood as an event that occurred in the past during contact or as a process that predated Confederation. Contrary to this misconception, settler colonialism is “an enduring structure requiring constant maintenance in an effort to disappear Indigenous populations” who continue to exist and resist the consolidation of settler power (Bonds & Inwoods, 2015, p. 2). A central logic of settler colonialism is the necessity of Indigenous extermination, either through eradication or assimilation (Bonds & Inwoods, 2015), which once achieved, completes the consolidation of the colony, validates nationalist myths, and finally removes the evidence and question of genocide. 3 Rollo (2018) grounds colonial violence in the “civilizational precepts” of “Manifest Destiny, terra nullius, the White man's burden and the Doctrine of Discovery,” and stresses that despite contemporary rejections of these precepts, they are reproduced today in the political systems of settler colonial states (p. 60).
The very notion that non-Indigenous social workers are positioned to authoritatively intervene in the lives of Indigenous, colonized families perpetuates the belief that settlers are morally bound to bring Indigenous peoples into modernity and save themselves from their own “savage childhood” (Rollo, 2018, p. 78). The construction of Indigenous peoples as less civilized not only naturalized imperial expansion, it also justified European control over the lives of Indigenous peoples (Bennett et al., 2005). Rollo (2018) suggests that without the belief in Indigenous inferiority, the “dispossession of lands, removal of children” and ongoing assimilation of Indigenous peoples cannot be justified (p. 74). Similarly, Bonds and Inwoods (2015) stress that White supremacist beliefs are inseparable from the systemic processes that continue to eradicate Indigenous peoples and control their lands.
Therefore, colonization cannot be seen as a historical event but is instead an integral aspect of the state and a feature of Canadian society that is sustained in part by socializing settler children to accept colonial domination as natural and deserved, “and learn not to question or challenge the beliefs, attitudes, policies, and practices of colonialism” (De Jong & Love, 2015, p. 495). Thus, settler colonialism is not only produced and reproduced by child welfare legislation and policies but also by the individuals who populate these systems and the broader society whose apathy and stigmatized beliefs against Indigenous peoples and children in care permit ongoing violence and oppression.
Where Residential Schools were once the primary institution to advance the policy of assimilation, today child welfare systems are used as a method to prevent future generations of Indigenous children from learning and perpetuating their peoples’ culture and identity (Armitage, 1995). As noted by Bennett et al. (2005) Indigenous children have long been targeted by policies intended to weaken and suppress Indigenous peoples by removing their children and placing them in the care of non-Indigenous peoples who, it is expected, will impart settler norms and values. Whether in Residential Schools, foster homes, group homes or, increasingly, custody, Indigenous children are removed from their culture and isolated within institutions whose actions are justified by “good intentions” and which seek to “‘help’ Indigenous peoples ‘for their own good’” (de Leeuw, 2014, p. 63). Yet, the removal of Indigenous children from their communities cannot be severed from the colonial context in which these removals occur, within which these are acts of colonial violence and not benevolence.
Colonial representations of Indigenous peoples
Historically, Indigenous peoples have been characterized as savages and burdens who present a myriad of dangers to settlers, including the risks of polluting settler society (Parliament of the United Kingdom, 1837). Colonial accounts of Indigenous peoples characterized Indigenous ways of living as impoverished, idle, and filthy (Parliament of the United Kingdom, 1837). Indigenous parents in particular were presented as drunken and negligent; while Indigenous men drank and hunted, an activity associated with leisure rather than survival, Indigenous women labored in the fields leaving children “exposed to the most severe sufferings by hunger and nakedness” (Rev. J. Evans in Great Britain, 1837, p. 64). In one testimony, Indigenous children were said to be neglected for “several days and nights in the wigwam alone, gathering a few sticks to warm their shivering limbs […] while their parents were rolling around some of those hot-beds of vice, those nurseries of crime, the taverns” (Rev. J. Evans in Great Britain, 1837, p. 64).
Figuier (1872), a respected scientist in his time, similarly noted in his work The Human Race, that among the Northern Red Race “[h]alf-naked children, girls and boys, scampered about outside” watched over by dogs, while women labored and men shunned all work “[b]eyond the chase and war” (pp. 468–469). The notion that Indigenous men mistreat Indigenous women is reflected in Figuier's (1872) commentary on this distribution of responsibility, where he notes that in settler society “respect for women is so profound,” though at this time legislation was first being introduced in some provinces to allow married settler women to vote and earn incomes independently of their husbands (p. 469). In Figuier's (1872) opinion, Indigenous peoples were destined for extermination if they did not “retire to the lands reserved for them” where “little by little they will lose their customs, their wild habits,” and would finally become “blended with the White” (pp. 469–476).
While Indigenous men were associated with drunkenness and violence, Indigenous women were “constructed as sexual objects” and associated with prostitution (de Finney, 2017, p. 10). Reports of sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls were pervasive in British and French colonies, and this violence was legitimized, romanticized, and normalized by colonial states (de Finney, 2017; Ellinghaus, 2009; Ruttan et al., 2008). Settler narratives such as the myth of Pocahontas, the legacy of slavery which firmly established the settler man's right “to determine the appropriate ‘use’ and value” of Indigenous women, and the belief that Indigenous women were inherently unclean all served to justify sexual violence (Ellinghaus, 2009; Ruttan et al., 2008; Sikka, 2010, p. 207).
Edmonds (2019) notes that settler control over Indigenous women and their “configuration as abject, unsanitary” and sexually deviant served to dialectically “maintain fictive ideas about White racial purity in the domestic and intimate settler domains” (p. 13). The assimilation of Indigenous peoples, in settler colonies, can only be achieved insofar as settler society can remain unchanged by the inclusion of Indigenous peoples. Therefore, only the complete extermination of Indigenous peoples’ cultures and identities, or the reduction of these cultures and identities to accepted settler categories may be permitted. In order to achieve this, the “intergenerational transmission of culture” must be removed from Indigenous hands and these individuals must also come under settler control (de Finney, 2017, p. 13).
Racialized and gendered colonial constructions of Indigenous peoples continue to produce and reinforce the portrayal of Indigenous peoples as threats to settler society, thereby justifying their segregation, institutionalization and assimilation. Where Indigenous females are sexualized and objectified, Indigenous males are “portrayed as thieves, gang members, violent offenders, and/or sexual predators” and are believed to be violent and thus, a threat to society and Indigenous women, a framing that valorizes settlers as those who do respect Indigenous women (Landertinger, 2016, p. 14; see Figuier, 1872). These contemporary characterizations of Indigenous peoples omit the possibility that Indigenous parents are able to care for their children; thought to be too dysfunctional to provide adequate care, and therefore it is not only normal but necessary to remove their children (Landertinger, 2016).
The violence of these colonial interventions is also masked by the belief that the conditions within which many Indigenous peoples live are the product of individual choice and not the result of centuries of oppression, marginalization, and concerted government policies designed to impoverish and politically, socially, and economically isolate Indigenous peoples. Governments at all levels across Canada have consistently chosen to continue to dismantle welfare state programs, retain racist legislation and policy, and ignore Indigenous poverty, thereby facilitating the conditions of extreme poverty that are “then presented back to the settler society as ‘proof’ of the imagined inadequacy of Indigenous parents” (Landertinger, 2016, p. 4). These narratives of Indigenous peoples’ inherent failings foster, sustain, and serve to obscure the violence and genocidal intent of Indigenous child removal.
For centuries, settler states have determined that the most expedient point of assimilationist intervention is through interventions that target Indigenous children. As noted by Davin (1879) in his report on Indian Boarding Schools, “[l]ittle can be done with” Indigenous adults (p. 2). This sentiment is echoed in John A. MacDonald's 4 infamous justification for Residential Schools, which argued that when “the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian” (MacDonald in Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p. 2). Thus, the settler colony must constantly manage the deviance of Indigenous peoples through their children (de Leeuw et al., 2009). When Residential Schools were found to be failing in this task, it was determined that through the child welfare system, the government of Canada, if committed to the task of “full assimilation”, could achieve this goal “within a generation” (Canadian Association of Social Workers & Canada Welfare Council, 1947, p. 155). Today, despite government commitments to reconciliation, Canada remains committed to the goal of assimilation.
Contemporary colonialism
Over 50% of all children in care in Canada are Indigenous with one-third of Indigenous children having been removed from their homes and families, exceeding the number of children who were removed from their homes at the height of the Residential School system (Blackstock, 2007; OHRC, 2018). In 2009, it was estimated that 86% of children in care in Manitoba were Indigenous (Kozlowski et al., 2011). Today, despite ongoing initiatives to reduce the number of Indigenous children in care, this figure is estimated at 90% (Malone, 2019). Similarly, child incarceration rates have doubled in the past 10 years. Malone (2018) notes that in 2006 and 2007, 21% of children in custody were Indigenous, and today these rates have increased to 47% of male children and 60% of female children in custody. In the province of Saskatchewan, 92% of male children and 82% of female children in custody are Indigenous (Malone, 2018). Once in the care of the state, children become increasingly vulnerable; as having been in care is a leading indicator of vulnerability for sexual exploitation (Kingsley & Mark, 2000; Sikka, 2010). A study in British Columbia estimated that 60% of sexually exploited youth are Indigenous (Bourgeois, 2015). Notably, in Winnipeg, it is estimated that “two-thirds of women involved in street prostitution had been taken into care as children” and that 70% of sexually exploited children are Indigenous (Sikka, 2010, p. 210).
These figures demonstrate that child welfare systems in Canada are not “natural, necessary, and legitimate” but are “coercive and destructive” (de Leeuw, 2014; Kline, 1992, p. 389) and that these systems operate through and are made permissible by “laissez-faire racism” which blames Indigenous peoples for the violence and poverty they experience (Denis, 2015, p. 221). Child welfare practices also demonstrate a clear continuity of assimilationist policies and continue to “perpetuate the ideal of the White, two-parent, heterosexual, able-bodied family” (Bohaker & Iacovetta, 2009; Gosine & Pon, 2011, p. 137). The assimilationist underpinnings of the child welfare system are evident in the dialectical construction of the White interventionist and the Indigenous Other (Pon et al., 2011). In 2009, 94% of child welfare workers identified as White and 80% of these workers were women (Brown et al., 2009). Racist stereotyping of Indigenous peoples as “aberrant and requiring intervention” also leads to Indigenous families being reported more often (de Leeuw, 2014, p. 72). At the same time, the construction of Indigenous families as unsafe normalizes continued intervention against Indigenous communities and justifies a failure to act on “genuinely unsafe circumstances” as these are “viewed ‘as par for the course’” (de Leeuw, 2014, p. 72). Because Indigenous peoples are believed to be inherently and unavoidably prone to vulnerability, violence and premature death, violence against Indigenous peoples is accepted in society as given and even expected (de Finney, 2017).
Tina fontaine
Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old child and member of Sagkeeng First Nation was found dead in Winnipeg's Red River in 2014. Though Tina was reported as a missing child who was known to be sexually exploited, numerous service providers, including police and doctors, who came into contact with her in her final days failed to protect her (Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth [MACY], 2019). Many authors, journalists, and advocates have written about Tina Fontaine. This brief case study draws on the findings of the 2019 Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) report A Place Where It Feels Like Home: The Story of Tina Fontaine, which suggests that a lack of mental health services for Tina who was struggling with her father's death contributed significantly to vulnerability and death. In this report, the advocate notes that Tina Fontaine's mother and one sibling declined to participate in the review (MACY, 2019). The intergenerational experiences of Tina's family are outlined by the advocate who notes that Tina's mother became a ward of the state at age 10 and that “[Child and Family Services] workers knew her to be sexually exploited by adults starting at a young age and did little to intervene and protect her from harm” (MACY, 2019, p. 16). The report elaborates further: In 1994, Tina's mother met the man who would eventually be the father to Tina and two of her seven siblings. When Tina's father met Tina's mother, she was a 12 year old child in care, and he was a 23 year old adult. CFS [Child and Family Services] documentation indicates the CFS agency knew the relationship to be sexual and knew that Tina's father had a past that involved violence and severe addictions. […] Tina's mother confirmed to her guardian CFS agency that at her then-age of 12, she was being sexually exploited by adults in the community and was using the money to buy alcohol. Tina's mother described to her worker feeling “depressed,” “suicidal,” “isolated, alone, and unloved.” (MACY, 2019, p. 16)
Despite the full knowledge that Tina's mother was being sexually exploited, and additional confirmation by Tina's paternal grandmother that “Tina's father was profiting financially from sexual exploitation” of a child in their care, Child and Family Services did not act to protect Tina's mother (MACY, 2019, p. 17). At no point did child welfare authorities attempt to protect Tina's mother who aged out of care, lost custody of all her children, and was still involved in the sex trade when Tina sought to reunite with her as a teenager (MACY, 2019). Shortly after Tina joined her mother in Winnipeg, her ‘grandma’ learned that Tina was “using crack cocaine and that she was being sexually exploited” (MACY, 2019, p. 36). Though Tina was a ward of the province, no efforts were made, or support given to her family to protect Tina from exploitation. In the final few months of her life, Tina was repeatedly reported missing and numerous individuals not only neglected their duty to protect her, but many also responded by further marginalizing and criminalizing her.
The advocate report outlines a number of incidents of concern, three are outlined here, all of which occurred within one day. On August 8, 2014, Winnipeg Police Services stopped a vehicle for failing to signal and found that the driver had a suspended license and was intoxicated. Police also “noticed a young female in the vehicle”—15-year-old Tina Fontaine, a child known to be missing (MACY, 2019, p. 45). The police impounded the driver's vehicle, allowed the driver to stay in detention until he sobered up, ignored his intent to sexually exploit a child and released him that morning (MACY, 2019). Tina, a child and ward of the state who was known to be missing and at high risk of sexual exploitation, was released onto the streets of Winnipeg in the middle of the night. Hours later on August 8, Tina was found unconscious and undressed “from the waist down” in an alley (MACY, 2019, p. 46). Paramedics responded and Tina was taken to a health center where she confirmed to a doctor that she had used drugs. When the doctor “expressed concern that Tina has been sexually assaulted or ‘sexually exploited in some way’” Tina denied this and refused further exams (MACY, 2019, p. 46). Tina, a 15-year-old girl found unconscious and exposed on the street was then “medically cleared for discharge” (MACY, 2019, p. 46).
The doctor and health center did not inform police and police did not follow up with Tina though there was “sufficient evidence known by each of these groups to warrant a request for involvement by the child abuse unit of the Winnipeg police” (MACY, 2019, p. 47). Similarly, child welfare authorities, who were directly responsible for Tina's care and who were aware that Tina was being sexually exploited, chose to place Tina in a hotel when she “was being discharged from hospital and required an emergency placement” (MACY, 2019, p. 47). Tina, a child known to have been sexually exploited, having recently been under a missing persons report and having been found unconscious in an alley exhibiting signs of trauma and abuse, was placed alone in a hotel without supervision. The advocate report notes simply; “Tina left the hotel shortly afterwards” (MACY, 2019, p. 47). Nine days later, Tina's body was pulled from the Red River where she had been left for a week “wrapped in a blanket with multiple rocks enclosed” (MACY, 2019, p. 50).
Alex Gervais
Alex was an 18-year-old Métis youth who had spent his life in and out of Child Protection services since he was 2 months old. After years of experiencing inadequate support and stability, Alex, alone and with no caregiver nearby, took his life at “the hotel that [he] had reluctantly been forced to consider ‘home’ for 49 straight days” (Representative for Children and Youth in British Columbia [RCYBC], 2017, p. 3).
The Representative for Children and Youth in British Columbia (RCYBC) report Broken Promises: Alex's Story, details some of the experiences leading up to Alex's final days. This report repeatedly stresses a central narrative, which suggests that a lack of stability and frequent placement changes contributed to Alex's suicide in 2015 at the age of 18. Though the representative notes that early on in Alex's care “a stable living environment” was noted as an effective solution to Alex's challenging behaviors, permanency was not a priority for his workers (RCYBC, 2017, p. 11). Instead, it was assumed that because Alex was under a voluntary care agreement, he would return to the care of his biological father (RCYBC, 2017). The representative notes that this was not communicated to Alex, who was instead told “that it was his behaviors that caused him to have to move so frequently” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 11). Despite persistent efforts by Alex's aunt and stepmother to have Alex permanently placed with them, the representative suggests that these opportunities were “missed” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 4). In the case of Alex's aunt, the representative notes that “the ministry refused to consider her as a placement because of her unwillingness to engage with [Alex's] father,” though Alex had “little to no contact with his father […] due to social workers wanting him to avoid contact they believed would be disturbing to Alex” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 18).
The report further notes “investigators could find no concrete reasons why either of these family placement options would not have worked” and suggests that “the ministry and its delegates failed to adequately explore either option” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 4). Additionally, the representative notes that the ministry would not provide any financial support to Alex's stepmother and instead “opted to pay far more for the boy to be placed with a contracted residential agency for the next seven years” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 4). In his final years in care, Alex was placed in a hotel under the supervision of a contracted “former respite worker—at an exorbitant rate of 11 times what [the ministry] had offered the stepmother years earlier” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 4). In his final years, Alex was often alone in a hotel, “without adequate food or clothing or support” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 4). Throughout his time in care, no effort was made “to connect him with his culture” and agencies placed this responsibility on Alex by claiming that he “wasn’t interested in learning about his heritage” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 4).
During his time in care, Alex also “complained of being sexually assaulted” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 5). Shortly before completing suicide, Alex disclosed to child welfare authorities that he had been sexually abused when he was 14 years old by a caregiver who had drugged and raped him (RCYBC, 2017). Alex had previously disclosed this sexual assault and exploitation to a caregiver who “did not pass the information on to anyone because in his view it was ‘none of his business’” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 32). Though Alex's aunt and stepmother, who Alex considered to be his own mother, consistently sought custody of Alex, he was instead routinely placed with caregivers who were unqualified or who posed a danger to Alex, including a respite caregiver with “a history of gun violence, gang involvement, drug dealing and use” (RCYBC, 2017, p. 28). It is not surprising that Alex was suspected of “using and possibly dealing hard drugs,” a suspicion that was not addressed by child welfare authorities (RCYBC, 2017, p. 29). Shortly before ending his life by jumping from a fourth-story window in the hotel where he had been placed, Alex expressed to a former caregiver that he was “nothing more than a ‘paycheque’ or ‘a bag of cash’” for child welfare agencies who deprived him of a loving family and then neglected him (RCYBC, 2017, p. 38).
Discussion
Armitage (1995) notes that “child welfare measures have been an important part of Canada's general policy of assimilation from 1867 to present day” and that the “form of policy in each period has followed whatever the current understanding of the ‘Indian problem’ might be” (p. 135). Dhillon (2015) uses the terms “throw aways” and “expendable” to describe the Canadian states’ construction of Indigenous children (p. 19). Adding to these representations is the false assumption that child welfare policies act benevolently to protect children from further harm. It has been found that youth removed from their homes are almost two times more likely to experience trauma than youth who receive services at home (Collin-Vézina et al., 2011). Being removed from one's home by child welfare authorities has been found to independently predict “self-harm, suicide ideation and attempt, and mental illness among young Indigenous people” (Clarkson et al., 2015, p. 268). Community consultations with Indigenous people in Alberta found that children continued to believe in their families, despite knowing they faced challenges (Office of the Child and Youth Advocate of Alberta [OCYAA], 2016). These same consultations found these children's call for more family-based support was reiterated by “family members, community leaders, and Elders” who all felt that rather than punishing families by removing their children, the system should support these families through direct funding and increased services (OCYAA, 2016, p. 19).
However, colonial constructions of Indigenous families invalidate this perspective; Indigenous parents cannot be made good parents because they are themselves children who require the guidance of the state. As well, the contemporary belief that Indigenous peoples cannot be assisted by equitable funding echoes early colonial sentiments, succinctly stated in Britain's 1837 Special Committee: “the annual payments made by the crown as a remuneration for their lands, together with presents, amounting to several thousand pounds sterling, were almost useless; nay, in many cases, worse than useless, by making them indulge, to a greater extent, in drunkenness” (Great Britain, 1837, pp. 64–65).
By failing to provide Indigenous children in care with adequate support, Alex's sentiments that he was being used for others’ profit are justified. Intergenerational neglect within the child welfare system is also evident in Tina's story; not only was Tina actively neglected by the state, she also suffered from the systems’ absolute failure in addressing her mother's needs as a child. Turpel-Lafond (2016) notes that the victimization of Indigenous girls is normalized and cites a social worker who struggled to provide protective support to a young Indigenous girl, as there was “almost an assumption in the community that [this youth] will be sexually victimized and that is it only a question of when” (p. 32). Turpel-Lafond (2016) further notes that Indigenous girls are frequently characterized as placing themselves in danger and stresses the need for social workers to confront the myth that Indigenous children “can keep themselves safe in an unsafe environment” (p. 38).
This myth is further exemplified in the MACY (2019) report where the advocate notes that in July 2014, a month before Tina's body was recovered from the Red River, Winnipeg Police Services “received a call that Tina was screaming for help as she was being dragged by an older male down” a street (p. 38). Though Tina had been reported missing, she was not provided any protective services and was instead “issued a ticket by [Winnipeg Police Services] for possession/consumption of liquor by a minor” (MACY, 2019, p. 38). Sikka (2010) cites a study which found that “[l]aw enforcement officers and child service agencies” refer to the transition of children from care facilities to the street “as the ‘revolving door’ of care” (p. 213). Yet, these same professionals often fail to recognize their own responsibility or acknowledge the ways in which they expose these children to abuse and exploitation, or directly reject this responsibility as in the case of Alex's caregiver who felt that a child's disclosure of sexual assault was none of his business.
Kingsley and Mark (2000) writing about the sexual exploitation of Indigenous children note that this is a “microcosm of many of the values, attitudes, and beliefs which are predominant in Canadian society at large” (p. 9). Dhillon (2015) notes that the gap between the narratives within which state agents operate and the reality that Indigenous girls live can be collapsed through critical reflection. This critical reflection reveals that Indigenous girls are specifically targeted because “their very resistance and survival” obstruct
The settler gaze is further averted from critical reflection by patterns of criminalization and incarceration which frame Indigenous people as violent rather than victims of a violent state. Though incarceration is the most visible expression of this violence, Dhillon (2015) notes that it is only one part of a broader “continuum of violence” that begins in the community with policing (p. 19). It is well established that Indigenous identity is “independently associated with incarceration” and that Indigenous youth are more likely to be subjected to harsh and punitive measures within the criminal justice system (Barker et al., 2015, p. 1663; Bracken et al., 2009). Skott-Myhre (2006) suggests that individuals working with youth allow themselves to be dissuaded from acting against these institutional biases because they fear becoming visible to the disciplining power of these institutions. Yet, Indigenous children already experience significant disadvantages and are deprived of access to necessary resources (Kaspar, 2014). Thus, inaction is itself a threat. When institutionalized children speak out about their own needs, they are “often overlooked, ignored and characterized as ‘attention-seeking’” (Office of the Chief Coroner [OCC], 2018, p. 6). The wording in the report on Alex's experiences echoes this procedural dismissal by framing his concerns as complaints, noting that Alex “complained” about a lack of food, support, clothing, and “complained” about being sexually assaulted. Children in care and custody, and Indigenous children in particular, are often “told to ‘get over it’” (OCC, 2016, p. 52), and when they cannot, their coping mechanisms and expressions of trauma are pathologized, leading to more restrictive and punitive treatment (Gray, 2016).
Conclusion
In the report on Tina Fontaine's care, the advocate notes in the findings that “[s]tarting in Tina's early years, child and family services did not reflect a commitment to preserving, supporting, and protecting Tina's family unit” (MACY, 2019, p. 76). This is an egregious understatement. Tina's mother, a 12-year-old child who had experienced significant exploitation, was knowingly left in the hands of an adult abuser who exploited her. This was not a failure in the system, this was complicit participation in the abuse of a child. This complicity was perpetuated intergenerationally and was seen again in neglect of Tina's safety, not only by child welfare authorities but by every adult she came into contact with on her last known day. This same complicity is seen in the refusal to provide Alex with a safe home and the lack of recognition of the abuse he had experienced. For both children, the concepts of safety, family, and support all remained foreign conditions that are not seen in the Indigenous Other.
Tina Fontaine was not vulnerable because she was a grieving child with too few mental health supports. Tina Fontaine was made vulnerable by the adults around her who were responsible for her safety but who, because of implicit racism, left Tina to the violence and exploitation that was assumed to be a natural aspect of Indigenous girls’ lives. Similarly, Alex Gervais was prevented from having a family and was left in the care of those who neglected him and exploited him. This abuse was permitted because Alex's neglect conformed to the belief that Indigenous men are criminals and that Indigenous peoples cannot have families, be loved, or be safe. It is not by failure or unintended consequence that these children died; conscious and active choices were made by adults in their lives—those who exploited, those who neglected, racialized and criminalized, and minimized the value of these children's lives. It is these choices, motivated by racist, colonial, gendered, and genocidal discourses that need to be brought to the forefront.
It is essential to uproot the colonial biases that perpetuate these injustices. By framing colonialism “as a concern of the past,” child welfare agencies fail to “ensure that colonial thinking and actions do not continue to influence social work practice, policy or research” (Bennett & Blackstock, p. 5). Without deep, critical reflection, the construction of Indigenous peoples as “legitimate and necessary agents of care, protection and improvement” will continue to guide state interventions, leaving the systemic processes by which Indigenous families are made poor and vulnerable untouched (de Leeuw et al., 2010, p. 283). However, recognition of these processes also requires non-Indigenous peoples to “recognize and acknowledge themselves of occupiers of Indigenous homelands, perpetrators of cultural genocide and sustainers of settler colonial practices” (Davis et al., 2016, p. 2). However, as Davis et al. (2016) note, Canadians are deeply invested in maintaining the status quo and are unwilling to risk the benefits they derive as a result of settler violence, past and present. That these benefits are weighed most heavily on the side of those who abuse and exploit children, allowing them to operate with impunity, has failed to motivate change for hundreds of years.
Footnotes
Ethical Approval
An ethical evaluation was not required for this article, as the cases reviewed were publicly available through government reports.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declarations of Conflict of Interests
The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
