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Disconnected from their roots

48 per cent of Canadian foster children are Indigenous despite Native children comprising only seven per cent of the country’s child population

Jack Contin will never forget the day he was taken from his reserve at Twelve Mile Bay by a social worker and two provincial police officers in October 1959. He was six. Contin recalls the leaves changing colours along Georgian Bay as his boat slowly moved away from shore. After travelling for more than two hours, Contin did not see any Indigenous people like himself. He was then placed with a non-Indigenous foster family in Bracebridge.

Contin was one of an estimated 20,000 Indigenous children taken from their homes in reserves by child welfare services and placed with middle class families from the 1960s to the 1980s. This was widely known as the “Sixties Scoop.”

“To me it was strange, going from one place to another, a whole new life altogether,” Contin said. “I didn’t really take it as stressful, I took it more as saying ‘Oh this is something different, I will have to adapt and adjust.’”

Contin was an only child, and never knew his father. He lived with his mother until she was sent to a sanatorium for tuberculosis when he was three. Contin lived with his mother’s friend until he was taken.

His native tongue was not spoken in Bracebridge, and he gradually lost his language.

JACK CONTIN

Jack Contin in 1962 when he was 9. (Courtesy of Jack Contin)

“Once you lose the language, you start losing part of your whole piece of yourself, of the culture, your identity,” Contin said. “And that’s what happened through history, through these assimilation processes of residential schools going right up to the Scoop, and even today, it still happens.”

A report on First Nations child poverty by Melisa Brittain and Cindy Blackstock from the First Nations Children's Action Research and Education Service noted the increase of Indigenous children removed from their homes began in 1959.

Indigenous children accounted for one per cent of the child welfare system in 1959. It rose to 34 per cent in 1964, though they made up four per cent of the child population in Canada back then.

At age 20, Contin knew he was Indigenous, but didn’t know which nation he was from until a friend told him to apply for an Indian status card.

He found out he is an Ojibway from the Henvey Inlet First Nation near French River, Ontario.

“Prior to that, there was no knowledge to say, ‘Geez, I am an Ojibway.’ No one told me I was an Ojibway,” Contin said.

Contin added the community he lived in as a teenager didn’t have much exposure to Indigenous culture.

“[They] didn’t really teach this in school, no one knew about it. And this is what the history of the government is - that it was very lacking in history to understand who First Nations were in Canada,” Contin said.

Contin said he was raised Roman Catholic and put into the Children’s Aid Society by the church. Because there were no Catholic families adopting, he lived with an non-Indigenous Anglican foster family.

While the church searched for a Catholic placement for Contin, his non-Indigenous Anglican foster family wanted to adopt him, but was denied by the church.

When Contin turned 17, that question popped up again.

“By then, I got to know more about who I was,” Contin said. “I said no, I wanted to keep my own identity, I know I’m different, I wanted to find out more about it, I wanted to keep my own name.”

He said his story would have been different if Contin was adopted. He would have lost his name and his Indian status, and ultimately, his identity.

Contin is now a town councillor in Midland. Prior to that, he worked with Parks Canada and Environment Canada preparing land claims and developing Aboriginal policies.

Jack Contin in 2017. (Courtesy of Jack Contin)

In 1990, government legislation allowed bands to run their own child welfare services in an attempt to provide Indigenous children with better cultural support, but the over-representation of Indigenous children in foster care continues today.

According to Statistics Canada, 48 per cent of all foster children are Indigenous. Only 44 per cent of Indigenous foster children have lived with an Indigenous foster family.

Jennifer King, a reconciliation and policy coordinator from First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, said the over-representation of Indigenous children in foster care is mostly due to neglect.

“The top three drivers behind neglect are poverty, poor housing and substance misuse by the caregiver which is more often or not tied to the experience of residential schools, and intergenerational trauma,” King said.

“There are preventative services or supports that can be put in place to keep kids in their family home. But due to the underfunding of First Nations child welfare, those resources, those supports weren’t available for families, and social workers had no recourse but to remove kids from their family homes.”

King said this could be minimized if the child welfare services were supporting families.

In January 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling found the Canadian government is racially discriminating First Nations children and families by underfunding child welfare on reserves.

“So much of the issue could be better addressed by not discriminating against kids and funding these services properly, and putting in place the system that actually addresses the needs,” King said. “It’s very difficult to say that the system has changed.”

Since the ruling, the tribunal has issued three compliance orders to Canada. In response, the Canadian government has applied for a judicial review of that decision.

Denise Toulouse, capacity development officer of Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, said it is important for Indigenous children in foster care to learn about their culture. The centre offers programs to do so, while providing social support.

“You notice that you are treated differently, you look differently, and you don’t have those role models that you can follow because they’re not available,” Toulouse said.

Contin said finding his identity is a combination of education and participation, where knowledge comes as life experiences. For him, it’s a lifelong journey.

“Kids were taken, and no one knows the history,” Contin said. “But they want to connect back to who they are.”

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