Duane Ningaqsiq Smith is the chair and chief executive of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, which represents six Inuit communities in the Northwest Territories pursuant to the constitutionally protected 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement.
Duane Ningaqsiq Smith, Chair and CEO of Inuvialuit Regional Corporation.Blair Gable/Supplied
While many Canadians celebrated the Pope’s visit with Indigenous peoples earlier this year, far fewer took note of an attempt by the government of the Northwest Territories to quash our rights at the Supreme Court earlier this month.
To save yet another generation from the horrific injustices of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop and child-welfare discrimination, Indigenous governments across Canada have taken decisive action to protect our children. We have been strongly supported in doing so by the federal government’s Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth, and Families, which allows Indigenous governments to reclaim jurisdiction over child and family services.
While our historic steps to reclaim our right to self-government and keep Indigenous children in Indigenous care were acknowledged in political speeches as the act came into effect in 2019, provincial and territorial governments have since failed to back up their commitment to reconciliation with meaningful action.
When we, the Inuvialuit, passed our first child-welfare law last year, Northwest Territories Premier Caroline Cochrane celebrated it: “This law is a big step forward in ensuring decisions are made in the best interests of Inuvialuit children, youth, and families,” she said in a statement.
In a shocking about-face this month, Ms. Cochrane joined the governments of Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba in taking the extraordinary step of challenging the Children, Youth and Families Act at the Supreme Court of Canada, effectively denying that Inuvialuit children have a right to care from their own community.
These three provinces and the government of the Northwest Territories stand in opposition to more than 33 Indigenous groups intervening at the Supreme Court to defend their right to self-government. This right is strongly supported by both the government of Canada and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The opposition to the act is particularly absurd coming from the Northwest Territories, which has a long history of colonialism that permeates government interactions with Indigenous communities and their children in Canada.
Between 1870 and 1998, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were removed from their families, denied their cultures and forced into a horrific system of residential schools. In the Inuvialuit region, the Grollier Hall Residential School in Inuvik, NWT, remained open as recently as 1997 – removing Inuit children from their families and perpetuating cultural genocide.
The policies of residential schools were based on the oppressive view that Indigenous communities were incapable of caring for our children. This view was perpetuated first by residential schools, then by the Sixties Scoop. We continue to experience discrimination within the child welfare system to this day.
While the last residential school may have closed 25 years ago, nearly 54 per cent of children taken into care in Canada last year were Indigenous, despite representing just under eight per cent of the youth population. In the Northwest Territories, they represent an astonishing 98 per cent of children in care.
Today, our children continue to be removed from their families, homes and communities. They are denied their basic right to live within their Indigenous culture. This is the tragedy that colonial government policy has repeated for decades.
Over the past decade, independent audits have consistently found that the government of the Northwest Territories has failed to meet its responsibility for the protection and well-being of Indigenous children. Ms. Cochrane’s efforts to cling to this responsibility, in defiance of the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples, is nothing short of a desperate attempt to seek power for power’s sake.
Colonial governments have had decades to reduce the number of Indigenous children in care, and they have failed. It is time to put Indigenous children back in Indigenous care.
The government of the Northwest Territories must immediately drop its intervention at the Supreme Court against Inuvialuit children and families and end this colonial and harmful approach to the child welfare system. It has damaged our communities for far too long.
Our children’s future, and Canada’s potential for meaningful reconciliation, depend on it.