LilMtnCbn
01-04-2005, 06:20 AM
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050104/EN
ATIVE04/TPComment/Editorials
Don't block the adoption
Tuesday, January 4, 2005 - Page A12
Imagine if Canadian children whose birth parents could not raise them were
condemned to one foster home after another, rather than given the chance to be
adopted into a family of their own. It would be unthinkably cruel, a scandal.
Yet that has been the situation for Saskatchewan's aboriginal children.
In a case before the province's Court of Queen's Bench last month, five
children had been denied a basic need of children everywhere -- the need for a
loving, lasting home. Two of them, 12 and 13, have already been in at least 13
foster placements. Another child, 8, suffers from an emotional disorder linked
to living in 20 homes -- yes, 20 -- in five years. A fourth child is just 4;
his foster mother explained that she does not have the bond with him necessary
for a permanent commitment.
Yet a Saskatchewan government policy has had the effect of ruling out adoption
by families that might nurture these children as their own. The government
gives native bands a veto over the adoption of children who are band members.
Understandably, the band involved in the court case, Sturgeon Lake First
Nation, does not want the children to lose contact with their community and
their culture. The problem is that there are no extended family members or
Sturgeon Lake band members willing to take the children.
None of these five children even lives on the Sturgeon Lake reserve. No
evidence was presented that they had ever lived there. Their connection to the
community is more a theory than a reality. Yet Stur-geon Lake has used its veto
to maintain the children in a permanent, and highly destructive, foster-care
limbo. The band says the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the aboriginal
right to reject the adoption of a native child by a non-native family. In
practice, this has meant that "native rights" were used to justify abysmal
childhoods for native children. And this was supported by the official policy
of the Saskatchewan government.
Thankfully, Madam Justice Jacelyn Ann Ryan-Froslie struck down this disastrous
policy as an infringement of the children's constitutional rights to security
of the person and to equality. Her decision should be read by every
child-welfare agency, judge and provincial government across the country. It
suggests how far the pendulum has swung since the 1960s, when, in the judge's
words, native children were subject to "systematic removal" from their homes
and communities and forcibly assimilated into non-native homes. Aboriginal
children in today's Saskatchewan have been subject to a systematic denial of
their basic needs as children.
Of 3,000 children in foster care in Saskatchewan, most of them under 11, 70 per
cent are aboriginal, according to government figures cited in the judge's
ruling. The province's Children's Advocate said four years ago that these
children are "sentenced to ambiguity" and warehoused until they are old enough
to leave care. The advocate said there is ample evidence that children's mental
health suffers when they are raised in limbo. This was clear in the judge's
discussion of the eight-year-old, whose emotional disorder makes it difficult
for her to form bonds with others. "What Maggie [the judge's pseudonym for the
girl] needs most is a stable living arrangement to help her attach positively
to someone and resolve her fear of loving and being loved. The key is
permanence."
It is unconscionable to deny an eight-year-old a permanent home and family.
Foster families fill an important need but they are not, by definition, as
committed as adoptive ones. As one social worker quoted in Judge Ryan-Froslie's
ruling puts it, the system of permanent foster care is a "method of appeasing
everyone, but the child is forgotten."
Enough of this destructive tug of war. All adopting families, no matter what
their heritage, should respect and foster a child's aboriginal identity. But
above all, a child deserves a family.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
ATIVE04/TPComment/Editorials
Don't block the adoption
Tuesday, January 4, 2005 - Page A12
Imagine if Canadian children whose birth parents could not raise them were
condemned to one foster home after another, rather than given the chance to be
adopted into a family of their own. It would be unthinkably cruel, a scandal.
Yet that has been the situation for Saskatchewan's aboriginal children.
In a case before the province's Court of Queen's Bench last month, five
children had been denied a basic need of children everywhere -- the need for a
loving, lasting home. Two of them, 12 and 13, have already been in at least 13
foster placements. Another child, 8, suffers from an emotional disorder linked
to living in 20 homes -- yes, 20 -- in five years. A fourth child is just 4;
his foster mother explained that she does not have the bond with him necessary
for a permanent commitment.
Yet a Saskatchewan government policy has had the effect of ruling out adoption
by families that might nurture these children as their own. The government
gives native bands a veto over the adoption of children who are band members.
Understandably, the band involved in the court case, Sturgeon Lake First
Nation, does not want the children to lose contact with their community and
their culture. The problem is that there are no extended family members or
Sturgeon Lake band members willing to take the children.
None of these five children even lives on the Sturgeon Lake reserve. No
evidence was presented that they had ever lived there. Their connection to the
community is more a theory than a reality. Yet Stur-geon Lake has used its veto
to maintain the children in a permanent, and highly destructive, foster-care
limbo. The band says the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the aboriginal
right to reject the adoption of a native child by a non-native family. In
practice, this has meant that "native rights" were used to justify abysmal
childhoods for native children. And this was supported by the official policy
of the Saskatchewan government.
Thankfully, Madam Justice Jacelyn Ann Ryan-Froslie struck down this disastrous
policy as an infringement of the children's constitutional rights to security
of the person and to equality. Her decision should be read by every
child-welfare agency, judge and provincial government across the country. It
suggests how far the pendulum has swung since the 1960s, when, in the judge's
words, native children were subject to "systematic removal" from their homes
and communities and forcibly assimilated into non-native homes. Aboriginal
children in today's Saskatchewan have been subject to a systematic denial of
their basic needs as children.
Of 3,000 children in foster care in Saskatchewan, most of them under 11, 70 per
cent are aboriginal, according to government figures cited in the judge's
ruling. The province's Children's Advocate said four years ago that these
children are "sentenced to ambiguity" and warehoused until they are old enough
to leave care. The advocate said there is ample evidence that children's mental
health suffers when they are raised in limbo. This was clear in the judge's
discussion of the eight-year-old, whose emotional disorder makes it difficult
for her to form bonds with others. "What Maggie [the judge's pseudonym for the
girl] needs most is a stable living arrangement to help her attach positively
to someone and resolve her fear of loving and being loved. The key is
permanence."
It is unconscionable to deny an eight-year-old a permanent home and family.
Foster families fill an important need but they are not, by definition, as
committed as adoptive ones. As one social worker quoted in Judge Ryan-Froslie's
ruling puts it, the system of permanent foster care is a "method of appeasing
everyone, but the child is forgotten."
Enough of this destructive tug of war. All adopting families, no matter what
their heritage, should respect and foster a child's aboriginal identity. But
above all, a child deserves a family.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
