Foster families focused on teaching Indigenous heritage to foster children

“It doesn’t work just to take a child out of their home and their families and expect it to be okay. It’s not okay,” foster mother Janet Michaylow said.

Over 50,000 children are in the Canadian Foster Care System (CFS); over 25 per cent of them are Indigenous, a ratio that climbs as high as 70 per cent depending on the province or territory.

It’s a ratio that doesn’t hold true for foster parents, where the number of Indigenous parents is more reflective of the three per cent of the Canadian population that is Indigenous.

The result is a generation of children who don’t know their ancestry.

Michaylow has fostered 23 children; all six months or younger when she and her partner took them in.

“It’s a learning curve for sure, we don’t know a lot about Indigenous culture,” Michaylow explained. Now she’s learning on the job, and teaching her kids along the way.

“We start reading little Cree words to them in their stories, we take them to the powwows that are going on, and we attended a day of the cultural camp that the Saskatchewan Foster Families Association does for families,” she said.

For Michaylow, it’s a personal quest.

“I can relate because my dad actually came from India and he never taught me any of my culture,” Michaylow explained. “I never knew any of my extended family, and that has always been a little bit of a hole in my life. I don’t want that for my children.”

Rose Harris was adopted at birth, her Indian name is Walks Among The Stars. Although she was never fostered by Michaylow, she had a similar experience with her family.

“I didn’t have very pointed questions, just in general wanted to learn about everything I could, and gain more knowledge about myself, my history, my background, my family, my Indigenous culture,” Harris said.

With the help of her parents, Harris is slowly discovering her heritage through cultural camps, language training and powwows.

“It’s not about race, but when it comes to identity, let’s instil the pride if they’re Indigenous children,” asserted Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme.

Delorme is the first of his family not to have gone through CFS. Instead, he adopted one of the young girls Michaylow fostered as an infant.

Now he works with other foster families to teach Indigenous culture to their children.

“It’s about identity, it’s about braid, it’s about having that prayer song and that prayer in hand at any time that you’re going to need it in life,” Delorme explained.

It’s a sentiment matched by Micahylow.

“They’re worth it, they’re special and they need to know their place in our lives, in their city, and in history and in the future,” she added.