Advocates are renewing calls for systemic overhaul of the child welfare system after a family laid to rest a young Anishinaabekwe (Ojibway woman) whose final words were to speak out against the system for targeting Indigenous families.
The 32-year-old mother of four took her life shortly after posting a video on social media on Jan. 27, seen by 28,000, after her children were taken when she reached out to child welfare for help after fleeing abuse – an incident the Manitoba government says it’s now looking into.
Global News is not identifying the woman to ensure the identities of her children are protected.
RCMP in Manitoba have charged a 32-year-old man with assault in relation to the matter. He was released with conditions and the next day, his spouse was found to have taken her life.
“I want her story out there,” said the woman’s grieving mother. “I don’t want anyone to go through what she went through with (child and family services).”
Loved ones and community recently gathered to lay the mother to rest on her First Nation territory, north of Winnipeg.
In Anishinaabe custom, some cut their braids to be buried with her.
That night, northern lights danced above signaling to family that spirits were dancing with her.
“It hurt my heart hearing cries of my grandma (the woman’s mother),” a niece of the woman told Global News.
The woman’s father was devastated as well. The family believes the child welfare agency responsible should be held accountable but they feel powerless.
Sen. Kim Pate has spent 40 years advocating for Indigenous communities in Canada with a particular focus on the over-representation of Indigenous women in jails and prisons.
She points to a common thread among them: being apprehended as children and having their own children apprehended by the system, inflicting trauma that causes mothers and children to often spiral to crime, drug addiction, mental health crises and suicide.
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls cited this as well, as did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“It’s horrifying to see this happen,” Pate said. “But it’s also really important for the public to know that this is far more common than we’d like to think.
“We know that there are more Indigenous children in care now than there were at the height of residential school,” the senator said.
“Instead of providing supports and going in and shoring up those homes, we take the kids away and leave the women in absolute despair.”
Statistics Canada 2021 census data shows Indigenous children accounted for 53.8 per cent of all children in foster homes. In Manitoba, that number is 90 per cent.
An Indigenous-run child and family services agency in Manitoba, identified by the Anishinaabe mother as being responsible for taking her children before she ended her life, told Global News it did not apprehend the children — instead blaming a non-Indigenous, government-run agency.
The provincial government said “steps are being taken to look at this case” but all information is confidential.
Regardless of which agency did the actual apprehension, Lynne Marshalsay of Preserving Families, an advocacy organization that helps those targeted by the system, says too many children are being taken from homes when the focus should be on supporting families to prevent separation.
“I would say the incidents where a child needs to come into care is actually few and far between, the incidents that required the child to be removed from their family,” Marshalsay said.
“(Agencies) are trying to hold onto their salaries. If there’s not kids in care, there’s not the need for the high budgets and the salaries these children’s services increase.”
Manitoba has the highest rate of kids in child welfare custody per capita — more than 9,000.
The woman’s niece says the child welfare system has had three generations of her family in its grip — the woman’s parents, whose children were all taken, the deceased woman, and her children.
“She’s been fighting to get them ever since. It was a similar situation with the domestic violence situation.”
When they took her sons last month after fleeing abuse again, family said it broke the mother.
“It kind of broke my heart. When you watch (the viral video) – I couldn’t watch at all,” the niece said.
She says her aunt was a “smart, wonderful mother” and wants her remembered for that.
The family says they’ve been told the boys have been returned to their father, the man charged with assault.
The two daughters remain in foster homes and the family fears they’ll be made permanent wards — staying in the system until they’re adults.
Global News is not identifying the father to ensure the identities of the children are protected.
Case should 'open the eyes' of Canadians
Hilda Anderson-Pyrz with the National Family and Survivors Circle, an advocacy group fighting to end gender and race-based violence, says cases like this are why many choose to stay silent in violent homes.
“It should open the eyes of everyone in this country on how systems are failing Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people and their children and their families and their communities as well,” Anderson-Pyrz said.
“There has to be a very collaborative approach taken when addressing situations of domestic violence and not creating further harm, to ensure that there’s supports all around and that systems are also held accountable when acting out their roles and responsibilities creating harm and addressing that structural and systemic racism that exists in this country with service providers.”
Dr. Jon Gerrard is a pediatrician and longtime Manitoba Liberal MLA who says he has watched successive governments fumble child welfare for more than two decades.
In the wake of the 2005 death of Phoenix Sinclair — a five-year-old girl who fell through systemic cracks and was killed after being returned home — Gerrard believes there was disastrous fallout.
“The NDP reacted by making it that any child where there was a concern, put that child in care,” Gerrard said.
“All of a sudden — over a short period of time — we had almost a doubling of the number of kids in care from about 5,000 to close to 10,000.”
When the Progressive Conservatives formed government in 2016, they vowed to reduce the number of kids in foster care by increasing supports to keep families together.
There are currently 9,000 kids in the system, according to the government — a stat they shouldn’t be proud of, Gerrard said.
“I think that they didn’t realize what they were getting into. They hadn’t done the preparation while they were in opposition and they continued the same system,” Gerrard said.
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A 2018 report, “Transforming Child Welfare Legislation In Manitoba Opportunities to Improve Outcomes for Children and Youth,” saw a committee of experts and front-line workers make recommendations to overhaul the system.
The report cited an 85 per cent increase in the number of children in care over the past decade and found that Manitoba’s annual child welfare budget almost tripled to $514 million in 2016-17.
With a provincial election looming later this year, Gerrard wants all parties to dust off the report and make good on its recommendations and work to reunify children and parents where there aren’t serious neglect or abuse concerns.
“There is no doubt that taking kids out of a family where they have been living — no matter how good or bad — that’s their family. And it can be devastating for kids and devastating for the family,” Gerrard said.
Ottawa responded to the national child welfare crisis with legislation three years ago to give First Nations, Inuit and Métis control over their own child welfare laws instead of following provincial acts.
Four communities have taken back control of child welfare so far. Another 64 are in process and 230 others are in the early stages but they remain under provincial legislation until that happens.
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