A VERY SERIOUS QUESTION.

This question was posted on my Facebook timeline and I wanted to put some serious thought into this question this morning.

A VERY SERIOUS QUESTION.

Why are there so many native kids in care? Really.

Can parents take care of their kids? Can the community? As a cop having worked with aboriginal communities, I have seen much suffering in Aboriginal families due to alcohol. Kids would have died without intervention.

I think that there is serious disfunction somewhere. An abandonment of hope, or siding with stimulation over kids etc.

What my sisterhood taught me about substance addiction isn't just their desire to side with the stimulus they took over their children. I didn't see this nor do I think my sisterhood comprehended they were making a choice. I saw periods within their induced substance addiction where they were completely conscious about what they were saying and what they were doing like the walking dead.

This is where I believe the separation between substance addiction and behavior addiction split. One can observe the shift in movement from one phase into another. So much focus over these decades focuses on substance addiction and this I believe was only a band aid to the real issue of helping the parent  with their behavior addiction. I heard of this in an extreme cases when addiction counselors are dealing with homeless people with schizophrenia. When the addict has a mental health issue and the counselor is trying to provide them with a safe place to sleep and their client will not take their medication.

It sounds extreme; however, the amount of children in care is extreme. For so many years generations were raised away from parents from their communities. Maybe, its one of the reasons why I am so pro-community based self-help approach. Even in the face extreme behavior having friends who are their through the thick and thin of things is far more important towards a child's mental health.

This labelling of dysfunctional thinking is only in the side of a behavioral addiction. Yes, children's safety is important; however, not every person who is working in some form of social development program is professional enough to properly care to the best needs of any child.

We see this in organized based self-help organizations whose soul purpose to help parents get their children back into their homes and communities. After all the decades of abuse on all sides, their is hope coming from all sides. Children, parents who grew up in this child welfare system and who are helping educated their own communities and indigenous people into how to work through the system. This effort is working. One need only look at Manitoba's Sandy Bay First Nations who brought 50% of their children home.

As a community, not as an individual, as a sisterhood and not just a sister, we can bring our children home. We must help these children and their parents work through mental health issues. Issues that were not their fault to begin with in the first place. Issues that were created generations before we were born into our indigenousness.

If I had a magic wand, I would wave it over these children. I would hope that they would guide their children with help through therapist, counsel, sisterhood, brotherhood and healers to guide them forward.

I dont understand.

• Why are there so many native kids in care?    From last count there are approximately 50,000 indigenous children in foster care in Canada. I can only comment on what I believe is going on. There are generations of indigenous people who were not raised by their parents. From all sources we can safely say that children suffer from being taken away. The trauma of being put out an environment that the child perceived as being safe. When indigenous were taken away there was nothing anything their parents could do. They would be put into jail for amount of time if they resisted.
• As a child growing up there was no such thing as child welfare nor was there any policing of my parents. I really didn't know they were raised in a Indian Residential |School system. I just know that I was loved. My parents tried to fed us with my dad having two jobs and my mom one full time job. It was difficult keeping babysitters. And, maybe that's were the problem is.
• Many children grow up not understanding who they are. Whether they are male or female or when they are pregnant whether they are going to have a litter or a dozen babies in one setting. It may sound crazy; however, when one is raised by people who really don't give a damn about you mental health, as a child wouldn't you wonder what life is all about?
• I've seen all sorts of organization come into my community trying educate us with life skills, addiction program on self-help and self-awareness. I've seen single parents wonder how are they going to handle their children. They are looking for support. The problem isn't for the lack of concern from the parents rather the vision of what life is like outside our cave. Parents want their children to explore; however, to explore in a safe way. It's not easy.
• I grew up in a very progressive community. I lived right next to a big city. In fact, most people who first met one of us thinks were are trying to ACT white because we sound so WHITE. Meaning we don't have an accent or is we do its very minimal. I am using my experience because this is all I have.
• My sisterhood had their own children and we raised them together. If we went out for the night there was always another sister looking after the others children. It never occurred to me that such a structure wasn't had by all. Yet, despite having this in place for their children once the sisterhood moved and were separated is when things started falling apart. I see this within our community. I'm fortunate that their are groups of sisterhoods for my nieces and nephews.
• Yes, when my sisterhood separated from each other they didn't stop their drinking and their need to self medicate over took their need to be amongst others. Despite my sisterhood dying off at a very young age their children were raised. It seemed that once our sisterhood was destroyed so did our lives.
• I helped bury most of my sisterhood. Five sisters from within my sisterhood died. Each having children and each of their children having to grow up without a father or in a few cases their brothers stepped in to help raised their children or one case the father stepped in. Today, I see their grandchildren and children thriving and I know they know my connection to their mothers. My life is much richer than anyone can ever imagine what we shared as sisters. My sisterhood would have given their life for me and I to them. We had are difference and we were not perfect when it came to coping with their substance addictions.  

Can parents take care of their kids? Can the community? 

• I grew up with my sisterhood; however, it was in my teens that I became separated from them. I ran away from home when I was seventeen and for some strange reason my sisterhood ran to where I was after I returned home. They went with each other as a group of young indigenous women.  Five of them to be exact and me I went off to another city with a different agenda. I really didn't know what my sisterhood got themselves into while we were separated on in that after about six years we came together. By this time, three of the sisterhood had children.
• The children's fathers were no where to be found; however, the stories these sisters had about they had done and the trouble they got themselves into while they were in that other city was amazing to me. Just as my sisterhood took care of each other so did they care of each others children. And, they got themselves into trouble doing so. Apparently, they did serve time in a prison for welfare fraud. They explained it to me this way. In this city they would go into a district welfare office seeking help. Each sister would take the others children and their children would be taught to call their aunt, mom. So, that when the social worker came for a home visit the worker would think this young woman this many children. Their welfare cheques added up to quite a large sum each month.
• Now, don't get me wrong. These young indigenous women were taught how to do this by their indigenous common-in-law husbands.  From what I could comprehend this left nothing for them in terms of privacy. My one sister within this sisterhood was with a criminal whose connections were such that in the middle of the night she's told me he'd get a phone call. This phone call would be from his friend who said he's on his way with a groups of their friends to party. It seemed that she couldn't say no, nor could he, or their friends could turn them into the police for fraud. It just seemed like a horrible way to live.
• From being taught to care for each other in a traditional manner to having such sisterhood become corrupt by participating in fraud was what they told me about how they lived. I was fortunate that when I reconnect with them they were not with these men anymore. They seemed like they were trying to settle down and remember we were all under the age of twenty=five years of age.
• Somewhere and somehow the values that my sisterhood that was taught by our grandmothers became corrupt and within the community that we grew up in started to turn against us. I was guilty by association and yet, I really admired my sisterhood. We went places and did things I had never experienced before with a group a indigenous women I grew up with. Again, substance abuse was getting the best of my sisterhood. I realized that if I continued living their lifestyle I would have a substance abuse problem, so after one year of partying with my sisterhood I became their designated driver. I didn't this for three years. I could hand being sworn at when they were drunk because something inside me thought it was the substance within their system that provoked them to treat me this way; however, I had to stop being around them after four years because they were started to swear at me when they were sober.
• As much as I thought they remembered our times together I was starting to realize that they missing parts of their life with me. This was the lowest experience I had with my sisterhood. Within this sisterhood, I've help bury their parents who died from substance addiction, each of my sisterhood died in form or another of substance abuse directly or indirectly as a slow death.
• Today, I write freely about what I think in hopes that someone who read this will be helped the way I was helped. Creator reminds us of the reason we are meant to walk a certain plan in this life we've chosen. Generosity isn't just the act of giving of a material gift rather its also giving of oneself to another or to a cause. Generosity is one of the virtues of the teaching of White Buffalo Calf Woman. When we do something that feels right and we do it to help another. It's important even if it means babysitting or helping a sisterhood with their children.

I owe so much to my sisterhood in all their vulnerability and within all their weakness. I say to them "I love you, I miss you & forgive me for not celebrating life and for not celebrating love. I am grateful for what you've taught me."