1. Abstract:
This article is an epistemological journey as 'witness' taken by following reported
events and narratives speaking to the lived experiences of Native Canadians by the First
Nations Family and Caring Society (Caring Society) as it navigates the jurisdictional and
legal processes of challenging Canada's federal government for its on and off-reserve
practices for first nations child welfare funding. The Caring Society maintains a website
inviting others to join and become witnesses, to read and consider Canadian First
Nations' history, their stories, and their experiences of racialized colonial oppression.
This article considers witnessing as a strategy, as activism, and as anti-racist educational
intervention.
My witnessing of the first nations child & family caring society of
Canada human rights commission tribunal complaint of
inequitable native child welfare funding by Canada through the
www.fncaringsociety.com website.
Robert M. Head

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The First Nations Caring Society & an invitation to witness
The First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada (the Caring
Society/FNCS) is a First Nations child and family advocacy group. My own
understanding of racism and anti-racism is premised on scholarly discussions I have
engaged in whereby antiracism is considered from theoretical, political, and
epistemologically critical positions. This text is intended as an antiracist educational
intervention in and of itself by giving voice to the inequalities that the Caring Society
alleges are being experienced by Native children in Canada with respect to federal child
welfare funding, as I have witnessed them through my research and consideration of the
Caring Society website, and listed media links. I will review the case, history, and
potentially relevant Caring Society allegations, looking at and giving witness to both
macro and micro details I consider appropriate to this antiracist intervention, for your
consideration of it as further witnesses. I will consider the call to witnessing, witnessing
as a strategy, and what it means in this case and instance. Where the Halkomeylem term
u’tsam refers to a formalised type of tribal witness, who performs very prescribed
ceremonial roles within their communities and in the contexts of Smokehouse
Ceremonies, for example, my witnessing takes place through my researchers lens of
visiting the fncaringsociety website [visit http://www.fncaringsociety.com], where, as
visitor, I am invited to witness, and as witness to make a commitment to follow the case
by either coming to watch the tribunal in person or by following it in my local media or
on the website daily updates feature. The website invites visitors to registering their
support, as members of a witness community. The fncaringsociety.com site informs

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visitors that as witnesses they are sending a message that they care about all children
being treated fairly and equitably by governments.
Antiracist interventions and activism
Where did I get the idea that to witness is antiracist intervention? Having been
brought to the fncaringsociety.com website as a result of somewhat casual academic
discourse, I feel not unlike Bloom, who considers herself an 'accidental activist' (Bloom,
2009). However, I feel no need to publicly stake my claim to my activist status beyond
sharing that I have been an activist in other matters of self-interest. The witnessing
component of activism is not unlike being carved as a totem, giving shape to our
positionalities and ideological forms as witnesses - the witness community being like a
wood altered, giving voice and cue to what we have learned, to the impressions created in
and upon us. The idea of witnessing is not strange for me. History is full of people who
have excelled at witnessing, from Dr. M.L. King to Nelson Mandela to Chief Dan George.
Movements have leaders, whose visions are often propelled by their lived and witnessed
experiences. When I first visited the Caring society website, while researching news
reports of inequitable native child welfare funding, I thought, I have here found reports of
racist and racialized practices against a group of persons by an ideologically lead-footed
Canadian federal government.
From WASP to Witness
I became interested. I committed myself to beginning some further basic research.
That the Caring Society website invited me to become a witness was intellectually
intriguing. And so, after some thoughtful introspection, I did become a witness, literally
signing my name to a list of many thousands of other members of that community of

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witnesses. What did this signify for me? From what position was I stepping forward into
the role of witness? As a fifty year old white anglo saxon protestant [WASP] Canadian
male, whom many might mistakenly consider to epitomize White Privilege, did I have
the right to declare myself a witness, to take umbrage with the claimed inequitable
federal position towards native child welfare funding? Well, I thought, yes, I can do this.
I am also many other things. It is with my own lived-experiences of parallel
discrimination that I focus my researcher's lens. Does this make me an anarchist witness?
Elun Gabriel speaks to the origins of witnessing as being anarchist philosophical
perspectives more situated in what he refers to as "the Bakunian visions of revolutionary
insurrectionalism" (Gabriel, 2007) of the 1860's and 1870's Europe and Americas. More
specifically from an oral perspective of faith, that, "'in the Christian tradition, witnessing
means testifying to one's faith, both living out its ideals and publicly proclaiming its
truth" (Gabriel, 2007). Mulling this over, as a spiritual person believing in a Supreme
Being and the tenets that we ought to treat each other with goodwill and kindness, I feel,
on reading from the fncaringsociety website, that the Canadian government is treating
First Nations children egregiously, in this case. As witness, through a kind of
proselytizing by association, I hope to beacon others to stand on higher moral ground
than the Canadian Government appears to me to be entrenched upon. The Caring
Society's social platform invites all who will witness to ideologically and publicly stand
upon a witnessing stage. Not unlike oral traditions, testifying and witnessing have their
places as traditions of communication - as does martyrdom for those who will have it
(Gabriel, 2007). How deliciously terribly rich it is that here we are in the twenty-first
century, in a Canada where a regime in office is doing its Machiavellian level-best in its

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exercise of power and dominion to deny First Nations and Aboriginal children equitable
child welfare funding through a process of denial of their familial rights and related
extended services [and their extraction from communities which are native and natural to
them], and it is in the witness community of the Caring Society that a venue for free
speech is sparked - not by a perhaps Orwellian colonialist government that purports to
actually care a fig for dependent natives, but instead by a Native self-determining agency
looking for social justice.
Unmasking inequality
When hip hop witness Awad Ibrahim proposed the idea of becoming black as
addressing the "interrelations between race, culture, and identity, and their impact on
what, who and how we as social beings within a social space, identify with" (Ibrahim,
2003), I was made to wonder about a 'what if' scenario whereby we as witnesses, marked
and made visible through our collective lenses, government and its actions and positions
and oppositions to equitability of and for Canadians, could properly task Canada to step
up and ensure equitabe social funding be administered for all people within Canada, if we
could use the language of witnessing and media speak to inspire the new power-base to
force the Canadian government to retreat from its colonialist past? Ibrahim (2003) asks,
"knowing what we do about the politics of identity and identity formation in the third
space, how then do we engage these identities pedagogically?" Perhaps this is how. We
might ask ourselves -whether reflecting upon hip hop, First Nations, linguistic, gendered,
or myriad other cultures, Canada claims itself to be a multi-cultural mosaic - how do we
support our distinctions, collectively, equitably?
Truth speaks through the ethics of the appointment

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Notions of epistemological pedagogy have nagged at me, and this is what brought
me to Ibrahim, literally and personally, with whom I spoke at length about the act of
becoming a witness, whereupon he directed me that through "the ethics of the
appointment: because you witness something you are almost appointed by and through
that witnessing to speak" (Ibrahim: personal comment, 2013). I agree with his assertion
and I take some responsibility; in the order that learning to witness profoundly survivors
testimonials, it is by remaining acutely sensitized to our unexacting propensities for
subjectivity, empathy, and revisionism that we must struggle to recall and learn from hard
historical truths (Regan 2010). As witness, many residential school testimonials can be
located through and listened to via the Caring Society website. These hard self-storied
truths from Native survivors of childhood abuse shared can further library the
information banks of the public as further witnesses to the lived-experiences of native
children at the hands of Canada's colonialist government. This unwavering testimony
steers me as witness.
Yet, it is not all about the witness, and so with an ear and an eye focusing on
unequal power relations and our positionalities of inequality as perhaps non-othered
witnesses who have come to our activism from that other side of the historicalised
cultural fence, we should acknowledge that stepping forward to give testimony is at once
a risk and a release for survivors, and is not an easy thing to do - certainly less so than
witnessing (Hulan, 2012). Any intellectual and spiritual desire and obligation to empower
the storytellers ought to not drain them of their truths for the benefit of curious academics
or national guilt. As witnesses, we need to learn how to channel what we learn - a process
that is not painless.

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Colonialism and The Indian Act (RSC c.I-5 1985)
The sheer volume of stories shared and news reported through the Caring Society
website can be overwhelming, with its myriad links to court findings, print news reports
and televised interviews related to the case. It is hardly new news, rather a glimpse of a
project and history of colonialization, that has used the vulnerability of children to shape
and direct the programmic and genocidal decimation of a population (Hulan, 2012). It
does not require a witness take an incalculable leap of logic to understand that Native
people within Canada have been grievously and egregiously wronged in so many ways
by a dominant group; that this First Nations population has been (re)defined; had an
identity imposed upon it; and then been minutely controlled. Canada, as settler
government, through the Indian Act (RSC c.I-5 1985), has imposed a stereotyped identity
upon Native Canadians. Why have we so casually accepted Settler Canada's
institutionalised efforts to mirror James Clifford's assertion that, "Identity, in a sense, is
about ways of looking at people, about how history is interpreted and negotiated, and
about who has the authority to determine a group's identity or authenticity" (Lawrence,
2003). Even more fundamental than identity is legacy, for without the latter the former
withers and is exterminated. The Caring Society invitation to witness is not established
for non-Natives alone - it is an invitation to Natives and Non-Natives. Natives are
reminded of the importance of the act of witnessing, like holocaust survivors, that "the
loss of the capacity to be witness to oneself and thus to witness from inside is perhaps the
true meaning of annihilation, for when one's history is abolished, one's identity ceases to
exist as well" (Daub, 1992).

8. 8
The Indian Act, which is referenced in determining Native Child welfare funding
by the Government of Canada, acts as a lens focused by the settler government. Loomba
(1998) considers that to be recognized becomes an act of compliance and acquiescence of
a Foucauldian order, of being played like puppets by those holding the balance in an
imbalance of power. As this way of life is seen, so too is it witnessed. That The Act is
more than a body of laws - that it is a regulatory regime, cannot be denied (Lawrence,
2003), and is reflective of a form of racialization.
And so we understand, given that The Indian Act has controlled every aspect of
Indian life, that many of the non-Native Canadian understandings of Native identity have
become taken-for-granted racializations over time. The process of witnessing facilitates
the deconstructing and reshaping of how we understand Indigenous identity, and thus we
can proceed towards a politic of de-colonizer status of the settler-descendant, if not of the
settler government (the Federal Government of Canada), perhaps towards what Lawrence
(2003) hopes will eventually reflect a more equitable treatment of those affected by the
settler government's policies and practices. To bear witness to the events being reported
by the Caring Society is to consider the evidence set forth in the complaint currently
before the Canadian Human Rights Commission Tribunal supporting the claim that the
dominant and controlling party: the Attorney General of Canada (AGC) has acted
inequitably. Elie Weisel (1986), as survivor-witness, tells us, " I believed that, having
survived by chance, I was duty-bound to give meaning to my survival, to justify each
moment in my life. I knew the story had to be told. Not to transmit an experience is to
betray it" . Canadians are living witnesses to the colonialist history of Canada. Again,
going back to Bloom (2009), we may consider that activist are made and not born. Weisel

9. 9
(1984) recounts in a Dvar Hashavua article, Bdiduto shel elohim [translation: The
loneliness of God], "if someone else could have written my stories, I would not have
written them. I have written them to testify." The Caring Society is witnessing and
testifying on behalf of Native children. By becoming aware, we join this chorus of
witnesses.
Witness-appointees & levels of witnessing
Robert Thompson, QM, LLM., Superintendent (ret’d.) Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, describes witnesses as not being aware and yet not being wilfully blind
(Thompson: personal comment, 2013). This echoes Felman's (1995) testimony that
witnessing is a strange appointment which precludes reliving and instead we reinterpret.
When one is a witness, whether one chooses to be witness or is chosen (is an unwilling
witness or unplanned witness), it is a thorny crown borne of inquiry and/or accidents that,
intellectually penetrating, is not so casually discarded, or de-branched, as further
suggested by Daub's (1992) description of three distinct levels of witnessing, somewhat
akin to Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems - we are informed by influences radiating
outwardly and/or inwardly, and once influenced, we are marked. Pro or con, we reflect.
This is the tightrope witnesses walk, and as my narrative journey it speaks to my
antiracist education intervention through invitation to participate observationally. I have
experienced this engagement in both internal and external examination in solitude,
accepting my responsibility for this (Felman, 1995), yet considering that solitude as a
filter prepares me to witness collectively, sharing what I have learned and experienced.
There is a responsibility in witnessing the case currently before the Canadian Human
Rights Tribunal between the Caring Society and the AGC. Accepting that responsibility

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is my antiracist intervention: to share with others the events and circumstances of the
claims being made by the Caring Society speaking to federal Native children's welfare
funding and Native child welfare in Canada, as reported by Cindy Blackstock and others
referenced in the Caring Society website under the heading 'All News'.
The Caring Society has been witnessing and/or testifying on its website, in the
courts, and in the court of public opinion. I too have become a witness, and now I too am
testifying. Here. Through this article - it is my testimony. My purpose is to speak to what
I have read and watched and learned, perhaps widening any potential breach in any
Caring Society - purported historic wall of denial by Canada and its non-Native
population (and others) to the conditions and inequalities of treatment being experienced
through underfunding of Native Canadians, in particular Native Canadian children. I
believe this testimony bears witnessing in the greater gallery of public discourse.
The Canada Human Rights Commission Tribunal (CHRCT) complaint
The legal case still before the CHRCT began when, on February 23, 2007, the
Caring Society (the Caring Society, Assembly of First Nations [AFN] and Canadian
Human Rights Commission [CHRC], with Amnesty International and Chiefs of Ontario
named Interested Parties) filed a complaint against the Government of Canada, namely
versus the Attorney General of Canada (AGC). In a ruling on the complaint, it was
judged that discrimination on the basis of race and national ethnic origin, contrary to
section 5 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, had occurred (RCS, c.H-6 The Act 1985;
and Sophie Marchildon, CHRCT 17, 2012.08.23 2012, 2).
The case is said by the Caring Society to have dragged on much longer than
necessary. In 2012, the Caring Society publicly blames the Government of Canada (AGC)

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for this on their website. The opinion that a similar claim within the provincial/territorial
human rights tribunal system(s) would take significantly less time to be concluded has
been voiced by Bernard Richard, New Brunswick's Ombudsman, as also reported on the
Caring Society website in 2012.
Given that the complaint was filed on February 23, 2007, it is now more than 85
months since the initial filing. Roughly $4 million, using as a model for estimating
expenditures to date an earlier article titled "Ottawa Spends 3 Million to Battle First
Nations Child Welfare Case" [The Globe and Mail, October 1, 2012] has been spent
fighting less in child funding. The Caring Society argues the accrued delays are
unreasonable. Reading the Canadian Human Rights Commission's (CHRC) FAQs on
their website, in 2013, the length of time taken, experienced while Canada's appeals are
considered, might be read to infer an unwillingness on the part of Canada to find a
solution. While I have been unable to find federal CHRC statistics addressing how long
an average case takes, I was able to learn from the 2007 Annual Report by the Province
of Alberta's Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, that was published on the
Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics website in 2012, that their average claim period,
from filing to conclusion, takes 11.6-12.0 months or 14.5% as long as the Caring Society
v. AGC (thus far).
The Caring Society website in March 2013 shared linked video footage provided
by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's media website, whereby the Prime Minister, on
National Aboriginal Day, on June 21, 2011, gallingly and hypocritically claimed,
publicly, to be advancing good care for Aboriginal communities:

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"Our government is committed to working with Aboriginal
communities, as well as provinces and territories, to provide
Aboriginal people with the education and tools they need to reach
their full potential and achieve a higher quality of life for their
families" (Harper, 2011).
The Caring Society argues that the funding sources would logically include equitable
child welfare care, which equitable funding could facilitate; yet this case has gone
undecided for almost seven years. Aboriginal people, the Caring Society informs us, do
not have access to the funding sources they need to thrive and achieve a higher quality of
life for their families, despite Harper's rhetoric.
Having some personal experience of human rights tribunal procedures, and
referencing the Caring Society website commencing in 2013; a timeline of related major
milestones, legal events and procedural delays experienced since the complaint was filed
in February 2007, I have noted how it has unfolded very unconventionally, compared to
timelines for provincial cases as previously cited, in that extensive delays have been
experienced by the Complainants (see Appendix I). During that first Winter, Canada
argued that the complaint was outside The Act as Canada funds but does not provide
services and that as Canada only funds Native children only, it cannot be seen as
discriminating against them as there are no comparable groups to measure against. This
is what Cindy Blackstock explains as, "The government wants off the equality hook
arguing that funding is not a service so governments cannot be held accountable under
the Canadian Human Rights Act even if they fund unequally on a discriminatory
ground." (Blackstock, 2009a). The Human Rights Commission Assessor (HRCA)

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disagreed, recommending that the complaint move to Tribunal. Canada invoked a
procedural claim to delay the movement to Tribunal, and applied to the Federal Court of
Canada (FCC) for a judicial review of the finding. The FCC agreed with the HRCA. Now
already two years along, the FCC stayed Canada's delaying tactics and the case was
scheduled to proceed to a hearing. Canada appealed. Canada asked for preliminary
decisions only on Service and Comparator issues, to chip away at the complaint, and
further delay a hearing. Hearings actually began in December of 2009. As soon as the
hearings began, the First Chair in the matter before the Tribunal, Judge Murray Sinclair,
vacated after the first day as his official retirement then took effect. While Judge Murray
would have stayed, and in fact requested he be allowed to do as much, his request was
denied, and the case reverted back to limbo. Nothing happened for the next sixteen (16)
months until March of 2011. I am reminded of Thompson's expert opinion on this
situation, how procedural rights can be misused to delay the expediting of due process
and how bureaucracy and/or legal privilege may be legally but improperly used as a
vehicle to postpone or distance government from an issue it does not support or endorse
(2013). That the Caring Society has claimed pretty much the same thing as a former
Counsel for the Crown in matters relating to Native Affairs, when witnessing these events,
is thought-provoking for me.
So what happened in March 2011, after this first lengthy delay? The newly
appointed judge, First Chair Judge Shirish Chotalia, granted Canada's motion and
summarily dismissed the complaint. The complainants, stepping back after being winded
by the judicial upper cut to their legal thoraxes, applied to the FCC for a review of the
decision. The review was granted, and the Tribunal's decision under Judge Chotalia was

14. 14
set aside, in 2012. By August 2012, the case was seen as proceeding. Canada tried but
failed to get the FCC to overturn this decision. The Tribunal proceeded concurrently. By
all appearances, the full hearing was on, until Canada again appealed to the HRCA,
which led to a further delay from August of 2012 until March of 2013. It was in
February of 2013 that Canada simply proposed cancelling hearing dates. The
Complainants objected. And the case proceeded. In fact, it is still proceeding, slowly, and
can be followed in minute detail via the Caring Society website. The legal motions, court
findings, appeals, objections, delays, and timeline are all clearly presented for your lived-
experience of witnessing Canada's present-day colonialist legal treatment of Natives
peoples.
The Caring Society witnesses the family hardships and heartache they allege
occur because of inadequate child welfare funding and a subsequent denial of equitable
services by referencing news reports on their website. On May 13, 2010 Aboriginal
Peoples Television Network (APTN) and on May 3, 2010, the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC) news reported Sagkeeng tribe member Alma Mann-Scott as saying in
an interview that social services provided to Native Canadians on reserve are different
from those off reserve. This may have contributed to the death of her handicapped
brother, and did affect her decision to give up custody of her grandson so he could
receive appropriate childcare services off reserve that would otherwise be denied him by
the province as a reserve-status Indian on reserve, geography notwithstanding. One must
ask why geography, in a land as vast as Canada, is used to divide rather than trying to
unite us. We are told, for example, "Being an on-reserve Indigenous person and leaving

15. 15
one's community means crossing the spatial and legal boundaries of the colonially
constructed Indian reserve." (de Leeuw, Maurice, Holyk, Greenwood & Adam, 2012).
This social engineering, legislated disparity in access of services and resources, and
forced colonial education directly and negatively impacts Indigenous peoples'
contemporary well-being (Kelm, 1999; Marmot 2005; Kelly et al. 2007; Marmot et al.
2008; Richmond and Ross 2009; Castleden et al 2010). Cindy Blackstock says, via the
Caring Society website, that she considers racism and the racialization of Native
Canadian children on reserve as an infringement of their rights under the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982 [which is accessible at http://laws-
lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html]. Blackstock contends access to better funded
child welfare systems exists off reserve. The 22% less federal child welfare funding cited
by the Caring Society as being received on reserve equals an estimated $200 million per
year less in comparative funding.
Blackstock (2007) tells us that the whole point of seeking additional and equitable
federal funding for increasing Native Canadian child welfare funding, according to
Natives, their advocates, media, and witnesses, is to better fund intensive family and
child support programs, and to implement programs of least disruptive measures; that by
supporting First Nations directly we can better address the poverty, poor housing, and
substance misuse experienced and witnessed on reserves. New Brunswick Ombudsman
Bernard Richard notes in his report, “Hand-in-Hand: A Review of First Nations Welfare
in New Brunswick", that, since 1993, "First Nations Child and Family Services (FNCFS)
Agencies in New Brunswick have had their own culturally based standards...consistent
with the principle of self-governance...an important mechanism for developing child

16. 16
welfare services that are accepted and embraced by First Nations communities" (Richard,
2010). Thus, added funding by the federal government for Native-led systems and
programs can succeed, and arguments put forth by the AGC in the media that First
Nations communities are not equipped to manage such additional funds are ungrounded,
the Caring Society website furthers in 2013.
In 2013, the Caring Society shares with us through their website, that it feels there
are issues related to the politics of representation on the judiciary hearing these
complaints, as the AGC is both named and defended by the judiciary hearing federal
motions and appeals.
From Residential Schools to foster care, plus ça change, plus ça reste la même...
Charges of a programmatic removal of Aboriginal children from allegedly baneful
parents by the Department of Indian Affairs are levelled by Mary-Ellen Kelm in her book,
Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia 1900-1950
(1998). Kelm's book historicizes claims that this is not a new phenomenon in Canada,
and in that sense the placement of Native Canadian children in non-Native foster care has
been construed by the Caring Society and AFN as a continuation of policy not unlike the
placement of Native Canadian children in residential schools. During the period of
residential schools, the Government of Canada considered the given nature of Indians as
savage, parents were largely ignored and considered beyond reforming, and so focusing
on Aboriginal children seemed the more pragmatic approach to take when addressing the
Aboriginal problem. Further, staggeringly, 150,000 Native Canadian children were
removed from their homes and families from 1876 to 1996, and then placed in residential
schools, whereupon estimates of upwards of 50,000 of them died from disease, neglect,

17. 17
malnutrition and abuse at the hands of their so-called civilised government-appointed
caregivers (Bryce, 1922), as further supported by a May 16, 2008 CBC news feature on
residential schools. In a post-residential school Canada, very oddly, the Caring Society
tells us that more Native Canadian children are currently deemed at risk and subsequently
removed, annually, from the home and placed in non-Native foster care than Native
Canadian children were formerly placed in residential schools. We are reminded by
Cindy Blackstock that, "for a colonial power to be successful, it must take the land,
control the natural resources (especially food and water sources), suppress self-
governance, delegitimize culture (language, spirituality, education, and so on) - and,
finally, it must take the children." (Blackstock, 2012)
For the survivors, Thompson reminds us that the programmatic removal of
children from traditional home settings also created broken generations (2013). Very
interestingly, as Anna Flaminio recounts on the kinanāskomitin website [visit
http://scaa.sk.ca/ourlegacy/about] , in 2013, Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations
General Assembly Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide as including "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
(UNGA, R260.3, a.2, 1948) [visit http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html]. The
forced removal and placement of native children from possibly at-risk environments to
non-native foster homes and/or residential schools has not been without social costs, as
individual positionalities and relationships are impacted by past violence and present
colonialist remnants of privilege and power imbalances (Simpson, James & Mack, 2011).
On the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "CBC's Power & Politics" of
February 25, 2013, Terry Cross of the National Indian Child Welfare Association

18. 18
critically discussed the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal case examining living
conditions for children on First Nations reserves, National Chief Shawn Atleo of the AFN
was reported as having told the CHRC Tribunal that the systemic underfunding of child-
welfare services on reserves means First Nations children today are essentially re-living
the residential school nightmare, and that Aboriginalism is a cultural strategy on the part
of the state to effect the spiritual defeat and cultural assimilation of Natives, with any
subsequent political and economic negotiations becoming little more than some sort of a
mopping-up operation (Alfred, 2005). Perhaps the denial or delay of justice and redress,
while engaged in funding negotiations, is a federal tactic aimed at breaking the spiritual
backs of communities by ensuring a status quo of harm to their children through
inequitable welfare funding strategies.
Parental and family situations on reserve that are assessed as at risk for children
commonly involve the misuse of alcohol and drugs and other substances. Cindy
Blackstock tells us via the Caring Society website that the easiest solution for Children's
Aide Societ(ies) (CAS) is to intervene and extract children, placing the children in non-
native foster care, as there is a dearth of family crisis prevention and family support
programs in place on reserve, owing to underfunding. The Caring Society is seeking to
redress this through their complaint.
The White Paper [1969]
To his credit, in 1968, then Federal Minister of National Revenue, Rt. Hon. Jean Chretien
wrote G.R. Baldwin, "it has been found that for the average Indian child, remaining a
member of the family unit can be more beneficial than the best residential school care"
(Milloy, 1999). This letter was penned just prior to Chretien being handed the Ministerial

19. 19
portfolio of Indian Affairs by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. That was forty-five
years ago and issues of native child welfare in Canada seem to have progressed little.
Given Pierre Elliot Trudeau's status as the often-labelled Father of Multiculturalism, as
well as Father of the 1969 White Paper [Statement of the Government of Canada on
Indian policy] , and Jean Chretien's status as his right hand man, it behooves us to
consider that, "Multiculturalism insists on the primacy of the individual and thoroughly
denies the significance of institutions." (Simpson, James and Mack, 2011).
Statistical red flags
According to Statistics Canada's online website, Native Canadians represent 1.6%
of the Canadian population, yet, using statistics cited by Michael Woods and Sharon
Kirkey in the Montreal Gazette on May 8, 2013 as the basis for estimates, as of
November 2013, they account for 47% of children placed in foster care by CAS
protective services. Canada has approximately 30,000 children in foster care, of which
14,225 are Native. It can be argued that they are over-represented in foster care by a ratio
of 33:1. An appropriate representation of 1.6% would be 440 children. Native children
are over-represented in foster-care, Cindy Blackstock tells us on the Caring Society
website, because they are considered more at risk and there are fewer protections for
families on reserves. Cindy Blackstock also recounts, on the Caring Society website,
that prevention and family support systems are absent or inadequate on reserves. Least
disruptive practices for CAS should mean fewer extractions of Native Canadian children
from their families in all but the most serious of family emergencies and crises. The
federal government underfunds child welfare on reserve, and provinces pay for child

20. 20
welfare off reserve, including for children removed from homes on reserve for off-
reserve, non-Native foster care placement. On-reserve Native Canadian children therefore
qualify for lower funding because they are on reserve. They are on reserve because they
are Native Canadians. Parents or guardians must give up their children's on-reserve status
or their children be extracted from the reserve to qualify for better-funded welfare care.
Non-native children off-reserve in Canada do not have to be jurisdictionally surrendered
to the CAS to qualify for equitably funded services. Federal government spending is 22%
less for Native Canadian child welfare on reserve than it is for child welfare off reserve,
according to the Caring Society, which can be thought to contribute to the racial
marginalization of a very targeted ethnic group (Thompson, 2013). These children are
seen as a race and are therefore racialized by the federal government because they live on
Native reserves (reserve-status Natives). They are subject to racism because they are
treated differently by the Government of Canada in regard to child welfare funding, to
their harm and disadvantage, the Caring Society claims. They are living on reserves as
members of a race of reserve-status Native Canadians. And treated inequitably for it.
This possible negligence of care leeches from Native child welfare to Native child
education, as inferred in the case of New First Credit Nation (on behalf of Sloan and
Marvin) v. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, whereby two Native Down's
Syndrome children were being refused special education services off reserve, because
they were reserve-status Native Canadian children. Off-reserve school boards were
demanding $80,000 per child per year to accommodate their special needs, as they were
not covered by the AGC [ see http://www.firstnationsspecialeducation.ca]. Equitable

21. 21
access to education, morally, should also be a part of overall child welfare in Canada.
These two separate issues are intertwined, the Caring Society contends.
Concluding thoughts
The Caring Society's online claims of inequitable federal Native child welfare
funding serve as antiracist education interventions through witnessing by the society and
by a community of witnesses developing from the Caring Society website. The reader
also becomes a witness though exposure. Through a shared review of claims made by,
and events reported by, the Caring Society, we become aware and better qualified to give
witness to others on this subject. While the inspiration for this article came from media
reports, the invitation from the Caring Society to become a witness was itself most
compelling, and perhaps will compel the reader. My act of witnessing has taken place
with little direct consultation of government representatives, and so it remains incumbent
upon the reader to review the arguments presented while keeping in mind Foucault's
belief that Truth as epistēmē shifts through history (Foucault, 1970, 1974).
The act of "becoming a witness" is not entirely unlike that of becoming anything
else; it is a [hoped-for] natural response as a human being upon seeing or learning of an
act of (passive/) aggression towards another individual or group of individuals. We
become witnesses to our lives, our times, our societies, our cultures, and those groups
perceived as our constructs of racial belonging; or even those 'races' we do not belong to,
but know through observer status. As witnesses to a human rights complaint between
Natives and Canada, we must potentially wear two hats, being mindful of our possible
researchers gaze of settler government participant and then also of observer. We can only
be asked to be as fair or open-minded as possible, to empathise with the complainants if

22. 22
and as appropriate, while acknowledging our own lenses and identities. What Bonita
Lawrence (2003) says has become natural to contemporary Native life may well be
unnatural, and that possibility needs to be considered. Witnessing what has been, and
what has occurred, can help us to perhaps better learn how to address equality in the now
and in the future, for all peoples living within what is called Canada. Whether federal
Native child welfare funding is inequitable in Canada or not is a question that begs
answering, in the courts and the court of public discourse. A possible benefit from people
becoming informed as witnesses could be greater related and shared public and private
critical discourses.
As witnesses, we do more than see, we learn, and, as "nothing comes from
nowhere" (Parmenides, 540-515 BC est.), we can teach. This small first step in the
journey towards implementing an antiracist education in society, toward the diminution
of racism and racializations, through this act of witnessing, this act of antiracism, may
help fix a wrong-headed and flawed system of colonialised wrongdoing, rallying a
discourse of dis-accommodation of the culturally murky and shadowed realms of racism;
as witnesses we are charged with rendering such places uninhabitable (Hall, 1997). We
must prod those who dwell therein to step forward, and to encourage change.

23. 23
Appendix I: Timeline of First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada Human Rights
Commission Tribunal Complaint of Inequitable Native Child Welfare Funding by
Canada
Date Action Result
27.02.2007 Case filed Proceeds
02.2007
To
09.2008
Canada argues, perceived as an unnecessary procedural delay by
FNCS: Canada argues, writing the Human Right's Commissions'
Assessor [HRCA] the complaint is outside the act because: (a)
Canada funds, but does not provide services [the provinces provide
services] and (b) because Canada provides funding for child
welfare to Native children only, it cannot be seen to discriminate
against them. This argument is denied, and the HRCA recommends
that the complaint go to Tribunal.
Delay
09.2008
To
11.2009
Exercise of procedural opportunity seen as delay by FNCS: As
soon as the complaint moves to Tribunal, Canada applies to the
Federal Court of Canada [FCC] for a judicial review of the referral,
same arguments.
Delay
11.2009 FCC stays Canada's application, case scheduled to proceed towards
a hearing on the merits of case
Proceeds
11.2009
To
03.2010
Canada appeals, stay upheld. Delay
02.2009
To
12.2009
Canada asks for preliminary decisions on Service and Comparator
issues.
Delay
12.2009 Hearing on merits begins
02.2009
To
12.2009
First Chair (Judge Murray Sinclair) vacates due to his retirement
after first day of hearings [Judge Murray Sinclair not asked to
extend stay, though would have if asked, he later says in
interviews].
Delay
12.2009 New Chair (Judge Shirish Chotalia) inexplicably vacates all
hearing dates.
Delay
12.2009 Canada files motion to dismiss. Delay
12.2009
To
03.2011
Lengthy period of inaction. Delay
03.2011 First Chair Judge Shirish Chotalia grants Canada's motion,
dismisses complaint.
Delay
03.2011 Complainants apply for FCC review of decision. Delay
2012 Review granted, Tribunal's decision set aside, case sent back to
Tribunal.
Proceed
2012 Canada appeals to FCC. Overturned Delay
2012 Tribunal proceeds concurrently. Proceed
08.2012 Canada's appeal denied and case to proceed to full hearing at
Tribunal.
Proceed
08.2012
To
03.2013
Canada appeals. Delay
02.2013 Delay: Canada proposes cancelling hearing dates, Complainants
object.
Delay
02.2013 Tribunal orders hearing dates to proceed. Proceed
11.2012
To
04.2013
FCC hears Canada's appeal. Dismissed March 11. Tribunal
reconvened April 2, 2013.
Delay
04.2013...present Tribunal Hearings continue Ongoing

24. 24
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