From Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning, four babies were apprehended from their Indigenous mothers by child welfare authorities in Manitoba and placed into state care.

A fifth apprehension was stopped.

Cora Morgan, the First Nations Family Advocate at the Assembly of Manitoba’s Chiefs, told me this was the reason she missed my call on Monday. She was dealing with this incomprehensible reality.

I had called Morgan to discuss the federal government’s new Indigenous child welfare legislation. But her office of 35 — a fraction of what is needed — was overwhelmed as they dealt with the apprehensions, not to mention the imminent release by the province of Manitoba’s Child and Youth Advocate on the death of Tina Fontaine in 2014.

The report detailed how 15-year-old Tina was failed by child welfare authorities, police, educators, the health system and others during her brief life. It found the Sagkeeng First Nation girl had repeatedly reached out for help but none came. Her body was found in the Red River.

It was in response to Tina’s death that Morgan’s position was created in June 2015. Manitoba chiefs all pooled their resources together, without any government help, to hire Morgan to help look after their children.

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The events of this week are just the latest reminder that the need has not subsided.

It’s a shame, therefore, that the long-awaited child welfare legislation sitting before Parliament, Bill C-92, squanders a crucial opportunity to address this need.

The bill’s greatest fault is that it fails to understand that child welfare authorities should not decide the fate of Indigenous children. First Nations, Métis and Inuit must have full decision-making power and control over children’s lives, free of interference and there can be no compromises here. Yet the bill leaves overriding powers in the hands of Canada and the provinces.

We know from painful history that Ottawa is in no position to determine the best interests of Indigenous children.

As the Nishnawbe Aski Nation of northern Ontario pointed out in a recent statement, “In the event that the government and the First Nations have opposing views on what is in the ‘best interests’ of First Nation children, the legislation does not clarify which will take precedence,” NAN said in a statement on the legislation.

As the bill sits now, there is no continued and strong funding to provide Indigenous communities with culturally appropriate care.

The bill should be changed before it becomes law. The stinging reality of Canada’s colonial history requires it.

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Almost every Indigenous family has been touched by the long arm of Indian agents, whether in the day of residential schools, or, later, by provincial child welfare authorities who came on the scene in the 1950s and in whose hands the number of Indigenous children in state care skyrocketed.

One system replaced the other, but both served to divide families, destroy sacred bonds to communities and culture. Many of us meet our sisters and brothers, our uncles and aunties or our cousins for the first time in coffee shops or at family reunions. We meet as intimate strangers and we often spend a lifetime trying to rebuild all that we missed.

Some never get the chance.

In Manitoba, between 2008 to 2016, 546 children who were in the child welfare system died, whether by suicide, homicide, illness or accident.

“That is 70 children a year dying from one small province,” Morgan says.

“You think about the suffering and the amount of loss.”

If First Nations communities were properly resourced with proper supports, Tina could have lived and thrived, says Morgan, who is also from Sagkeeng First Nation, 120 kilometres from Winnipeg.

The new legislation does not guarantee adequate, sustainable, reliable and predictable funding. It doesn’t empower Indigenous communities to provide the care needed.

As it stands, First Nations often have no idea where their kids are — which foster homes they are in or what cities they are living in. They are just taken. This legislation does nothing to address that.

“How powerful would it be if we changed the mandate from protection of children to the healing of families?” asks Morgan. “Our communities need that opportunity to heal.”

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