Here we are – once again in the middle of a national election and once again the federal campaigns are ignoring what is Canada’s most urgent issue: the health of our indigenous communities, families and individuals.

This is without doubt the most shameful fact of Canada’s history. It continues to inflict its damage on more than a million people in Canada. No other group in Canada lives with the poverty, illness, social and cultural burdens that we impose on our indigenous peoples: third-world standards of housing, water supply, social supports and healthcare; more illness of all sorts (diabetes, heart disease, tuberculosis, to name but a few), higher suicide rates, more children in foster care, lower levels of education and employment … when will it be addressed and when will it end?

See also:First Nations health inequities an obstacle to reconciliation

Indigenous leaders are attempting to bring the problems confronting their nation to the public debate. Why are political parties not actively debating ways to solve these shameful problems?

Our political leaders repeatedly speak of Canadian values. Our values surely include going beyond mouthing platitudes and expressing concern. They surely go beyond just making apologies. They go beyond just recognizing that immigration has dealt a terrible blow to indigenous peoples, a blow that falls inexorably from generation to generation. Prime Minister Stephen Harper recognized the damage inflicted on aboriginal people and their children and apologized. What has the government done since then?

These problems are complex and have deeply intertwined roots that go far back into our shared time here in North America. Destruction of First Nations’ cultures has destroyed the resources and supports that parents need to guide their children to physical and mental health, to guide them to healthy and adaptive ways of coping with frustration, loss and pain, to help them enjoy the fruits of life and of their own accomplishments, to take pride in their own histories and narratives. First Nations communities have identified a need to improve parenting.

The bitter harvest of residential schools, family disruption, economic disaster, unremitting stress for day after day, has left parents unable to help their children regulate stress. Unregulated stress is known as toxic or traumatic stress. This begins in earliest infancy through the process called attachment. Unregulated stress and insecure attachment are associated with depression, anxiety, difficulties with learning, difficulties with social relationships, difficulties with drugs and alcohol; the list goes on and on.

The more stress infants and young children experience, the more likely they are to suffer serious adverse consequences. These consequences carry major economic costs. The children become drains on our health care, legal, educational and social service systems. We also lose the contributions they could make to our country.

Many aboriginal communities have already made huge changes. We can make even more changes when we work together. When we merge expertise and knowledge based in science with the culture, strengths and resources of First Nations communities we can make changes.

Some of those changes can influence and support parenting. This finding, known as family-centred or patient-centred care, has made a significant difference in healthcare delivery in some of our most sophisticated healthcare sites (such as Sickkids Hospital in Toronto). When we recognize the authority, responsibility, strengths and rights of the individuals and families who seek healthcare services, we improve outcomes.

The same principle has been applied and can be expanded in developing a collaborative approach to delivering health care in indigenous communities, in keeping with Jordan’s Principle. Both sides must be open to collaboration, to working together in meaningful ways. Each side must recognize the strengths of the other. Communities must be strengthened so that families can be supported and infants can develop the inner capacity to deal with stress.

We challenge political leaders to address the plight of aboriginal babies. Give them a healthy start. Give their parents the chance to protect babies from toxic and traumatic stresses. Give them and their communities a chance to contribute to Canada.

Specifically, we demand that our governments focus on the needs of First Nations babies to start off life healthy. There are legal arguments and economic arguments that demand that we address this issue. There is a moral argument: what in fact are our Canadian values?

Jean-Victor Wittenberg is head of the Infant Psychiatry Program and Co-Chair Infant Mental Health Promotion, at The Hospital for Sick Children.

Michael Dan is founding donor of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute, University of Toronto.

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Cindy Blackstock is Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.