Good morning.
I'm going to start with the Anishinabek Nation's preamble to our Chi-Naaknigewin, our constitution for the Anishinabek Nation. It's called Ngo Dwe Waangizid Anishinaabe. We are one Anishinabek family. It's on the Anishinabek Nation website if you want to refer to it later.
[Witness spoke in Anishinaabemowin as follows:]
Debenjiged gii’saan anishinaaben akiing giibi dgwon gaadeni mnidoo waadiziwin. Shkode, nibi, aki, noodin, giibi dgosdoonan wii naagdowendmang maanpii shkagmigaang. Debenjiged gii miinaan gechtwaa wendaagog Anishinaaben waa naagdoonjin ninda niizhwaaswi kino maadwinan. Zaagidwin, Debwewin, Mnaadendmowin, Nbwaakaawin, Dbaadendiziwin, Gwekwaadziwin miinwa Aakedhewin. Debenjiged kiimiingona dedbinwe wi naagdowendiwin. Ka mnaadendanaa gaabi zhiwebag miinwaa nango megwaa ezhwebag, miinwa geyaabi waa ni zhiwebag.
[Anishinaabemowin text translated as follows:]
Creator placed the Anishinaabe on the earth along with the gift of spirituality. Here on mother earth, there were gifts given to the Anishinaabe to look after; fire, water, earth and wind.The Creator also gave the Anishinaabe seven sacred gifts to guide them. They are: Love, Truth, Respect, Wisdom, Humility, Honesty and Bravery. Creator gave us sovereignty to govern ourselves. We respect and honour the past, present and future.
[English]
My name is Adrienne Pelletier. I'm the social director for the Anishinabek Nation and have been for the last 11 years. When I became the director, I noticed that there was a resolution on the books that said that we were to pursue child welfare jurisdiction. The chiefs and assembly—we represent 40 first nations—asked us to do just that, to pursue child welfare jurisdiction.
We've been on this path since 2008. We took an inherent rights perspective with respect to our jurisdiction over our children, youth and families. We just did it. We didn't ask the government for money. We just went out and we asked our citizens all across Ontario, and we even got folks sending in their comments from across the country and out of country because they have inherent rights as far as we're concerned as an Anishinabek Nation. We took all of their input into a law.
We created an Anishinabek Nation Child Well-Being Law. It's been well vetted through our citizens. It's been enacted in 17 of our first nations currently. We're 40 first nations strong, 66,000 people. We are seen as leaders on this path forward to take back our jurisdiction and look after our own children in a culturally appropriate way.
One of the major issues we have with this legislation is that we're already negotiating with both the province and the federal government to fund our Anishinabek child welfare system but then we have this bill coming in and it's causing interference for us. We would like to continue to pursue our jurisdiction and the path that we set forward under that inherent rights perspective. We continue to do that.
One of the major issues with this bill is that in Ontario we have band representatives and, thanks to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, those band reps are now funded. For many years, for maybe 15 or 20 years, the government stopped funding the band rep position in Ontario. We now have band reps fully funded in Ontario again.
This is our stopgap. The band reps are child advocates to make sure that no child or family service agency is interfering in the rights of that child as an indigenous child or the rights of the parents and the right of their extended family wherever they're from. If they're from two or three or four first nations because they had ties, then that's the right of that child.
We believe that the connection to community and extended family culture and spirit are a requirement for all indigenous children. It's the right of that child just because they're indigenous.
We would like you to make some considerations with respect to the band representative role and my colleague here, Tracey O'Donnell, will talk a little bit about some of the other sections that we have serious concerns with. You do have our submission. When we did that submission, we had 16 first nations that had enacted the law. There are now 17.
We continue to go to our communities, because now the lawmakers are the first nations, so the first nations give us the authority to enact a law for them. It's a community-based law. It's a prevention-based law. It gives the power back to the first nation to set its own community standards, its own way of doing child welfare for its indigenous children.
Meegwetch.