Thank you for the honour of being here today.
If you could indulge me for 30 seconds, let us have 30 seconds of silence for all the children who have died while in care. In your mindset as well, get ready for the reality that some of the present children in care may not return home.
[A moment of silence observed]
Thank you very much.
Please do not misinterpret the tone of my voice. It may come off as being angry, but it's from the five generations of hurt. If you don't mind me, at times I may stand up or sit down; that's just who I am.
The first question I have to ask you, and you don't have to answer me—I want you to think about these things tonight before you go to sleep—is this: Do you see me? Do you see me? I think I'm invisible to some people. Our walk on the bridge again this past while reminded us of that. Is there not a better way to do this? “Get out of the way! You're hindering our traffic!”
I'm glad to be here. I want to be recognized as a human being with one great quality, and I encourage you to have that quality too—the quality of honesty. Learning how to relate to one another over this next while is going to be really interesting.
Please don't misinterpret my presence here as an approval of this bill. It is not an approval of this bill.
Please do not play politics with our children's lives. This is a very serious matter, and if we're going to do this shift, let's do it appropriately and in a really respectful manner. Walk with respect. Walk with forgiveness.
Listening means two things....
Don't mind me; I do parenting classes. I'm not here to talk to you as though you're kids, if you know what I mean.
Listening means two things: You hear what I say and do what I'm asking you to do. I'm in my sixties now. I need to see some markers, because I've heard idle words since I was in my late twenties and I have seen no improvements in my community.
Besides being part of SAWCC, I'm a part of the Aboriginal Family Defence League. It is a non-incorporated entity and it will never be incorporated. I've advocated for families for the last 35 years, and I still advocate for families to get children back today. I'm still traumatized by the archaic patriarchal approaches that come out of the people who are there to supposedly help us. I am encouraging you to relate to us differently.
Treaties...? There's a word my relative used during the Constitution talks when somebody asked him about treaties. He said, really, the federal state is in hypocrisy. They've been fighting us for years. Look how long it took to get Jordan's principle. Look at the fact that they took up the Supreme Court issue around children to fight us. That is appalling. I want to say “blasphemy”, to some degree. It's blasphemy. It's terrible.
To help with the shift, what you need to realize is that we have grandmothers, we have kokums in our community—matriarchs who have been here for many years. That traditional kinship system is still alive. It's why we still have a generation of grandmothers willing to help by interfering and asking for those grandchildren to be tended by them and not by the state.
I want to make a plea for the most important institution of all—family. If you can, explain to me why and what is preventing us from that investment. Really try to help me understand it, because I can't. What my eyes see is a contradiction, the state willing to waste $18,000 a month to keep nine children away from a mother that they already raised in foster care. It's intergenerational. They already have second generation kids in care. What does that tell you in regard to what they're doing? This way is not working.
At the last meeting I went to, as I was leaving a young person said.... I'm an advocate for families, but what he said was, “Kokum, you're a hostage negotiator. You're negotiating for the return of children.”
What I need to awaken you to, especially in Saskatchewan and maybe throughout Canada, is that there is a national crisis going on. It's called genocide, as well. Do you know that it's illegal to remove one group of children and place them with others. It is against the law to do that.
We have a national crisis going on. We have a child advocate in Saskatchewan who just released a report on suicide. Action...? What's going to be done? Suicide is a result of PTSD, the ripple effect.
We do not have an opioid epidemic in our community. We have a doctor and a pharmaceutical problem. I'm trying to re-shift this stuff because we keep on being blamed as if this is our problem. These are not our problems.
Poverty...? We have economic poverty that started when they killed the buffalo.
Housing...? It's a treaty right. We have homeless people.
Affordable housing...? No, at $1,300 to $1,500 a month, you can't afford that.
Missing and murdered indigenous women happens on a daily basis, and it's still going on in this community.
I'm here to remind you that it's illegal what they're doing. What I'm here to do as well is to demand.... In Saskatchewan, Merriman refuses to meet with common citizens who have been doing this work and have the answers. He ignores us. We're invisible. I'm demanding from Saskatchewan a hundred children home by Christmas and a hundred children thereafter. We know the reasons children are being taken. We all know why. If we don't help with this shift, we're going to be part of the problem. I can't apologize any more to children, and you can't continue to pay out children.
Meegwetch.