Thank you.
We, as the Atikamekw Nation, worked on modifying the legislation in Quebec. We have had success in making sure it respects our traditional ways of adoption.
I don't know about other provinces. I know the Inuit do it differently from us, and that was one of the matters in the beginning. The Quebec government understood that we were all the same—Inuit, first nations, and all that. We intervened and we told them that our way was different.
Let's say someone is adopting a kid. For us, that person will raise that kid, but that kid never loses the link to his original mother and father. That is the ancestral way of adoption in our community.
Even though a child may live all his life with the parent who adopted him, the child will always know who his real mother and father are. That's the way we are; that's always been like that. We always work in a traditional way.