Thank you so much for your presentations.
I must say, Ms. Charlie, that the time you spent talking about your culture and how you grew up, etc., really brings home the fact that what we're talking about here is the de-culturalization of a people, with children being apprehended and sent off to foster homes that are not in themselves indigenous.
There are a couple of things. Most of the people we heard from are supportive of the bill, but they have found some things that they wanted to discuss. One of them I'd like to hear from you about is this. I think, Ms. Charlie, you made a really important point about the collective, about not just the best interests of the child, but the best interests of the families and the community and that whole ability to bring back nations to what they used to be. As you said, the best interests of the child, when it's interpreted through a western colonial lens, is very different.
In British Columbia we have been told, and I have been told by many provincial bureaucrats who wish to remain anonymous, that more children have been apprehended today and over the last 30 years than have been in the residential school time. They were taken from their families and put into foster homes that were not indigenous. How do you see this happening for urban aboriginal children? I think this is the key thing.
On reserve, it's easy to get involved back in the family. But when someone has moved away to an urban area and they're very far away from families, and many times they're fleeing abuse within the family itself, how do you see that ability to come back together happening so that you can protect the child while trying to reunite the child with the family? That's the first question. The second question is, if it's not possible to do that, how do you see the role of either friendship centres or of neighbouring bands being able to take up that role of bringing the child back? Do you see that as a possibility? How do you see funding going to that ability to help neighbouring bands to bring back children into their band, even if the children can't go back to their original band?