Evidence of meeting #44 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
We all agree around this table that the residential schools were a complete failure on the part of the state. For me, the number one issue with that is the complete disrespect by the state for the role of the parent in education. Would you agree with that?
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Would you say that parents should be the number one educators of their children?
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
We should definitely put education back under the control of the parents.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
I'll ask some of the other witnesses as well about the role of parents in education.
If you want to speak to that a little bit, it would be much appreciated.
Chief, Ojibways of Onigaming
As part of my report here, there's a big emphasis on the gap in support and services for adults. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of adults in my generation encountered either physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual abuse in our day school. From that experience, obviously a lot of the parents, as well as the grandparents who had gone to residential schools, have been really negatively impacted in their ability to provide quality parenting to their children. I see that today, because that's what our youth are saying in our report. Our youth are saying that they need to be heard.
These are not mere words. If you really look behind what they're saying and dig deeper, you'll find that they want to communicate. They want to build relationships. This is where we have discovered that we need to support our solutions, which are community-based and community-driven, to help support the families, and to help the youth have greater and healthier relationships with their parents.
I always have difficulty in trying to convey something that is so great. Words and rhetoric make it so difficult to really express and to be able to share with you that gap, as well as that particular issue you're talking about.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
Thank you so much for attempting to explain the generations of trauma that your people face.
For more questions, we now move to MP Romeo Saganash.
Romeo Saganash NDP Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Meegwetch, Madame Chair.
[Member speaks in Cree]
First of all, I have a quick question for Kendall here. I don't know if it's going to be a quick answer.
Chief Kishiqueb mentioned the priorities of youth in her community. Are these priorities similar in your community?
Youth Councillor, Pimicikamak Okimawin
Yes, there are the youth. I've been working with the youth for about a year now and I've asked them what they want, and that's a recreational centre. A recreational centre would be nice. We'd need a swimming pool and the facilities that other places have that reserves don't have.
There are 7,000 to 8,000 people in our community. Why can't we have what other places have, like drive-ins? They have everything. They have a McDonald's. They have infrastructure that we don't have and that we should get as aboriginal people. Everyone on all of the reserves who don't have these should get the infrastructure. But for Pimicikamak, the youth are always asking for a recreational centre.
NDP
Romeo Saganash NDP Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Chief Merrick, you talked about a major resource, the development of hydro in your case. I think over the years we've talked a lot about the environmental impacts of these projects, the economic benefits from these projects, but we rarely talk about the social and cultural impacts of these projects. I think you mentioned that briefly.
I come from a part of the country where there is major development as well, hydro-electric development in northern Quebec, and most of the time these social and cultural impacts trickle down to the most vulnerable of our people, the kids and the youth.
Can you talk a bit about the lessons that you've learned and how we can benefit from those lessons for the future for other communities? I was recently back in my community and went to the lake where I was born. I was born on the land. I know a lot of non-indigenous people cannot necessarily relate to how I relate to my territory, how I relate to that lake, and how my parents related to that place, and my grandparents, for thousands of years.
There are mental impacts when you destroy part of the territory. Can you speak a bit about the lessons that your community have learned from major development and how that experience can help us in the future?
Chief, Pimicikamak Okimawin
Thank you for that question.
With regard to the destruction of a land where our people, our ancestors, have grown, we have to protect our lands and our waters. That is one of the fundamental things that our elders have taught us to do.
Within our time, we have seen the destruction of our lands and the ways of our people. To this day, we rarely have any trappers who go out on the land to sustain their families, to provide for their families in that way. Now we have the social impacts of all of that. Where the man was responsible for his family and able to provide food and provide clothing, that has been taken away.
Eighty per cent of my nation is unemployed. In the fundamental agreement that was signed 40 years ago, it states that it was to eradicate mass poverty for my people. Today, we are the poorest of the poor. We should be one of the richest nations in Manitoba from the results of the electricity that is provided to the United States. We should not be poor.
Our people should be very proud of who they are as aboriginal people, but we're not, because we don't have what this young man, our young leader, has explained here, such as the wants and needs of our people for recreational facilities. These are the things that every community should have. Every community should have recreational facilities. Every community, every nation, should have libraries.
Those things that are taken for granted in urban centres, we don't have them. There are communities that don't even have water in this good country of ours that we call Canada. We haven't asked for anything over and above what any other Canadian has or that any other Manitoban has or asks for as a Manitoban. We have to beg all the time for the things we want. That should stop. It should stop today.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much for coming today and presenting this testimony.
We've heard this heart-wrenching testimony from a number of different communities that have come to testify on this issue.
I want to pick up on something that MP Viersen said earlier about the role of parents. I found that the question was a bit—no offence—simplistic, from the standpoint that we've talked about residential schools, the generations of destruction of the cultural and historical heritage and the literal ripping out the souls of indigenous peoples, and the breakdown of the family unit itself, the nuclear unit of the family. If you've taken children away and raised them in residential schools, how do those children become parents when they've not had parents themselves?
It's not simplistic to say that, yes, parents need to be a part of the education system, but I think it needs to be a more holistic process. Yes, they are a component, as elders are a component, and as educators are a component, in that they all need to be a part of education.
Would you agree with that, Kendall, Catherine, and Kathy?
Youth Councillor, Pimicikamak Okimawin
Yes, I agree with that, because our elders are very important to us. As youth, we learn from them, and we ask them for guidance. I agree.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
You all need to come together to try to reconnect your cultural heritage—
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
—because it's at the root of so many of the issues around identity and hope, and it's just an integral part of who and what you are. If you don't know who you are or what you were, how do you become what you need to be? Would you agree with that?
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you.
We've heard this many times, and it's something that we have tried to draw out, which is that it needs to be community-driven. The solutions need to be community-driven. Priorities need to be community-established.
Kathy, you brought this to the fore as well in your conversation. When we're talking about the lack of resources around mental health, is it just a lack of dollars or is it also the lack of human resources themselves and the availability of human resources within the communities themselves that are really at the crux of the situation?
Chief, Ojibways of Onigaming
It's all of that. It's the lack of funding resources to be able to employ more resources to deal specifically with the situation and directly with people. I think we focus so much on community-driven solutions. There are a lot of solutions that are unique to each community. I speak only in terms of solutions that we see and that we're advocating to have for our community.
Another barrier to that is having to go through multiple barriers when you have to access off-reserve and external resources. For us those include transportation and travel. As well, when you utilize external resources, there's lack of sensitivity with regard to the dynamics and the environment that the client comes from. For example, when a youth is taken to a hospital because they're threatening suicide or have obviously attempted suicide, a lot of times they see a general practitioner and maybe a social worker in the emergency unit who have no idea about the dynamics of the place this child came from, which they're going to be released back into. There's no connection, and there needs to be greater communication with regard to safety plans for when a child is returned.
In most cases when a child says they're fine, the doctor will say, “We're releasing the child back into the community.”
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
A big part of it is long-term funding so that you're not just going to crisis funding every time you end up in a crisis situation. You were talking a lot about community co-management and community teams that would come together to help manage mental health on a long-term basis. If you had long-term stable funding, you would be able to once again have that internal mental health resource to the community. It could then propagate that knowledge out to the rest of the community so that there could be a community-based approach rather than relying on one individual who is going to become burnt out as you said.
Chief, Ojibways of Onigaming
Yes. When you are dealing with crises, for probably the first year, you're looking at just trying to put a lid on the crisis. In the second year, you're probably looking at entering into medium-term solutions and starting to implement long-term solutions. If you have resources to support that, you're bringing a lot of continuity into the community. When resources are limited, that continuity stops until another crisis hits, and then you're back to square one.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
So it comes back to what Catherine was talking about as well, that if you had the long-term stable funding that would have resulted from the dam project, the hydro project, then you would also have the opportunity to train your own people internally so you wouldn't have that 80% unemployment rate.
Would everyone all the way around agree with that?