Thank you for that question, Irene.
I've worked as a social worker both in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. When I was working in Manitoba I saw a system that was much more sensitive to the needs of first nations individuals, Métis individuals, and non-aboriginal counterparts. There were four authorities at that time made to be sensitive to all four, because they had a first nations north and a first nations south.
With the diversity in Manitoba, in the first nations northern authority many communities are fly-in or train-in only; they don't have any roads going up there. Those authorities were more sensitive on how we dealt with first nations children. If you were a Cree person wanting to adopt, let's say, a Dene child, you could not do that. A Dene child had to be adopted by a Dene family, and so on and so forth.
Here in Saskatchewan it's a little bit different. A lot of the first nations have their own childhood family agency, but still there are a lot of non-aboriginal caregivers. Basically, you're tearing a family apart during the apprehension stage, and placing them outside the community in a non-first-nations home or putting them in a group home that is run by non-aboriginal people. Basically, you're separating the family, and we workers didn't really have much of a choice in saying we're going to tear your family apart and put you back in the 1960s again and show you an entirely different educational system away from your family and an entirely different family system away from your family. It is not constructive.
Actually the Saskatchewan government is going through harsh criticism because of it at this point in time. It's in the news. It's in our newspapers. Everybody knows that this system we have here in Saskatchewan is not good right now. It is so harsh to take a child away from their family. I know that because I was adopted. Right now, I don't speak to my biological parents only because there was a system there that tore me away from my family. I was very fortunate to grow up in the same community, but it still tore me away from my family. Children are going through this over and over and over again, which is what's happening here in this city. When we see our moms going through violence or something that's happening in the home where the children have to be apprehended, it's one of the worst things to place a child in a different home setting. They don't know anybody. There are no familiar faces. There's nothing familiar about that home. It is one of the worst things to hear a child cry or hold onto your pants because they don't want to stay there. That is one of the worst, most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking things you'll ever hear.
To say that we need more aboriginal people in the workplace, yes, we do. Yet when we apply for those jobs the door is always slammed in our faces.