Public Safety committee  Thank you. I've written some words down, so I'll just read that. “Indigenous People in the Correctional System” I said that to myself and it rings in my ears like vulgar profanity, Mostly because I'm here addressing this colonial body of the government, Responsible for putt

Public Safety committee  Elders in prison started out with actual elders from the community being paid by CSC to come in and be the elder for convicts, both men and women. I think around the early 2000s that policy changed, or that had changed internally within CSC, and elders were no longer approached b

Public Safety committee  Pretty much.

Public Safety committee  There is no LifeLine anymore.

Public Safety committee  Native people actually were the ones who created that restorative justice. Colonial society adopted it and put it into the correctional system. It's long been a belief of indigenous people that if youth are committing crimes against the community, the community should deal with

Public Safety committee  Any program that deals with an indigenous offender right now, if it was breaking barriers or cognitive skills, it's just with that inmate, that convict. Plus, you're the ones in the program. I think if you want to change the individual, then you're going to need the community. Th

Public Safety committee  My understanding is that the aboriginal head start deals with preschoolers. Am I correct?

Public Safety committee  I don't have any experience with that, sorry.

Public Safety committee  From what I know of Gladue reports, I think a recent article said that about 80% of the time they're just ignored or they're not implemented by the courts. More often than not, Gladue reports are written not by somebody who's trained in Gladue writing. They're written by the same

Public Safety committee  Stop taking native kids from native families. There are more native children in child and family services custody now than there was in the entire sixties scoop. Those children aren't going to access native elders at all.

Public Safety committee  The problem is that it's not that the children are removed when they're five years old or two years old; it's that they're removed when they're born. You're a native person and your child is removed from your home because you're native. Child and family services are more often th

Public Safety committee  It's a societal issue.

Public Safety committee  You need to approach the elders in a good way. You need to ask them.... See, when I want an elder to help, I go with tobacco because that's the way it's done. If I want an elder to take part in Kim's family because she's going to have children, then I go with tobacco and I ask th

Public Safety committee  Elders don't necessarily come forward in the traditional sense, like a Roman Catholic priest; an elder doesn't come forward and go to school to be an elder. There are some priests, obviously, who feel it inside themselves and know they're going to be a priest, so that's what they

Public Safety committee  I think you touched base on that: indigenous offenders are released to urban centres. If you take them from the reserve, if that's where they're coming from, if they're entering the criminal justice system from the reserve and they're not being released back to their home communi