Former foster child guides nieces through kinship care

Maxine Courtoreille-Paul is hopeful that the time her nieces spent in kinship care with her will make a difference in their lives. She says it was the grounding she needed when she was a ward of the province. She was in her mid-20s when she finally discovered who she was. 

“It took me until I was 25 to find out who I was as a person. I knew I didn’t fit in with the white people, and I didn’t fit in with the First Nations, but I was Métis. I always kind of forced myself into the First Nations community because that’s where I seemed to blend in more easily,” she said.

Courtoreille-Paul grew up in the Fort Vermilion-High Level area. She and her seven siblings were taken into care because “my mom was dealing with her own demons, addiction, sexual abuse, physical abuse.”

She wasn’t yet in kindergarten when she was placed in her first foster home. By the time she was 14, she was in her eighth and final foster home. The oldest girl in her birth family, she was often placed in the same homes as her youngest siblings.

Her foster care experience was difficult and even now, decades out of the system, she still sheds tears when she recalls it.

“It was really hard. Not allowed to be an Aboriginal person. Not allowed to cry,” she said.

None of her foster parents understood what being Aboriginal meant, says Courtoreille-Paul. “They focused on changing who I was.”

She was forced to practise their religion and to follow their beliefs. She was dressed like the other children in the home and her hair done in the same style. But when the foster parents’ own children got into trouble, it was Courtoreille-Paul who was strapped for misbehaving.

“All these separations that were put into place with residential schools were the same things for me growing up,” she said.

After she left foster care, Courtoreille-Paul lived on her own. But, she says, “I’ve been basically living without parental guidance since I was 12.”

She moved to Edmonton 19 years ago.

When the opportunity came to provide kinship care for her sister’s two daughters, Courtoreille-Paul stepped up. The girls had been in foster care for eight years. While her nieces no longer live with her, Courtoreille-Paul maintains contact.

“My aim is to stay involved with them, more to help them maintain their identity, to let them know that family is actually out there. We’ve always cared. They always knew who their mom was, their brothers, their grandpa,” she said.

Courtoreille-Paul also helped the girls understand why their extended family was struggling.

“I had to share the history of our family from residential school up until now and how all of these similarities were carried on from generation to generation,” she said.

Courtoreille-Paul sees maintaining ties with family and learning about culture as two advantages of kinship care over foster care. She is adamant that had kinship care been available to her, she wouldn’t have struggled so much growing up.

It is easy to see how Courtoreille-Paul’s experiences have shaped her. She is now self-employed as a life skills coach, working with Native women mostly, but also men and children, teaching them how to communicate in healthy ways.

“It leads toward healthy family, healthy communities,” she said. “That was what I was lacking when I was growing up.”

Photo caption: Maxine Courtoreille-Paul (right) shares a lighter moment with Mary McDermott. The two were part of a panel discussing ways to raise children using Indigenous practises.