Residential schools, current child welfare situation linked

Child care service providers from across the province still have little knowledge about Indian residential schools and the intergenerational impacts that feed into the startling statistic that the majority of children in care in Alberta are Aboriginal.

“You would be surprised. Even people that provide services don’t know and from what I understand, there’s a real lack of this information and this history in the school system,” said Tara Hanson, director of Knowledge and Partnership Development.
Hanson’s organization helped bring Mike DeGagne, executive director of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, to Edmonton early last month.

DeGagne referred to his talks as part of a “farewell tour” as AHF’s funding was not renewed by the federal government.

“The legacy of residential schools…is not well known,” he said. “What the key to this problem is is that the impact is not necessarily (only) in the way (those) children were treated, the abuses they suffered.”

Hanson agrees.

“Even if (people) understand that there was a residential school, I don’t think they understand that intergenerational trauma or the impact that has influenced the future generations,” she said.
Since AHF began operating in 1998, it has worked throughout the country to fund programs that address the needs of residential school survivors and their families. Many students were abused physically, sexually and mentally through the residential school system, which took students away from their families and attempted to break them of their language, culture and way of life. Residential schools operated for over a century.

Rhonda Barraclough, executive director for the Alberta Association of Services for Children and Families, says an overall approach needs to be taken with the systemic issues that bring so many Aboriginal children in to care. And those numbers are expected to continue to grow. The impact of residential schools is one of the factors that has led to poverty, low education, substance abuse, poor living conditions, and the inability of many parents to care for their children.

“Families love their kids,” she said. “The system has to look at how it can support families. We all need to work on the challenges of the decisions that are made in communities and in the child welfare system…. More of the challenges are a result of structural decisions made by those outside  of communities as a result generations of children have suffered the long-lasting threats to their well-being.”

Comprehensive policies are needed and they must be driven by Aboriginal communities as well as an awareness of the impact residential schools have had on the generations that have followed, Barraclough says.

“Our experience with communities has been that you can be culturally sensitive and still have the safety of the child at the forefront,” DeGagne said.

Hanson says the expertise of and funding from AHF will be missed.

“The amount of knowledge that the healing foundation has generated during its term is quite extensive, so we thought there were a lot of lessons to be learned,” she said. “So although the future opportunities are no longer going to be in existence, we thought it was a terrible thing to waste all of the knowledge that was generated and is still very relevant for communities.”

It was this working experience and field of knowledge that attracted the Knowledge and Partnership Development to ask DeGagne to speak to people in the child welfare system.

“Understanding the residential school history helps us understand the situation we find ourselves in and helps us to have some empathy and sympathy and maybe challenge some of those less informed opinions people may have because their less informed about the history,” Hanson said.

Caption: Dr. Mike DeGagne, executive director of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, talks about what his soon-to-be-defunct organization learned over the years.