Innu, N.L. at loggerheads over foster placement

The Innu Nation and the Newfoundland and Labrador government are caught in a dispute over the placement of a young girl in foster care.

A seven-year-old girl, whose parents live in the central Labrador community of Sheshatshiu, is in care with a family in nearby Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

Last week, the girl's mother— whom CBC News is identifying by her first name, Bernadine, to protect her children's identities— learned that her daughter is poised to move with her foster family to Gander, in central Newfoundland.

"How are we supposed to spend more time with our child, my oldest daughter, if she's going to Newfoundland?" Bernadine said.

"She needs to be here, she needs to be in her community, so she can see her family."

Bernadine, who quit drinking alcohol one year ago, completed an eight-week parenting course with her boyfriend, and last winter had another of their children returned from foster care. The two children were taken into care 17 months ago. The couple had another child three months ago.

"I made a mistake in my life… I was running away from my problems," she told CBC News.

A court hearing was scheduled for Thursday in Happy Valley-Goose Bay on the matter, which has become part of a broader issue dividing the Innu Nation and the provincial government over where Innu children are placed in care.

In2005, the issue came to the fore when Innu leaders succeeded in having a Sheshatshiu boy returned to his home community and removed from a foster family in Pasadena, in western Newfoundland.

Bart Jack, the boy's uncle and the Innu Nation's representative in negotiations in handing over child protection powers to the band councils in Natuashish and Sheshatshiu, said Innu children do better in their own communities.

Jack claims there are more than 100 Innu children living outside Labrador.

Jack said the province only needs to look at what has happened to his nephew since he returned to Sheshatshiu in late 2005.

"He was about to lose his language," Jack said. "He was going to speak just the English language. Now he's beginning to speak Innu."

Officials with the provincial government would not comment on Bernadine's family situation while it is before the courts.