New funding for First Nations child welfare agreement will help healing strategy, Cowessess chief says

According to a 2018 children's advocate report, more than 80 per cent of children in care in Saskatchewan are Indigenous. A federal bill, signed last year, hopes to change that. 

The Trudeau government last year passed Bill C-92 — officially known as An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families — to reduce the number of youth in care, and allow communities to create their own child welfare systems to bring and keep their youth home.

Before this week, there was no funding attached to the bill. But an agreement has now been signed between the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government.

Cadmus Delorme, chief of Cowessess First Nation in southeastern Saskatchewan, has already been working on child welfare initiatives on his First Nation. Last November, Cowessess built Sacred Wolf Lodge, which serves a variety of needs in the community, from preventative healing work to keep kids out of care to helping youth transition out of care.

Delorme said he has seen a difference in the community already. He said youth are hungry for change, and 10 kookums (grandmothers) on reserve are being trained to work at the lodge to help families deal with their trauma.

But in this process, they're learning about, and working through their own, trauma too.

'Let's not repeat the past'

Delorme says the newly announced funding for the bill, along with a law his community has put into practice, allows First Nations to be in the driver's seat. Now, Cowessess gets to decide what kind of partner it wants the government to be.

"The province's role here is not negotiation. It's 'how do you transfer files? How do you make sure … when transferring over to Cowessess, [children] do not fall through the cracks?'" Delorme said in an interview on CBC Radio's The Morning Edition Wednesday.

He said the systems in place now were imposed on his First Nation. They didn't consent to having the government take over managing children in care.

He said in another interview that he wants the discussions between all levels of government to be respectful and productive but that at the end of the day, decisions come down to what Cowessess wants for its people.

He's also mindful of how decisions will respect treaty rights.

"Let's not repeat the past and let's not sentence another generation," he said. 

"If we just sit here and just pick out the problems, we're pretty much telling the next generation 'you figure it out.' And that is not the Cowessess way."