Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for March 1, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We know that these things are not something we're going to get over or forget, but that we're going to live with and we're going to journey on. So we sing this for you.

[Sound: Singing]

VOICE 2: My name is Joyce Carpenter. I lost my beautiful girl in 1992 here in Toronto. This would be the 25th anniversary of her death. This is a national tragedy that has to stop. It has to stop and it has to stop and like Maggie said, we're the only ones that can stop it. Trisha only lived 14 years.

[Sound: Singing]

VOICE 3: Hi. I'm Tashina's mother, Denise. And she's been gone for 9 years now. He was the father of her baby and he was first charged with murder and then went for another trial and he was let out for only manslaughter. I just didn't lose her. I lost my grandbaby and his name would've been Tucker. Niá:wen for coming.

[Sound: Singing]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: All you have to do is ask and you will hear another story of loss of a teenage daughter, a sister, a mother, a grandchild. Sometimes they know what happened. Most times there is little to help to piece it together. And at no time do they forget. The voices you just heard belong to women who gather in Toronto every year outside Toronto police headquarters—part of a nationwide Strawberry Ceremony—in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Hello everyone.

Back To Top »

'Reconciliation is a two way street': Indigenous youth want 'more than canoes’

Guests: Angel Wolfe, Rebecca Benson, Sam Mukwa Kloetstra

[Music: Theme]

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: We are in front of an audience in the Barbara Frum Auditorium at CBC's broadcast centre in Toronto for the fourth in a series of public forums on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Today we are exploring how this affects children and youth. We want to hear from them directly about their experiences, perspectives, what they've been told, what they want to tell us. In a moment, we'll hear from a young woman whose childhood memories of her own mother were forever altered by a visit from police looking for her DNA. She was eight years old. In our second half hour, we'll meet a man once forced into a residential school who is now at the forefront of a new era of education for Indigenous youth as the principal of a First Nations school in Toronto. In an hour we'll be looking for more perspectives and maybe ideas for solutions from those of you joining us in our audience. This is all part of The Current’s focus on the missing and murdered through a project that includes our virtual reality documentary on the Highway of Tears—the long and isolated stretch of the BC highway that has become emblematic of the violence toward and the erasure of so many Indigenous women in this country. So let's begin, shall we? I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current.

[Music: Applause]

AMT: Before we begin, I'd like to start with a welcome from Mi'kmaq grandmother Wanda Whitebird who is the person you heard at the very start of the tape as we opened this program.

WANDA WHITEBIRD: Bonjour. [Speaking in alternate language] My name is Dancing Star. I come from the Bear Clan. Although I live and work here in the territories of the Mississaugas of New Credit, [speaking in alternate language], so this is Toronto. So I welcome you to this stolen land that we leave our footprints on tonight. I asked our creator and our ancestors to come and join us, watch over us, give us those kind words and respectful words. Open the minds and hearts of those individuals that are going to hear our voices. That are families of missing and murdered women are looking for the truth. They're looking for justice. They're looking for hope. And that's what we hope we're going to give them, is that the one thing that we're going to share is the love we have for each other. So welcome here. Let's share our words and let’s remember those that have lost their loved ones. Miigwech. All my relations. [Alternate language]

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: We will start today with a panel of Indigenous youth to hear firsthand how the issue of MMIW has affected them. First we will hear from Angela Wolfe. She last saw her mother Brenda Wolfe when she was only five years old. Hello, Angela.

ANGEL WOLFE: Hi.

AMT: Can you tell me about your mother Brenda? What are your memories of her?

ANGEL WOLFE: I remember my mother. She was a very happy person. She loved jazz music, rock and roll, was very artistic. Loved her beading. She used to bead these little lighter cases. And she was just all around a very joyful person. I have very fond memories of her actually brushing my hair, doing my nails. Just mother-daughterly stuff.

AMT: And you were five the last time you saw her.

ANGEL WOLFE: Yes.

AMT: You had been living with a foster family when the police showed up one day. What did they want?

ANGEL WOLFE: Two officers, a male and a female, that came knocking at the door when I was eight years old asking for DNA from me because they told me my mother's jawbone had been found on Pickton’s farm.

AMT: They actually told you that.

ANGEL WOLFE: Yeah. Word for word, my mother's jawbone was found on Pickton’s farm. And I was eight years old.

AMT: I can't even imagine what an eight year old would think. How did you react to that?

ANGEL WOLFE: I was very angry. At that point, I kind of just envisioned a glass mirror being broken and shattering to the floor because growing up in care, I always had a dream that I would pack my bags one day and run away and find my mom. And so once those police told me my mother's jawbone was on a farm, that mirror kind of just shattered all over the floor and I knew that bag wasn't going to be packed and I was never going to find my mom again.

AMT: How did that impact you as you grew up, knowing that?

ANGEL WOLFE: I kind of ran away from my identity. My mother was being publicized all over the media and the media didn't really encourage—like they said grotesque stuff about these women. They were grotesque details about people's mothers, daughters, friends, families in the newspaper every day. So I ended up growing up very angry. And once I ended up becoming a teenager, ran to a little bit of no drugs and alcohol. And I think it was only till then that I kind of realized that I was going on my mother's track—well, slowly towards my mother's track—that I kind of just stopped myself and realized that I didn't want to go down that. And I met my birth father who then led me to Bridget. Bridget Perrier, she is my stepmother but she also went through a similar thing and is a national activist and speaks about human trafficking and missing and murdered Indigenous women. So it was really her that helped me piece the puzzles together and learn to love my mom again and learn to be the person I am today.

AMT: Very special stepmother.

ANGEL WOLFE: Yeah.

AMT: Yeah. Well, I want to introduce two other people into this conversation. Sam Mukwa Kloetstra is an Anishnaabe youth from the Mattagami First Nation. That's about 100 kilometres from Timmins, Ontario. And Rebecca Benson is the two-spirit program coordinator at Egale, a charity promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans human rights. She is a member of the two-spirit community as well and the former coordinator of Aboriginal Arts and Stories, Canada's largest art and creative writing competition for Indigenous youth. Welcome to both of you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Rebecca, I want to start with you. You identify as two-spirit. What does that mean?

REBECCA BENSON: Two-spirit means a lot of things to a lot of people. So the actual term “two-spirit” was invented in 1990 by a group of Indigenous LGBTQIA folks who gathered. And the point of that gathering was to come together and make a decision about that so that we could have a term that would encompass both our indigeneity and our LGBTQIA identities in one kind of neat set of words. So that's where two-spirit comes from and it is used as a resurgent term. So a lot of our nations historically had gender diverse and attraction diverse folks in our communities. And so for me, like I'm a Mohawk language learner. I'm a Tuscarora person. So in Mohawk, the word for two-spirit is onón:wat, which means I have the pattern of two spirits inside my body. So for Mohawk Nation, that's a very specific role. So each nation has their own rules and identities and two-spirit is a word that you can use to encompass all of those. Our nations which are all separate—so they had their own languages, their own culture, their own politics, their own ways of doing everything—also had different gender role systems. So some nations like didn't have gender at all and some nations had seven gender roles. And many nations didn't have the gender binary as we understand it today. And we lost all of that in the fires of colonialism, in residential schools. And that's where homophobia and transphobia and those kinds of phobias are rampant in our communities because of Christianity.

AMT: And how does the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women impact the two-spirit community?

REBECCA BENSON: It impacts us drastically. A lot of trans women for example have gone missing and they're not specifically named in the inquiry and two-spirit folks are missing entirely from the language of the INAC inquiry website. The problem isn't that the missing and murdered Indigenous women inquiry shouldn't be happening. It needs to happen. And like I just need to give all that respect to the folks who've been hustling for that to happen for 40 years and they deserve all the space in the world. But Indigenous men who have gone missing deserve space. Indigenous trans women who have gone missing deserve space. Indigenous two-spirit folks, they also deserve space. We all deserve space and justice and this is just one example of the fact that the inquiry’s set up along the gender binary and that's not our system necessarily of doing things, right? This isn't an Indigenous way of doing justice. So people will be left out.

AMT: Okay. Well, Sam Mukwa Kloetstra, how did you first learn about the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women?

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: Well, I think it was on CBC. I learned about it through news—not through school which is where we should be talking about it—but through the news. I saw those grotesque images and I saw those horror stories and I saw that these youth, especially when you look at Tina Fontaine, like they weren't very much older or younger than me.

AMT: She was 14 when she was found. Yeah.

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: I would have been in high school, a little bit older. My sister would have been around that age.

AMT: So what kind of conversations were you having with your own family members about this when you started realizing that this was a problem?

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: Well, I think there was a lot of honest fear in my family. I mean I was raised almost entirely by strong Indigenous women. I lived with my mom. I've lived with my grandmothers. I've lived with my aunts. I've lived with my sister of course. And every time, I have a fear that when they leave the house, that they're in danger. The intersection of being Indigenous and being a woman and even being two-spirit is a very dangerous one. But for me as a light skinned Indigenous male, I have a privilege of being able to access the colonial system and actually walk the streets safely. And so when I look at my younger sister and I look at my mom and my grandma and I think about the Indigenous women and Indigenous girls like Tina Fontaine, I think that it's my duty as an Indigenous male to raise them, to help them in any way that I can as another Indigenous person and to support them and to figure out what's going on.

AMT: I want to go back to something you just said Sam, about two-spirit and two-spirit youth. Rebecca, you were in Thunder Bay just earlier this month hosting a summit for two-spirit youth. What kind of stories were you hearing?

REBECCA BENSON: I was hearing first of all, stories of spectacular resiliency and youth who are refusing to stop being themselves in the face of immense violence and immense discrimination. And I heard about folks who are really worried about their personal safety and who are asking for resources and asking for help.

AMT: Sam, you’re from the Mattagami First Nation and I'm wondering—we're all in Toronto right now—but what's it like to go from on-reserve life in a small community to a city like this? What was that like for you?

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: You don't really realize how disenfranchised you are as an Indigenous person living on a First Nation until you leave it for good. You don't realize that a blackout every winter isn’t a normal thing or that for some Indigenous people that not having access to water that they can drink out of the tap is a normal thing. But you also don't realize the sense of community and the sense of utmost respect, especially for Indigenous women that we have in most of our communities.

AMT: There's a big Indigenous community in Toronto, isn’t there?

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: Upwards to 70,000. We say there's 70,000 here in Toronto in our non-profits, but Stats Canada data shows that it's 30,000. So that obviously means that we have a huge underfunding when it comes to services. Unfortunately our stats are wrong.

AMT: Angel, I want to ask you a little bit more about the connections that you made to your own Indigenous culture because you were living in care with a foster family and you lost all connection at one point with your Indigenous roots?

ANGEL WOLFE: Once I was in that foster family, I kind of lost all contact with my family at home. So even the stepmother Bridget, they didn't want me talking to her anymore. So that's where my cultural identity issues really came in. For the longest time, like I pretended I was Jewish. I was running far, far away from being native. So it was just really difficult for me. It was probably only till I was ended up being 16 that I wanted to learn more about my culture and ended up educating myself. It took me a really, really long time to learn to love myself because I first had to get to know myself, and then after love myself. So it was a long journey. I am definitely proud to say I'm Anishinaabe-kwe and you know daughter of Brenda Wolfe and have come a long, long way. So I obviously did something right.

AMT: Rebecca used the word resilient. What do you think of that word, Sam?

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: I've been often called resilient when I was growing up and I always looked at it as a copout to say you did it. You made it through adversity but we're not actually going to identify or you know acknowledge the adversity that you succeeded through. So instead of resilience, I say that we just have the will to live and succeed. We have the need and the understanding that we are a part of a community, especially Indigenous people, where we need to help each other out and that our purpose isn't to be resilient. It's to support and help and to love each other.

AMT: We are having—

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Go ahead. Applaud him. Go right ahead. Feel free.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: There's been such a discussion just in the last few years about missing and murdered Indigenous women. We see the inquiry getting ready to do its job. I'm wondering what your generation of Indigenous people, Indigenous young people, thinks of how you move forward and what you want Canadians to know about who you are and what you expect of this government and what you expect for your own future.

REBECCA BENSON: More than canoes? [laughs] We want canoes and then some. I think we expect—I expect—folks to understand that reconciliation is a two-way street and that like we can't get to reconciliation until we've had the truth part and the truth part isn't over yet. Because like Lee Maracle always uses the analogy of I’ll accept an apology from someone for stepping on my foot, but first you have to get off my foot. So I think the fact that you know 70 per cent of the cases in Manitoba of missing and murdered Indigenous women are folks who were in care. And I think the statistic that—I heard this from Pam Palmater—is a child a day is taken away from their family in Manitoba, an Indigenous child a day. So today. So I expect Canadians to engage. I expect Canadians to do their work. I expect them to read and I expect them to listen and to be really engaged in thinking about what it is to do work with the Indigenous community in an Indigenous way.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Angel, what do you expect?

ANGEL WOLFE: Well, for my community, I don't think the promotion of sex work in my Indigenous community is proper. You know a 13-year-old girl doesn't have a choice. I also want accountability from the police with the missing reports going missing. I just need accountability from the police all over Canada.

AMT: Sam?

SAM MUKWA KLOETSTRA: I need Canadians and I need Justin Trudeau to understand that the disenfranchisement of women isn't something that's new. It's not something that started with missing and murdered Indigenous women. It's something that's been since the first treaty was signed with only men because the settlers wouldn't deal with women. And then it came in the Indian Act with the disenfranchisement of women when the settlers took away a woman's right to be Indigenous and to pass on her status. And now it's come again in the form of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

AMT: Thank you, all of you. Angel Wolfe works on issues surrounding MMIW by sharing her mother's story. Sam Mukwa Kloetstra is an Anishinaabe youth from the Mattagami First Nation and Rebecca Benson is the two-spirit program coordinator at Egale. Thank you, all three of you. Thank you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: I just want to remind you, if you're tweeting about this public forum, use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. Coming up, we will hear about one man's journey from residential school survivor to principal of a First Nations school in Toronto, and from a woman who has spent three decades working to improve child welfare for Indigenous children and families. Also we do have a full house here at the Barbara Frum Atrium at the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto. In our last half hour, we will be taking questions from our audience. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Toronto and you are listening to a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One.

Back To Top »

'I'm in disbelief': Advocate overwhelmed by number of Indigenous children in care

Guests: John Kakegamic, Karen Hill

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current from the Barbara Frum Atrium of the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: This is the fourth in our series of public forums on missing and murdered Indigenous women. Today we're looking at how this issue affects Indigenous youth. If you are tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. Still to come, we will be taking questions from our audience here at the CBC. But first, the issue of MMIW is inextricably linked to two things that can deeply impact a child's experience, from education to child welfare. I'll talk to two people who have spent their lives trying to advocate for change in both of those areas.

SOUNDCLIP

My name is Shannen Koostachin. I lived in Attawapiskat for almost my whole life. But I recently moved to New Liskeard for a proper education. And what I mean about proper education is I had to go away from home. I've been going to school in portables for eight straight years now. Our real school has been contaminated 30 years ago and we were replaced in portables. And we were stuck in them ever since. I am now attending New Liskeard Timiskaming District Secondary High School, away from home, family and friends.

AMT: Before she passed away in an accident in 2010, 15-year-old Shannen became known across the country as a fierce advocate for Indigenous children, especially around access to education and the right to attend good schools in their own communities. But when it comes to education and child welfare for Indigenous children and youth, the statistics are sobering. The government spends $2,000 less per Indigenous student each year than it spends on non-Aboriginal students, which means less money for everything from books and computers, even to heat to keep students warm while they learn. It also means a lack of schools in First Nations communities and that ends up forcing children to leave their home communities as Shannen did. When it comes to child welfare, the number of First Nations children taken from their families is three times the number of children that were taken from their families at the height of the residential school system. My guests in this half hour are working to address that. Jonathan Kakegamic is the principal of the First Nations school in Toronto. He has been in this role since the summer but he has spent his lifetime in education, from teacher to vice principal in Northern Ontario. Karen Hill is with us as well. She's been working in the child welfare sector for over 30 years. She is currently the director of Aboriginal services at the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies.

AMT: Welcome to you. John Kakegamic, I want to begin with you. As you listened to our last three panelists, what were you thinking?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: It was tough because the experience that they shared, it's real and I think that them speaking on it, it empowers them but also it empowers us as First Nations people. And I think these young people need to keep talking.

AMT: What overlap do you see between the history of child welfare in Canada and the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women?

KAREN HILL: Well, I think that it's a huge overlap and it's something that I think we've long ignored in that you know we had initially residential schools that really looked at removing kids as a way of really breaking our communities and breaking our spirit, if you would. And after residential schools were closed, you know as late as the nineties, they actually in, I believe, late 1950s, you know declared that child welfare agencies would have jurisdiction in communities. And in my present role, I've kind of been given that opportunity to see that child welfare was again worked hand-in-hand and replaced much of what residential school was intended to do. But it also had an economic purpose, in that many people from you know the communities in the north were removed from intact, pretty solid families for economic reasons. For hydro lines because they wanted to build the dam and they were inconvenient, if you will. So I do think that child welfare, when you talk about that intersection of missing and murdered, it really has victimized women and children in the same way I think residential schools have.

AMT: I was surprised at the statistic that there are more children in care today than at the height of the schools. You’ve got even better numbers.

KAREN HILL: Yeah. I just brought some numbers from the Ontario incidence study that says Indigenous kids are a 168 per cent more likely to be placed in out-of-home care than non-native kids. It's a huge statistic.

AMT: What does that say to you?

KAREN HILL: Well, in many ways, I'm frustrated. I'm overwhelmed. I'm in disbelief. I remember because I did frontline child welfare—it's not quite 30 years, I'm not that old but pretty old. But I used to think because I practiced in my home community that the biggest thing I had to worry about was a child being neglected to death because people didn't really abuse their kids. There were issues you know here and there with alcohol. But again, there were extended family community systems that supported. But now, I think things are in some way are in a worse state.

AMT: Jonathan Kakegamic, you are a residential school survivor. How old were you when you were at a residential school?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: I was 17 and 18.

AMT: Yeah. How old are you now?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Um…

[Sound: Laughter]

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Forty-eight.

AMT: The reason I'm asking is because I'm really not trying to do a trick question here. I just think it's worth underlining for a non-Indigenous part of our audience that this was still going on. I'm older than you. It was still going on. And we have to remember that it's not something that happened in a faraway history.

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Yeah. The school I attended was one of the last ones that was run, that was funded by the federal government of Canada. And just to show you, you know I was talking to my son a couple of days ago and he just finished high school maybe about eight years ago. And we were talking about residential schools. And I asked him how much knowledge or how much time was talked on that. And he thought back and he thought of a time in grade 10 with a textbook. It wasn't even a paragraph in the textbook. It was a did you know column or a fact column. And you know and that was 2009. So you know, when you think about the residential school, it lasted five generations. It wasn't like World War II was eight to nine years. It was great damage was done to our people. And I think that, no, I believe having a school like First Nation school of Toronto, where I came from, Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, we need these type of schools to inform our youth because it's part of their identity. You know and also talks about what the young man said—the will to live.

AMT: How have you seen the legacy of residential schools affect the students you have today?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: I think the biggest is the identity. They need to know who they are. And in our culture and even my own family, you know the pillars of any society is family, community and the language goes with that. And our schools across Canada, in the communities is that we are losing our language every day. I was just talking to a community member east of Toronto here and he made a comment that none of his people in his community speak the language. So it's important that we provide avenues to address that. But it needs to come from the community. It needs to come from the parents, the elders. And that's why I'm thankful for this school where I’m at now. It provides an avenue for that.

AMT: Before you came to Toronto, you were at the Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, a First Nations high school in Thunder Bay for like 15 years. Am I right?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Fifteen years. Yeah.

AMT: Yeah. Some of those years you were the principal, right?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: My last seven.

AMT: Okay. What challenges did you see facing the young people there in that school?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: The change for me was, I was vice-principal and I called a young girl down and she came. Beautiful, grade 10 girl. And she thought she was in trouble but her teacher showed me her test score and I just called her down to acknowledge her. And after our discussion, she says to me, this is the first time that someone said I was good at something. And that floored me. And the students that I served—23 First Nations—these kids each day didn’t go home to their parents. You know and that was back in 2003. And you know I think Canada needs to realize that there's still, that school’s still running, but they take for granted where their kids come home to them each day. And I grew up with that whole, my parents would say how was your day? But there’s still kids, students that don't get that asked by then because they live in boarding homes and they’re as young as 14, 13.

AMT: What kind of responsibility was that for you then as vice-principal and principal, with young students who weren't going home? They weren't anywhere near their parents.

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: It was heavy. You know when a parent tells you in September, like our history, we lost six students tragically. There was an inquest completed last year. You know it's heavy when a parent tells you, please look after my child. Please make sure they come home alive. And you know that comment that made me be a principal like that because my job was more than educating them, more supporting the teachers, but to ensure that they go home alive.

AMT: You talk about the inquest. That was the inquest into the deaths of seven First Nation students in Thunder Bay since 2000. The year 2006 of them actually—

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: We lost our last student in 2009, I believe. And that was my cousin. And I was vice principal at that time and they wanted to—the talk was that they wanted to close the school down because we lost six students within eight years of its existence. But I think the point that I want to share with the youth is that they know who cares for them and I believe everyone knows that. And just to show you two examples, there's two [unintelligible] ladies— Sandra [inaudible] from Bearskin Lake First Nation and Sarah Brady from Rocky Bay First Nations. They’re one of my staff and they provided sports like broomball and basketball. And this is the key for when you work with kids is that what we do with them each day, we need to have the results where the kids could stand up and say that these staff help us. When that happens, there's more change that will come from that because the relationships is going to become stronger. And the knowledge that these two ladies pass on to these young girls is important. It empowers them and they see their own taking care of their own.

AMT: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report took aim at the child welfare system for decimating Indigenous communities and families in Canada. Does that make you conflicted about the work you do inside the system?

KAREN HILL: Well, absolutely. Absolutely it does and I think our own system is asking itself some pretty big questions right now in terms of, it almost puts you in mind of you know you start out I think with some pretty idealistic notions about helping kids, creating future for kids. I don't think I've met one professional in child welfare who started out to you know snatch kids and abuse women or families or Native communities. It's the best of intentions. But you sometimes feel like you're in a position of a colluder as opposed to an actual helper. And I think it's a difficult place to be when you're a Native person because I was, you know again like many Indigenous people, raised to believe that whatever gifts or skills or ability I had were for the community.

AMT: And yet you don't walk away.

KAREN HILL: Well, as I said, I think anybody can questions and anybody who has a conscience would question. What am I really achieving, you know what am I doing and one of the things that I realized when I was at a more service level, every day I could walk out the door feeling like okay, I did one thing or two things that made a difference for a family or for a mom. But I think it's increasingly difficult to feel that way now.

AMT: Jonathan Kakegamic, you face young people every day—all those teenagers at the First Nations school in Toronto. It just moved into a new building last month. What is your school offering to Indigenous children that other schools have not?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: It’s the language and culture teachings. Every classroom, they spend 45 minutes a day with our language teacher and school elder. And so they talk to them about the language and stories, histories and seven grandfather teachings.

AMT: And do you have a different life being a principal here than in Thunder Bay?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Yes. The biggest difference: I’m done at four every day.

AMT: That's because the kids here go home?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Yeah. It’s amazing. You know the kids go home to their parents and that's such a huge relief for me and what I came from.

AMT: It's less stress for you.

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Oh yes. Yes.

AMT: You must have been under incredible stress and feeling so much responsibility before.

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Yeah. Like being principal for seven years, I was honoured to do that. But you know I think that this change is good and it's important that that school continues because it's serving 23 First Nations and they need to be successful.

AMT: How many students do you have in the Toronto school?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: We have 137 and we will be adding grade nine this fall.

AMT: And is it open to non-Indigenous children as well?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Yes.

AMT: Do you have a lot of non-Indigenous children?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: No, but we are open to anyone to attend our school.

AMT: What effect do you think an education rich in Indigenous language and culture can have on students?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: The biggest is the identity. You know school is so important—the building and what happens in it. And you know where I come from, 23 First Nations, there's a school in each community that could be such a great resource and the use of elders and the language and the land. I've been in Toronto for six months now and I miss the smell of fire. The fire and just walking in the woods in silence. You know and our kids, they need to know that. And I know some communities do a real good job in addressing that. But you know it's time that our leaders acknowledge that. And 15 years at my school, you know I would encourage our leaders to come. The position of a chief is so important among our people. And when a chief would visit our school, the kids would get so excited. They'll talk in the classrooms—“oh, my chief came. Oh, I’m going for pizza with my chief after school.” And their relationship was built there. And I go back again. Our kids know who's there for them. And you know and sometimes it feels like you want to quit. But you know when I see these kids every day, you can't because you don't know where they're going to go in the future if you don't instill those life teachings—more than two plus two is four.

AMT: I'm wondering what it would mean to each of you for the national inquiry underway to be inclusive of the perspective of children and youth.

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: It's a big, it plays a huge role. If you don't listen or address what's happening now, you're going to have more problems down the down the line. You know and I think that Canada, our prime minister, he needs to know that we have the same dreams and wishes for our kids every day when they leave our home to go to school. And I think that everyone has a story, even a grade three and they need to be heard because if we don't address what's happening in that little boy or girl's life when they’re in grade three, we lost them. And I think if we keep at it every day, a kid will learn to say no or learn to say what's happening is not right and learn to ask for help.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Karen Hill, what do you think it would mean for the national inquiry to be inclusive of the perspective of children and youth?

KAREN HILL: Well, I think I was struck by my friend Angel. When she shared her story, it was hard to hear, you know. And I think we all in the audience—because I was sitting in the audience—really felt that with her. But I think that's such an important component in terms of hearing how they've been impacted by this because I think that's a big part of how this has occurred. Native people are usually silent, very much on the margins. And I think if we don't relate to each other, we don't hear from each other in that feeling way. We don't move any further towards healing or changing or shifting. And you know one of the things that I was taught you know and we're talking about the inquiry but I think in terms of people like yourself, like other Canadians, it's important to hear, I guess the story of the survivors and how it resonates with them today and how they carry it. Because you know as you're ignorant of the impact, as you're ignorant of those feelings, you're negating those feelings. But as you negate the feelings and the experience of the original people here, you're negating a huge part of your own humanity.

[Sound: Applause]

KAREN HILL: And I think that’s about how Societies can become distorted when we objectify each other and when we don't relate to each other in that feeling relation away. And you know when my friend—is it John?—talked about language, you know that is another, such an important component. You know we hear about language and it infuriates me when I hear two official languages. And you know it’s appalling to me. You know we have Indigenous people who have existed all across this country and you know when we talk about educating kids so they have a different understanding, educating people like yourself, I don't know why children—whichever jurisdiction they happen to be in—aren’t made to learn at least at a minimal level an Indigenous language.

[Sound: Applause]

KAREN HILL: Because as John talked about language, I just remember—I'm not a fluent speaker but I was surrounded by fluent speakers and they were talking one day about snow snaking, which is a game that we played at Six Nations. It’s a traditional game. And they were talking about getting their snakes ready. And you know I was listening because I was semi-fluent and then I said well, I thought they were talking about the snow and my mom said they are but there's all different words for snow depending on the type of snow. She said they have to be able to read the snow. But that's just one example of the different perspective in terms of that relationship to nature, that more intimate understanding of nature.

AMT: Thank you both for your ideas and your thoughts.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: That is Jonathan Kakegamic, the principal of the First Nations school in Toronto and Karen Hill is the director of Aboriginal services at the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies. Stay with us. Coming up next, we will take questions from our audience. If you're tweeting about this public forum, use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. If you want to watch our virtual reality documentary, Highway of Tears, go to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And on that website, you can also see photos from this public forum. Check out our Facebook page for more information about our project. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One from the Barbara Frum Atrium at the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto.

[Sound: Applause]

Back To Top »

Why 'love is medicine' for Indigenous youth

Guests: Krysta Williams, Jody Porter

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current from the Barbara Frum Atrium of the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: This is the fourth in a series of public forums we're recording across the country about missing and murdered Indigenous women. And today we have been talking about how the issue affects children and youth, hearing directly from them about their thoughts on their issue, looking at the wider issue of education and child welfare. A reminder if you are tweeting about this program, use the hashtag #TheCurrentMMIW. Head to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent to learn more about our guests and our virtual reality documentary, Highway of Tears. In this half hour we want to hear from our audience. I will ask you to be brief because we want to get as many voices as we can in. But before we hear from you, I have one more guest right here that I'd like us all to hear from. Krysta Williams is the advocacy and outreach coordinator with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

[Sound: Applause and cheering]

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: Aww.

AMT: Your fans are here. This organization is by and for Indigenous youth. It works across issues of sexual and reproductive health rights and justice throughout Canada and the United States. Welcome, Krysta.

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: Thanks for having me.

AMT: What have you been thinking as you've been listening to the conversation?

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: I think it's really humbling for all of us to be here and to actually have an opportunity to talk with one another and talk with such a large audience on such a large public scale. This was one of the only youth focused events that has happened in the context of this broader conversation, other than what's been organized you know by ourselves and by our community. So I think it was really meaningful to see something that was youth focused, right. And actually—because people often say oh, we want to talk about youth issues or we want to hear from youth but they actually just want to talk to us or talk about us as if we're not in the room. And I think that was changed a little bit hopefully here tonight.

AMT: What role can a youth-led Indigenous organization like the Native Youth Sexual Health Network play in addressing some of the vulnerabilities that children and youth face?

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: I mean I think first and foremost, it's about challenging and changing the conversation because how we talk about not only this issue but how we talk about our communities matters. How we talk about young people matters. And so whenever we're called and we talk about this issue a lot over social media, in our workshops, in our communities, in our families—and we are family at NYSHN—we have to constantly challenge and come up with new ways to talk about ourselves because the language that we're given is so offensive, is so racist, is so awful and we heard that consistently today. Even words like at risk and vulnerable don't speak to the realities that young people are surviving every single day and they're figuring it out. And we're figuring out ways to get through the day and that's actually a strength. We're amazingly strong to have gotten this far. And I would say even the women—

[Sound: Clapping]

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: Yeah. Give it up. And even the women who are missing, who are currently missing, who have been murdered, who face violence every single day—their extended families, their communities—they're the ones that we need to learn those skills from about how did you get this far and how did you survive up until this point? Because that's where the knowledge is about where we're going to go from here.

AMT: Well, how optimistic are you about the conversation this country is having MMIW now?

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: How hopeful am I?

AMT: Optimistic, hopeful, I don’t know. You pick a term. Or not.

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: It depends on the day. It depends on you know if there's another missing poster that comes through my Facebook feed because what we're actually seeing on the ground is not a whole lot of change. Right? If you actually talked to people about okay, so are the rates of sexual violence going down? No. Are the rates of child apprehension going down? No. Do people experience less gender-based violence or homophobia or transphobia on a daily basis? Are any of those rates going down? They're not. And in some cases they're increasing. So obviously there's a lot of unaddressed problems that we've been constantly naming, that families have been naming for 30 years, who have been making hundreds of recommendations in multiple inquiries, in multiple ways to governments, to non-profits. Just everyone have been screaming about this for 30 years and only just now we're like oh yeah, maybe, maybe. You know and when I say us, I mean like broader, broader folks and broader folks who are listening to this conversation. If this year is the first time that you've seen that acronym, then you have a bit of catching up to do.

AMT: Well, you make the point that it's taken a lifetime to get here and it's going to take that again. But I'm guessing you think there are some concrete things that this government can do in its mandate right now to move things forward.

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: Yeah, like give the land back would be cool.

[Sound: Cheering]

KRYSTA WILLIAMS: That's in their mandate, right? No. I'm actually really tired of talking about what the government can do because we've been doing all the work. Our communities have the ones who've been doing all the work this entire time. So I'm less interested in the inquiry and I know that that's a big focus of tonight and that's the thing that's been on the forefront of everybody's minds. And last year, we were in the same boat where it was the pre-inquiry, right. And before that, you know it was BC missing women's inquiry which was dubbed a sham. And we're not actually seeing any kind of change in pattern of behaviour when it comes to the institutions that are responsible for those things. So when we see those patterns repeating over and over and over again, you lose interest really fast. And I'm more interested in what are we doing internally? What are some of the amazing youth organizers that are coming up? What are we placing on their shoulders? What am I sharing with the people around me and my co-organizers? What are we doing to take care of each other, to support each other and to make sure that we can break those patterns at least within ourselves first?

AMT: Krysta Williams, it's really important to hear from you. Thank you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Krysta Williams, advocacy and outreach coordinator with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network. Let's just see who's got a question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: My name’s [unintelligible]. I’m known as [unintelligible] in the native community. I have a question for Ms. Hill. It's more of I guess a statement. If you know that there's a 163,000 children in care, what's actually being done to actually stop that because I've recently read the TRC’s recommendation about things that, well, the recommendations that they've made and when I read through that, I find myself getting angry about it. Specifically to my own story, I was a product of the Sixties Scoop in 1982. I was taken from my mother who is Indigenous and placed into a non-Indigenous home. At the age of 16, I aged out from the CAS and I was essentially put out onto the street. I view this as a process of assimilation that's still happening. And when I read through the TRC’s recommendations, all I see is just—excuse my language—a load of crap because really at the end of the day, it should be literally four things, is one, just stop taking our children. Stop removing them from the communities. Do everything you can to keep them in the communities. And what's really being done to do that? I mean you work for the CAS. Your agency is responsible for who took me from my family. I lived with my aunt, who just like Angel, who could’ve stayed with her father, stayed within her Indigenous community. And that's not happening. Children are being taken away and I think it's wrong. I just don't see what the CAS role is really actually doing to change that and it frustrates me. You know. And I've rewritten it. Those recommendations come down to four things: don't remove the children from the home. If the child can’t be then put with a safe family member, that they would stay with a community member. And if they can’t stay with the committee member, that they would stay within the community in a home run by their community. Why does that child have to be taken from the community and put into a non-Indigenous care run by the CAS? Like what programs are you guys doing to put things like that in place?

[Sound: Applause]

KAREN HILL: Well, I think your frustration and your anger are really well-founded and I think I expressed some of that earlier in that. And again, I'm not familiar with child welfare systems across Canada but I do know in Ontario, that we really aren't going far enough because I, like you, have reached a place I guess in my career or in my experience that tells me that removing a child from a family really isn't the answer. We, however, have a system that is based on a punitive, time-sensitive standardized approach to engagement with families that I think doesn't fit the Indigenous communities well at all. I think we as a community have to have the resources. We have to have essentially the will to step forward and support that mother, that family and to do so as needed.

AMT: Thank you. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: [Speaking in alternate language] I think as men, we need to step up. We need to be there to support our women. I know that's something I've struggled with myself. I had a partner who felt that she was abused. I didn't see that but I ended up having to take ownership for. Because even if there was no intent, if that's the way she felt, I had to own that. I listened to my friend Jonathan talk about the different things that we need in her education. I think one of the things that we have to do is have a land-based program because unfortunately when we think of the land, they sometimes talk about the land the same way they talk about our women. They talk about the rape of the earth. We have to stop doing what we're doing to the earth. We have to stop that with our women as well because women really are the centre of everything. And as a man, I have to learn to listen and ask what they need. So I'm glad to see Sam up there listening and asking. I hope everyone that's out and wherever this is going, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, realize that they have to listen to because this isn't just an Indigenous problem. Talk about the canoe. We're all in the same canoe. We have to learn to paddle together.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Thank you. Angel wants you to address what you've just said.

ANGEL WOLFE: Yeah, I totally agree. This is a man's issue and I want to thank you Sam for you know coming up here and standing with us in solidarity because we do need more Aboriginal men, Indigenous men, youth, boys, whatever it is, up here with us standing in solidarity with you know confronting this problem. And at the end of the day, yeah, people want to say it's a woman's issue, this, that. I disagree. I think it is a man's issue because at the end of the day, it wasn't the laws or this. It was a man that killed my mom. So let's just look at that. It was a man that killed my mom. So for me, I need more men, accountable men like Sam here, standing with me in solidarity for this issue.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Thank you. We have a couple of questions on video from people not living in Toronto and we're going to play one of them now. This is from Victoria, British Columbia.

SOUNDCLIP

Tân'si. My name is Monique Gray Smith. I come from the [unintelligible] family of Peepeekisis First Nation on my mum's side and my dad has Lakota ancestry from the Fairbanks family and Scottish ancestry from the Smith family. I'm the mum of 13-year-old twins, Sadie and Jackson and I have the privilege to live on the beautiful Lekwungen Territory in Victoria, British Columbia. I've been thinking a lot lately about the messages we give to young people and the messages coming at them right now in our country. And it makes me think that we are on a journey, where love is medicine. And I don't mean love in the form of romantic love. But I mean self-love, love for our family, for our community, love of our culture, our language and our ceremonies, love of the land, the water and the stars. And it calls on us to create safe spaces for our young people and our children so they can learn to talk about their feelings. They can learn to identify their feelings. They can learn to trust and they can feel love. So I think let's make this incredible opportunity to do all we can to ensure that our young people and our children experience love as medicine.

AMT: Jonathan, do you want to comment on what. Monique Gray Smith just said?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: I love hugging my students. They come to me every day. I’m warned not to hug them but you know, you've got to hug them. They're so cute. And with us First Nation people, touch is so important. Residential school years took that away. With my parents’ story, I was wondering why my dad would have a hard time hugging me. It's because of what happened to him. He finally told me his story. And we hug now. And that's so important. Our kids need to hear that. They need to see that. They need to feel that. And I think that we are on the right track right now.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Jonathan, thank you. Thank you. Where did Jody Porter go? Jody Porter is a CBC reporter. She's in the audience taking your questions. But I have some questions for Jody because she covers issues related to social justice in northwestern Ontario. I'm sure if you're a CBC listener you have heard her many, many stories on issues from First Nations communities. Hi, Jody.

JODY PORTER: Hi.

AMT: The focus on the forum today has been on children and youth and MMIW. In Kenora last year, a 14-year-old girl left a hospital. Tell us about her. Who was she? What happened?

JODY PORTER: So that's Azraya Kokopenace and Azraya was involved with the child welfare system. She was looking for mental health services. She was grieving the death of her brother. Azraya’s from Grassy Narrows First Nation, which is a community many people know because of the mercury poisoning there. And Azraya’s brother died from complications that involved mercury poisoning. So here's a little girl who has the strength to know that she needs help and she seeks help. But to get that help, she has to leave her community. And when she does, some very bad things happen. We don't know a lot about what happened because a lot of people aren't answering questions. We know that a few weeks before her death, Azraya had an interaction with a police officer that was caught on videotape and it's a situation that no mother would want to see their child in with a police officer. A few weeks after that, we know that Azraya was picked up by police. She was taken to hospital. Just 14 years old. She walked away from the hospital. And two days later, Azraya’s body was found in a forested area not far from the Lake of the Woods Hospital in Kenora. So this isn’t an issue of the past. This is an issue about children and it's happening now. Azraya was the second teenager to die last spring—Indigenous teen to die last spring—in Kenora, in one small community. And she died because she was looking for help that wasn't available in her own community.

AMT: As you cover her story—you have a history of covering stories. When you first began your job at CBC in Thunder Bay, you got a brown envelope. What was that about?

JODY PORTER: There's a long history in Thunder Bay and it speaks to some of the things that Jonathan talked about with the school and the students that died. And there's a long history of mistrust and I think some of the things we've been talking about tonight are about building community and building communities across communities. So when you have a place like Thunder Bay, where as a reporter I arrived in 2000 and some papers arrived on my desk about a man named Agnew Johnston. And Agnew Johnston was a Crown prosecutor, a well-respected man in Thunder Bay, and he was convicted of soliciting sex from underage prostitutes. And during the course of his trial, other high-ranking people in Thunder Bay were implicated. Now this happened back in the nineties. It happened around the time that Sandra Johnson died in Thunder Bay. It happened around the time that some things were happening with Angel's stepmom in Thunder Bay. Some very difficult times. And the trust level between those people in power—those people in charge of administering justice in Thunder Bay and the people who are so often affected by injustices—those relationships remain quite broken. And I don't think we can ever get to the bottom of the things we're talking about tonight until those relationships are restored. Maybe restored isn’t—are built I guess is the word I'm looking for.

AMT: When you're reporting, you report in Thunder Bay. You also get on small planes and you fly to small isolated communities. What do you see as the challenges facing young people and children in relation to what we're talking about tonight?

JODY PORTER: Jonathan, if it's okay, I'm going to talk about your community of Keewaywin. So I visited Keewaywin last winter and I went to visit one of Jonathan's students, Skye Kakegamic. And Skype had testified at the inquest into the student deaths. One of her friends is one of the students who died. And she's an incredible young woman. She's gone on to be a teacher's aide in her community. The grief that she's dealing with and the things that she experienced and that there's no language for talking about and that she just has to get on with helping other people in her community because there's kids at the school that she needs to help and she wants to help. I think it's the grief that I see most—the unresolved grief in the communities and especially among the youth. That is cause for concern.

AMT: And there's no help.

JODY PORTER: Mental health services are incredibly lacking and we saw this story in the beginning of January where there was a community that knew Wapekeka First Nation, that knew there were young girls with a suicide pact in the community and they asked for help. They went to Health Canada and they said we'd like to use our land. We'd like to use our resources to help our young people. We just need a bit of money to do that and the Health Canada official that I spoke to said you know that request came at an awkward time in our funding cycle so we weren't able to accommodate it. And in January, two 12-year-old girls died by suicide.

AMT: Jonathan, you want to add something to what Jody is saying?

JOHN KAKEGAMIC: Just a comment that Jody and I know each other well. She shared many great stories that people go through. We need more people like her. You know like with grief, it's hard. I don't think you ever get over losing someone. To me, grief is a lifelong journey. And oftentimes we don't talk about that enough. We go through the funeral. We have the burial then that's it. And when youths are losing friends like that, that does something to them. It leaves them open to hurtful things. And I think you know Thunder Bay, I spent 15 years there and we went through a heavy inquest last year for seven students. And when something big that happens in a community, it should affect the whole community. It didn't. Leaders need to start being leaders. Chief of police, the head doctor in emergency and hospitals, the principals in the local boards—they need to start staying up and acknowledging the First Nation people because we’re not going anywhere. We are here to stay. And I think this avenue tonight will play a huge role in addressing that.

AMT: We have to leave it there.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Thank you, all of you, for taking part in this today. I want to thank the people involved in putting this forum together. The virtual reality documentary was created by director Lisa Jackson, producers Josh Bloch, Chris Bennett. Creative director Marty Flanagan, cinematographer and editor Connor Illsley, executive Producers Kathleen Goldhar, CJ Hervey, James Milward. The forum was produced by Pacinthe Mattar, Josh Bloch, Ashley Mak and Kathleen Goldhar. Our digital producer is Ruby Buiza. Our technical producer is David Allmark. Our technical team tonight is Greg Fleet, Petar Valkov, Thomas Gall, Tim Lorimer, Craig McDonald, Errol Gonsalves, and our photographer, Pascal Chiarello. A special thanks to Connie Walker, Jarrett Martineau, Angela Sterritt, Tanya Talaga, Maya Cane and the communications team here in Toronto. We are going to leave you today with a performance from Binaeshee Quae. She is accompanied on stand-up bass by Connor Walsh and an exclusive first listen of her song "Missing”. So we’ll leave you with that. I am Anna Maria Tremonti. We are in the Barbara Frum Atrium of the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto and I want to thank you for being part of this special edition of The Current.

[Sound: Applause]

BINAESHEE QUAE: So this song is called “Missing” and it was written within the year for a cousin’s cousin who went missing last winter. Thanks so much for having me.

[Music: “Missing” - Binaeshee Quae]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

March 1, 2017 full episode transcript

More Stories Like This