♪ >> Welcome to Canada Files .

I'm Valerie Pringle.

My guest today is Cindy Blackstock who is a member of the Gitxsan First Nation.

An activist for child welfare.

Co-founder and Executive Director of the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society.

A professor at McGill University School of Social Work.

She led a group that took the Canadian government to court over their discriminatory treatment of Indigenous children It took nine years but they won.

>> Welcome, Cindy.

<< Thank you.

It's good to be here.

>> You've described yourself as a single mom to 163,000 kids.

Why did you decide that Indigenous kids needed your help and protection?

>> That's how other people have described me.

I consider myself an auntie.

The reason is that I've always been raptured by unfairness.

I grew up in the 1960s in northern British Columbia.

I didn't understand back then why everyone was so mad at us.

That's the only way I could pin it down.

People thought Indians were bad people because we had done something wrong to them.

That's how you think about it as a 5 year-old kid.

You also see that they're limiting what you grow up to be.

A drunk Indian, somebody on welfare.

None of that interested me.

I always thought I can be more than this.

I don't have to be this.

But the fact that I was being fenced in.

I saw other children being fenced in by this systemic racism by the government of Canada and residential schools were then still operating.

That struck me as so unfair.

>> You had a remarkable insight from the point of view that your dad was First Nations and mom white.

>> Yeah.

>> You talk about how you could go out with your mom and you were treated... >> Differently.

>> And you could feel that?

Completely differently than if you were holding your dad's hand.

>> Absolutely.

There was no question about it.

That is the reality.

I could go back and forward.

But this fence would automatically be put around me when people would identify me as First Nations.

>> You'd go, I'm the same kid!

>> Exactly and I couldn't understand this.

I would also think about what is it about these people that make them think this?

I remember getting CBC in black & white back then.

That's all we had.

We would see the civil rights movement.

We would see these KKK members then burning crosses.

I talked to the townspeople about that and they agreed that it was a terrible thing to do.

But these were the same people who would say that you're going to grow up to be a drunk Indian.

>> You say living the difference between the white world and First Nations world set you on a course of a lifetime.

And that was a question of why?

Why are we treated different.

What is the difference?

>> Yeah, what is the difference.

>> What did you find?

What is it...racism?

>> It's racism.

It was baked into the DNA of the country.

The Indian Act is the oldest piece of legislation we have in the country.

It applies to First Nations.

If you take a close read-- most Canadians haven't even googled it.

But if you get onto Google and you see this thing regulates your wills and estates.

It determines who is and who is not a First Nations person from the accordance of the government.

They give you a card for this.

This is stuff we hear about in South Africa.

But we've so normalized it here in Canada.

That racism, modelled by the federal government, was ceded into society too.

Because non-indigenous Canadians particularly back then learned nothing about First Nations, other than stereotypes.

>> They keep saying we're going to get rid of the Indian Act.

They've been recommending talking about that for decades.

>> For decades.

I think this is part of the thing.

When we see these things, we assume there's no solution.

But my experience is, there is a solution.

The government is choosing not to do it.

Because they think Canadians are asleep and they don't care.

>> Back to you growing up and looking at America and the civil rights movement.

You were reading and really moved by not only Martin Luther King, Gandhi and others about civil rights.

In your bones, something spoke to you.

>> Yeah.

It was...

I would see these people with such dignity.

That's what struck me about the Black people and their allies in the US is the dignity of it.

And the indignity of those who were claiming that they were more civilized.

But I thought why don't we have something like that?

We have the same seeds of this type of discrimination happening in Canada.

In fact, residential schools were an export of the treatment of the US government towards Native Americans.

So why is it that this isn't addressed?

>> There have been some issues in the last couple of years.

People would say there's been a change in the conversation.

The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out with 94 calls to action.

What Canadians can do.

It got a huge amount of attention.

Then unmarked graves were found by a residential school.

Not a surprise to people who know that story but to a lot of Canadians.

Subsequently more graves found.

Do you think it has caused the people of Canada to feel differently?

>> Yeah and it's also has resulted in the government of Canada reacting differently.

So you'll remember when the 215 unmarked graves were found in Kamloops in the residential schools, thousands of Canadians were out with orange shirts.

In fact, Canada Day fell shortly after that.

Instead of wearing red & white, people were wearing orange.

>> Which was the colour to wear in remembrance of the kids.

>> Exactly.

So in the 6 weeks following the discovery of those unmarked graves, the government of Canada implemented more of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission's calls to actions than it did in the previous six years.

So when Canadians are paying attention and demanding action, the government will make a choice to act.

>> Now I had talked in the introduction, that you took the government to court.

>> Yeah.

>> Nine years of being fought and obfuscated.

The government is fighting you for saying you discriminate against Indigenous kids.

This is an issue before the Human Rights Commission.

I say, after nine years you won.

What did winning look like?

>> Winning meant that we got a decision that said that yes, Canada was making a choice to racially discriminate against First Nations children in ways that separated them from their families unnecessarily-- created harms and contributed to their deaths.

It ordered the government of Canada to stop.

But they did what they always do.

They paraded out a bunch of ministers.

This is good.

We love First Nations kids.

And then they did nothing.

So we've had now 24 procedural non-compliance orders against the Canadian government in the wake... >> This is going back almost 8 years though!

Still non-compliant.

So when I say you won.

You haven't won yet.

>> No.

This is a mistake that a lot of people make.

They call for procedural mechanisms, like an inquiry or a ruling from a court and think that's the win.

The win is when people's lives change for the better.

That's where I've always had my eye.

Is that child in that First Nations community able to access the health and social services, and supports to keep them growing up safely at home that they deserve?

If not, then we need to push forward and that's what we've done.

>> Your awareness of this began in your first job as a child protection officer in British Columbia.

>> Yeah.

>> You were among those people who had to go to into homes and see if parents were fit or unfit and make a decision.

Do these children stay here or not.

You decided in one case, I think your first, that the children had to leave.

It kinda haunted you.

>> Yeah, it did haunt me because I don't think I had a full sense that we really had apartheid public services in Canada.

That apartheid service, coupled with the post-traumatic stress of the residential schools, which only closed in Canada in 1996.

That was creating situations where almost nobody would succeed.

It was a recipe for failure and trauma.

What was happening in child welfare is we were judging that it was the parent that wasn't able.

But it wasn't about the parent at all, but about the system.

>> Tell me about Jordan's Principle and Jordan.

And what's come of what he was able to accomplish.

>> This is the thing, the human consequences of this stuff.

This is a little boy, born from Norway House Cree Nation.

There was a high-risk pregnancy so his mom, Virginia gave birth to him in Winnipeg.

He had to stay in a hospital for two years.

This is something far too many parents are familiar with.

But finally the day comes when he could go home.

Bringing home the baby is a big day, right?

If he was non-Indigenous, he would have gone home.

They would have had the in-home supports that he needed to be able to stay in his family home and get the medical care.

But because he was First Nations, the GOC was supposed to be funding his services.

The government of Manitoba in the province where he lived, said that's a federal government responsibility.

So what they did is argue over 2.5 years about each individual item like shower heads he would need.

That kind of nonsense while this child stayed in a hospital.

His pediatrician sent a letter saying a hospital is not a place for a child to grow up in.

This child should get at-home care.

His sister, Jerleen Sullivan, said, "Eventually Jordan died of a broken heart."

He saw other little children coming in not well, then leaving when they were better.

He was better but he was trapped in this hospital because of who he was.

And he dies at the age of five, never having been outside of the hospital walls.

Just because of who he was.

We found 393 kids in that same situation.

We're just doing a very small study of 12 of the 105 First Nations agencies.

So this was happening to kids all over the country.

The family asked us to do something about it.

So Jordan's Principle is about ensuring First Nations kids can get the help they need when they need it.

That's the answer.

So it was part of the litigation in that humans rights case we talked about.

>> But it's having an impact.

>> Oh yeah.

So now, thanks to Jordan's Principle, we've had over 2 million services provided to First Nations kids that they otherwise would have been denied To give you a sense, Canada was capping the number of feeding tubes you could have for your child.

So parents were having to think, do I have to re-wash this thing?

And risk infection for my child or do I not feed them.

We had children in palliative care denied basic things for respiration.

We had kids who had learning disabilities who never ever got the help that they needed.

Grew up feeling that they were dumb and a failure.

It was the denial of basic things that every child deserves in a rich country like this.

>> The number of kids in foster care-- I think people have awakened to the shame and horror of residential schools.

You say we are creating another generation who are being removed from homes and put into foster care.

Or cared by the state.

It's making the same mistake twice.

>> Yeah, at a bigger scale.

There are 3 times the number of First Nations children in care today than at the height of residential schools in the 1940s and 50s.

When we think about child welfare, often amongst the public, we think these are the parents choosing not to look after the kids.

But imagine yourself, if I was in downtown Toronto, and I cut your water.

One in six First Nations folks don't have water.

35% of you will have broadband access, the rest of you won't.

We're going to cut every public service from education to your hydro electric access, everything down by about 30%.

Then I'm going to foist the trauma of residential schools on you and your family.

Then I'm going to come and check you and see how well you're parenting your kids.

I'm going to use the same standard as everyone else who's not affected by any of that.

That's why we have so many kids in child welfare care.

We need to get at the roots of the problem.

Which are poverty, poor housing-- both things related to the inequalities in funding.

Then we have things like addictions and mental health that are owing to residential schools.

Those are things we need to get at.

We can, with equitable services that are culturally-based.

>> Can money solve this problem.

>> It is a big part of solving a problem.

People say you can't throw money at it.

I say when you're giving people far less than everybody else throwing money at the problem to bring them up to the same level of opportunity, that is part of the solution.

But it's not the whole solution.

The full solution is we need to make sure that things are culturally based and available to people to address these very serious traumas that have been going on for over 100 years.

>> Does anyone get this right in the Americas' post-colonialism, in New Zealand, Australia, and America?

>> There are nuggets of possibility happening in all these different places.

But the same kind of systemic failures of behalf of the governments are there.

For example, in the US there was a study in 2016 that showed the various rates of healthcare.

For populations who receive federal funding for--like veterans, federally incarcerated prisoners and Native Americans.

What that study found was a federally incarcerated prisoner received healthcare at the rate of about $6,500 per capita from the US federal government.

Where as a Native American got about $1,200 per capita.

I'm not suggesting the prisoner doesn't deserve that $6,500.

But it makes you wonder why they think Native Americans can get by with $1,200!

We saw that during COVID-19 with the Navaho reservation.

Where you have very few homes with water, then you have those unbelievable rates of COVID.

It's no surprise.

>> Do you find it's the same with anti-Black racism or do you differentiate?

>> I think there are some similarities.

But the difference is the Indian Act.

So there's a piece of legislation that affects First Nations in Canada.

Whereas there isn't a national piece of legislation that would somehow systemically discriminate in a very focused way on Black people in Canada.

There's also the issue of the land.

We've been here for 1,000s of years.

That kind of dispossession of the land story is very important.

That's not to, at all, diminish the experience of racism against Black Canadians.

It is to say it is different.

>> It's interesting because you said or wrote that as a little kid, you felt you ingested some racism as well.

>> Oh yeah, you do.

My first job--I was four years old pinecone picking.

We go out and get gunny sacks, put your pine cones in it and they'd be used to reforest things.

I had no idea, at that same time there were people out there hunting for kids like me to put into residential schools.

You get the sense that who you are is not going to be okay.

I didn't want to grow up to be on welfare or a drunk Indian.

I knew if I was something else, then I had more possibilities.

I can do other stuff.

Look at Mary Tyler Moore on tv.

She had a job, she was a journalist.

There was stuff you could do-- that looked a lot better to me!

You do take on board that systematic racism.

It's like a denial of who you are.

Because if you are who society says you are and you absorb those fences.

>> And those stereotypes.

>> Then your future isn't that great.

>> Tell me about your courage.

You talk about not being comfortable public speaking.

>> Now you do it all the time.

>> I was scared stiff.

That's why I ended up in these obscure courses like 17th century literature and all this other stuff.

I was petrified.

I would look at the syllabus.

If it said presentation, I was out of there.

I think, often we are most afraid of the thing that we have to give most generously to society.

For me, when I was doing social work at the front line level, I saw this discrimination.

It became very crystal clear to me.

What was also evident is I was not the person to do it.

That's what I thought.

So I thought for sure there's somebody else out there who's smarter and knows more than me.

And my job & contribution is I'm going to put the hole in the dyke with the families I'm working with.

And I'm going to wait around for this person to appear.

Then after a year or so, I looked around.

There's lots of people doing exactly what I did.

It came to me--there's a poem in a book of poetry that my aunt gave me by Patrick Overton which says when you step across that place where light leads into darkness, there'll be something solid to stand on or you'll be taught to fly.

And I've been taught to fly by a lot of different people.

I just decided-- I thought I've got to love these kids enough to show them that I love them enough to try.

To get over my own fears, to try and do something.

Even if I fail, then they will have seen me try.

Instead of just standing there and doing nothing while they were being hurt.

>> And know that they were worth it.

I also think of the courage it took to take the government to court and fight for nine years!

>> It's been 16 years now.

The case is still going on.

We had a wonderful teaching by an elder when we created The Caring Society which is the organization I'm honoured to work with.

He said, "Never fall in love with your organization."

The Caring Society.

Because we were so excited.

We finally got some funding to get an office!

He said never fall in love with that.

He said never fall in love with your business card.

Only fall in love with the kids.

Because there will come a day when you have to sacrifice both those things for them.

He actually said to us when we were starting our little organization, "I want you to figure out what you're prepared to die for as an organization."

That was, if the government didn't implement these reports and treat these kids fairly, then we were prepared to go all in.

For that same reason when I stepped across the place where light leads into darkness.

That we wanted to show these kids that we loved them enough to stand with them.

To stand in the winds of that discrimination so that they didn't have to do it alone.

When we filed the complaint, within 30 days the federal government of Canada cut all of our core funding.

Up until today, we're the only Indigenous organization nationally that doesn't have government money.

>> They put you under surveillance for awhile.

It sounds like Martin Luther King... You've been described by a member of Parliament as Canada's Martin Luther King at this moment for First Nations.

>> I'm not sure I'm at that level.

This whole surveillance thing.

>> I'm a social worker >> You're a threat!

>> I don't even have a parking ticket.

You think of surveillance.

You think of people, looking at criminal activity, that stuff.

They were, for over four years-- and we know this from the government's documents.

They wanted to get this case dismissed.

They knew the facts were against them.

So the way they'd get it dismissed was either discrediting me or trying on a procedural item.

That's why they put me under surveillance.

It was found to be unlawful and I was given $20,000 which I donated to all children's organizations.

We actually used some of that money to have a party to celebrate the court case when the kids won.

>> What do you see with the next generation?

>> It depends on whether we trust them with the truth.

When we trust children with the truth and we tell them about residential schools and teach them to how make a difference in society in peaceful and respectful ways, kids step up to the plate.

In our case, the hearing room was populated by non-Indigenous and First Nations kids of all diversities.

They could see clearly what the rest of society couldn't.

Because they hadn't been baked in all this normalization of the discrimination.

They said what do you mean this job doesn't get this or they get this because they're First Nations.

Well, that's wrong!

It needs to be fixed.

No excuses.

So they were active in the case.

I also see a lot of adults freaked out about telling children the truth.

We can't tell them about residential schools.

It will make them uncomfortable.

It's actually not true at all.

When you can tell children difficult things about the world as long as you give them the possibility of being co-creators in a different type of society.

That would make them proud and realize the human rights of other people.

It's the adults who are standing in the way of that future.

>> All of us have to have difficult conversations.

>> That's part of life and growing up.

You know what?

When I look back at my life and think, figuring out this racism is happening to First Nations kids wasn't a very pleasant thing.

But what a blessing I've had to be part of maybe turning the boat on that a bit.

>> You and Spirit Bear are on the right side of history.

>> I think so because the kids are on the right side of history We're taught that children are the most sacred.

Some people think it's the elders in our community.

Elders are important but only because they teach the children.

When you have children of all diversities who can see the possibility of a different world.

Where every child does count, does matter, as we say on Orange Shirt Day.

And they're working towards it.

Then you know you're in the right boat.

>> The final question, what does being a First Nation person in Canada mean to you?

>> It's about seeing--I'm not blind to the wonderful things about living in a society like this, especially for people who live in very toxic situations around the world.

The women in Afghanistan can't go to school.

People in the Ukraine who are fighting against the war.

Those are all things I'm aware that we don't have here.

What I do see myself is having to resolve the contradiction between what Canada says it is and the way it treats First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.

Some people think that it's not patriotic when you're taking the government of Canada to court.

I actually look at it very differently.

I'm not allied to a country per se.

I'm allied to values of a people that get embodied within a community that we call Canada.

My work is as much about bringing Canada in alignment with those values of justice, truth, compassion.

That to me is probably the best I'm going to be able to do on the patriotic front while still recognizing we have fabulous and rightful rights as First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

>> Thank you Cindy.

>> Thank for having me.

>> Such a pleasure talking to you.

>> Thank you.

>> We'll be back next week with another episode of Canada Files .

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