b'OP/EDHelping Our Children By Ashley BachCOME HOMEH ow can you know who you are if you dont knowassimilated with the ruling power.1 Despite best efforts to repair where youre from? This question is asked over andthe relationship with First Nations, many non-Indigenous child over by advocates for First Nations children andwelfare systems still implement what the quote intends: cultural youth in the child welfare system. It goes deepergenocide by preventing First Nations children from practising than asking what reserve you are from. It addresses who youtheir rights to land, ceremony, language and community.are as a First Nations person: do you know your ancestors? TheFirst Nations youth are disproportionately removed from their traditions and ceremony which guided them? The lands andfamilies, First Nations, cultures and the lands their ancestors waters you and your Nation come from? The answers to thesehave called home for millennia: 52.2 per cent of children under questions are often out of reach for First Nations children livingage 14 in foster care across Canada are Indigenous, despite only in non-Indigenous child welfare systems across the country.comprising 7.7 per cent of the total population under age 14. Despite best intentions, a foster parents Google search or anThe federal government estimated in 2016 that approximately educational pamphlet from social workers cannot replace such14,970 Indigenous foster children were in private homes.2 Older intimate knowledge.teens, those living in residential care or group homes, and Removing Indigenous children from their families, traditions,those who have aged out of the system further add to this cultures and lands is at the core of colonialismthe Indian Residential School system, Sixties Scoop and now Millennium Scoop are key examples. Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau1 Doxtator, Elizabeth. Home and Native Land. Two Row Times, 15 Feb. 2017, https:// infamously stated, If you no longer speak your languagetworowtimes.com/opinion/home-and-native-land/. Accessed 11 September 2019.and no longer practise your culture, then you have no right to2 Government of Canada. Reducing the number of Indigenous children in care.demand Aboriginal rights from us (Canada) because you areIndigenous children in foster care, 21 Jun. 2019, https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1541187352297/1541187392851. Accessed 10 September 2019.62 The Circle Winter Issue 1 2019'