State of care: the ontologies of child welfare in British Columbia

Abstract

This is a paper about child-welfare regulations, policies, and practices as they impact Indigenous families and communities. I take as my starting point that child welfare, and geographies of Indigenous homes and families, are under-scrutinized ontologies worthy of more investigation especially by geographers interested in understanding neo settler-colonial power – and how to unsettle it. I track historical logics of state intervention into Indigenous families through to the present day, reviewing the empirics of child removals and state interventions into contemporary Indigenous families in British Columbia, Canada. Curtailing the state’s ongoing disruption of Aboriginal families and communities, I conclude, requires understanding child welfare ontologically, as historically contiguous with other colonial projects, and as premised in great part on ungrounded logics of ‘common sense’ that (re)produce Indigenous families and communities as rarified and othered geographies in constant need of intervention.

Navigating Structural Violence with Indigenous Families: The Contested Terrain of Early Childhood Intervention and the Child Welfare System in Canada

“…This research also illustrates how AIDP workers' resistance to the state oppression of Indigenous women was enacted through AIDP relational practices that emphasized women's positive identity and agency in motherhood. A strengths-based relational approach provided a critical counter-narrative to historicallyconstituted and persistent racialized discourses that pathologize Indigenous women as unfit and uncaring mothers, thereby legitimizing the need for "child protection" (de Leeuw, 2014;Maxwell, 2014). AIDPs' strengths-based and relational orientation to supporting family well-being (Gerlach et al, 2016) is consistent with a transformative approach to the Child, Family and Community Services Act; this transformative approach has been advocated by Indigenous communities and leaders in B.C.…”

“…Today, the continuity of colonial state power is structured through the contemporary child welfare system (McKenzie et al, 2016), which is upheld by enduring patriarchal and racialized discourses that portray Indigenous women as "unfit" mothers and their children as "at risk" (Cull, 2006;de Leeuw, 2014). In the province of B.C., where this research took place, Indigenous children currently comprise 8% of the total child population and 53% of the child population living in "out-of-home care" (Representative for Children and Youth, 2013).…”

Theatre for health: "Playing" the price of colonialism on the health of indigenous peoples in Saik'uz territory.

“…For example, the language of child welfare policies in British Columbia has changed over time to reflect understanding that it is imperative to the well-being of Indigenous children that they be connected to their families and culture. However, the practice of child welfare in BC has resulted in more Indigenous children in care than at the height of Residential School mandates (de Leeuw, 2014). Therefore, seeking to understand these languages and the ideas that support their uses may contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between racism and Indigenous health inequities.…”

“…These assumptions are also and importantly located in a colonial project wherein Indigenous children were taken from their families and communities and sent away to Residential School or, in the present day, are apprehended (de Leeuw, 2014). The disconnection from their families began here and the recovery from this historical trauma is slow and complicated.…”

Examining the climate for Aboriginal mothers in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs): an exploratory qualitative study about views of health care professionals

“…In an article about racism towards Indigenous people in Canadian health care, the author makes reference to the damages inflicted to Indigenous peoples by Canada's health care system through imposition of Canadian health laws and policies on Indigenous groups (Matthews, 2016). A lack of recognition about the colonial context in Canada and the impact of this on child-welfare regulations, practices, and policies provide a platform for the discussion of the data pertaining to 21 infants under the age of two that died between 1 June 2007 and 1 May (de Leeuw, 2013. Of the 21 infants that died under the "protection" of the MCFD, 15 infants were Aboriginal (de Leeuw, 2013).…”