Weechi-it-te-win Family Services

Weechi-it-te-win Family Services[1] is a family services agency focused on the needs of Anishinaabe families in ten communities in the southern part of the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3 in Canada.[2] It provides bicultural aboriginal and mainstream child protection and prevention services based upon cultural competence. Weechi-it-te-win "is an example of First Nations communities reclaiming jurisdiction for their children and safeguarding a cultural heritage shaken by the impacts of colonization, the legacy of the residential schools and intervention by the mainstream child welfare system."[3] Weechi-te-win is a national child protection agency of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3.[4] The defining difference between Weechi-it-te-win and mainstream services is its focus on customary care. Its website says: "Weechi-it-te-win was founded as an Indian Alternative and we continue to envision the revitalizing of an Anishinaabe child care system that is rooted in the customs, traditions and values of the Anishinaabe people."[5]

Children and cultural survival

Like other agencies for aboriginal child protection world-wide, Weechi-it-te-win is focused on the protection of children within a modern aboriginal and also bi-cultural context. "The mission of Weechi-it-te-win is to preserve Indian (Anishinaabe) culture and identity among our people; to strengthen and maintain Indian (Anishinaabe) families and through them our communities; and to assure the growth, support and development of all children within our families and communities."[6] This mission must be understood in the context of a history of both the systemic use of aboriginal child protection for genocidal purposes and the participation of Anishinaabe communities in mainstream society in Canada.[7] Denying a people the right to raise its own children is a method for culturally extinguishing it.[8]

Anishinaabe customary law

Weechi-it-te-win bicultural practice is based upon both customary law of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3 and statutory law of the province of Ontario.[9] Customary care derives from customary laws. Customary Anishinaabe laws are mostly uncodified.[10] Such laws are enforceable in the courts of Canada.[11] "Abinoojii naaniigaan" expresses a foundational legal principle[12] in Anishinaabe law: that the total well-being of a child is the central consideration in the care and protection of children. It means literally, "The child comes first and foremost," and admits neither exception nor excuse. This principle is consistent with but more forceful than the conventional child protection concept: "the best interests of the child". Even more forceful is a companion principle: "kizheowsowin", which invokes the fierce love for, and protection of, children exemplified by a mother bear who will kill or die in the protection of her cubs. Taken together, Anishinaabe customary legal principles reflect a more holistic worldview and so give relatively greater emphasis to spiritual, cultural and relational needs in addition to physical needs of the child. This emphasis seems to be a common element in aboriginal child protection principles and practice.

Community-based services

Weechi-it-te-win's child protection services are community based. Each community has its own service delivery system, which is supported by Weechi-it-te-win. Customary care practices are community-specific because they are adapted to local culture and circumstances.[13] Ontario child protection laws, developed for non-aboriginal culture and urban circumstances, are not necessarily relevant to or effective in these communities and may result in unintended injury to Anishinaabe children.[14]

Enforcement

The Anishinaabe people's maintenance of its customary law and its cultural continuity through its children are aboriginal rights.[15] Such rights are recognized and affirmed by the Canadian Constitution.[16] Although infrequently relied upon in the past, aboriginal laws including customary law continue to be enforceable in Canadian courts.[17] Anishinaabe customary laws, the Canadian Constitution, and Ontario laws are enforced by the Court of Ontario.

Notes
  1. Weechi-it-te-win (from wiiji'idiwin in the Anishinaabe or Ojibwe language) means "looking after each other".
  2. Weechi-it-te-win provides aboriginal child protection services in part of this territory that now falls within the Province of Ontario.
  3. Peter Ferris, Estelle Simard, George Simard, & Jacqueline Ramdatt, "Promising Practices in First Nations Child Welfare Management and Governance," September, 2005, http://www.fncfcs.com/docs/WFSPromisingPractices.pdf; accessed 5 October 2008.
  4. Anishinaabe Abinoojii Family Services is also a national child protection agency of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3, providing bicultural services to five communities in the north-west area of Treaty 3 territory; http://www.aafs.ca/homen.htm, accessed 8 September 2008.
  5. http://www.weechi.ca/index.php; accessed 5 October 2008.
  6. See http://www.weechi.ca/index.php; accessed 5 October 2008.
  7. In 2008, the government of Canada acknowledged and apologized for a major element of this systemic problem; Hansard, Wednesday, 11 June 2008, Stephen Harper, "Apology to Former Students of Indian Residential Schools", http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3568890&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=2; accessed 5 October 2008.
  8. Such actions are now illegal: "In the second half of the twentieth century, removing children from their parents in order to change a people and a culture came to be recognized as an act of oppression, formally considered by the United Nations to be a form of genocide." Andrew Armitage, Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada and New Zealand, UBC Press, Vancouver (1995), p. 6.
  9. The ten communities serviced by Weechi-it-te-win are in Ontario. Initially, Weechi-it-te-win operated under Part X of The Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. c. C11; http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90c11_e.htm.
  10. See, e.g., R. v Secretary of State For Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, [1982] 2 All E.R. 118, wherein Lord Denning said "These customary laws are not written down. They are handed down by tradition from one generation to another. Yet beyond doubt they are well established and have the force of law within the community."
  11. See, for example, Campbell v. Attorney-General of British Columbia, 2000 BCSC 1123, at para. 84: "If it need be said, the common law will be enforced by the courts. The common law has long recognized 'customs' or rules that have obtained the force of law in a particular locality."
  12. This may be a constitutional principle in the sense that it cannot be amended or over-ridden by temporal customary law.
  13. In 2008, the Auditor General of another Province recommended there that "the ministry [of Children and Family Development], in consultation with First Nations and Aboriginal organizations, obtain ... community-by-community knowledge of Aboriginal child protection needs." Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia, "Management of Aboriginal Child Protection Services, May 2008, p. 9; http://www.bcauditor.com/include/view_file.asp?id=10&type=publication, accessed 5 October 2008; there is no similar report for Ontario.
  14. For example, a regulation introduced under Ontario Bill 210 subjects foster homes to searching inquiry that is appropriate to a location where neighbours may be strangers but may be an inappropriate obstacle to finding much-needed culturally-compatible child placements in a close-knit community where almost everyone knows almost everything about almost everyone else. The Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty No. 3 represented by the Executive Directors of Weechi-it-te-win and Anishinaabe Abinoojii Family Services are developing more effective procedures in consultation with Ontario on a community-by-community basis; see correspondence between Ogichidaa Arnold Gardner of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3 and the Ontario Minister of Children and Youth Services on file at Grand Council of Treaty 3, the Ministry and Weechi-it-te-win.
  15. Brian Slattery, "What Are Aboriginal Rights?", in Let Right Be Done: Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case, and the Future of Indigenous Rights, Hamar Foster, Heather Raven and Jeremy Webber (eds), UBC Press, Vancouver (2007); see also SSRN 787244, p. 9.
  16. Constitution Act, 1982 (Can.), s. 35. http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/annex_e.html, accessed 7 September 2008.
  17. "[T]he most salient fact, for the purposes of the question of whether a power to make and rely upon aboriginal law survived Canadian Confederation, is that since 1867 courts in Canada have enforced laws made by aboriginal societies." See: Campbell v. British Columbia, 2000 BCSC 1123.
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