GUELPH – Family and Children’s Services of Guelph and Wellington County (FCSGW) has recognized three Indigenous women for their work in child welfare advocacy.
Tauni Sheldon, Donna Dubie and Wendy Stewart were presented with FCSGW’s Award of Merit on June 20.
“The invaluable contributions of these Indigenous leaders and unwavering dedication to their communities serves as an inspiration to us all,” FCSGW officials state.
“This is the first time in local history Indigenous providers have been recognized for our child welfare advocacy,” Stewart said.
Sheldon, Dubie and Stewart advocate for Indigenous children involved with child welfare societies across Ontario. They are not agents of family and children’s services but independent providers who offer culturally appropriate support to Indigenous families.
Inuit advocacy
Sheldon lives in Ospringe and is Inuk from Nunavut and Northern Quebec, a Sixties Scoop survivor, and a cultural advisor with Kamatsiarniq.
Sixties Scoop refers to the removal of tens of thousands of Indigenous children from their families into the Canadian child welfare system.
Kamatsiarniq translates to “a place where Inuit are welcome” and is a child welfare program at Tunjasuvvingat Inuit, a non-profit service provider.
Sheldon oversees Inuit culture with families, supports Inuit families through navigating the child welfare system and guides children’s aid societies regarding Inuit culture and Inuit rights.
“Its important for Inuit to have that advocacy and support,” Sheldon said, “especially as none of us are on our traditional lands” in southern Ontario.
Tauni said Inuit are often swept under a pan-Indigenous approach, or assumed to be First Nations, instead of recognized as a distinct Indigenous group.
When Inuit are sent to Ontario from northern Canada through the child welfare system, she said it’s important the children “remain connected to who they are as Inuit.”
Sheldon said she “has that fire to try and be that voice for people who don’t have their voice or don’t know what to do,” because she knows how it feels to be a voiceless child.
Her family and her adoptive family are “still trying to understand the Sixties Scoop.”
“For my birth mother, it was very traumatic,” she said. Sheldon’s birth mother had arranged for a traditional Inuit adoption, but instead Sheldon was “scooped” and taken away to Ontario.
“I was a baby when I was apprehended” and at that time, there weren’t Indigenous people in the system who could advocate for her, Sheldon said.
After decades apart, Sheldon reconnected with her mother and said they now have a loving relationship. On Sheldon’s 50th birthday, she spent the day with her mother – the first birthday with her mother since the day she was born.
“We cried and held each other,” Sheldon said, adding she hears many stories similar to her own through her work.
First Nations
Dubie is an intergenerational residential school survivor who is Haudenesounee Turtle Clan from the territory of the Grand River.
She’s the founder and executive director of Healing of the Seven Generations (HSG), a nonprofit organization in Kitchener that supports Indigenous people in Waterloo, Wellington, Guelph and surrounding areas suffering the impacts of the residential school system.
Stewart, who lived in Erin from 1968 until 2019, is Bay of Quinte Mohawk Turtle Clan and the founder of Tall Tree Indigenous Peace Building Circles, a non-profit that supports Indigenous families and children through healing circles.
The circles go beyond conflict resolution, Stewart said, and work to “wrap around a family” and rally to figure out what they need.
Her work centres around safety, helping the family “address what they don’t do so well,” and emphasizing their strengths.
She builds relationships and trust with the families and helps them become aware “of their identity that was stolen from them.”
“If they are First Nations, I can say ‘here are your teachings – this is who you are. These values are pretty important. This is what was taken from you.’
“If they are Ojibwe, I can say ‘you are an Anishinaabekwe; an Ojibwe woman. I want you to keep repeating that.’”
Then she starts connecting them with “helpers,” many of whom work at HSG.
The helpers’ support includes food security, housing, health care, education, court support and ceremonies.
“It takes a village,” Stewart said, “and we are building that village.”
There is nothing like HSG in Wellington County or Guelph, so many Indigenous locals go to Kitchener to receive this support, Stewart explained.
Funding
And though HSG supports hundreds of people from Clifford to Kitchener, funding is limited, Dubie noted.
“Funding for Indigenous community organizations is always on the sparse side – an Indigenous organization will only be funded two thirds of what a mainstream organization is,” she said.
“We ride on grants for the most part,” Stewart said, “but grants are not sustainable.”
“It’s like the Canadian government wants us to fail,” Stewart said.
“We need resources,” Dubie said, “we need them to walk beside us, because we can’t do it all alone. But we aren’t asking them to control us as they walk beside us – walk beside us in friendship and understanding.”
She compared keeping the organization afloat on such a tight budget to “surviving above the drowning line of a flood.”
But despite the low funds, “We are going to do everything we can to better help those children,” Dubie said.
With more resources, they would like to create a place like HSG in Wellington County or Guelph, Dubie and Stewart said.
‘Canada did this’
Supports such as those offered at HSG are essential to combatting systemic issues such as the over-representation of Indigenous people in foster care, shelters, prisons and hospitals, “yet do we get the help to better our people? Absolutely not,” Dubie said.
“We basically top the chart at everything,” Stewart said: suicide, domestic violence, child welfare system, criminal system, poverty.
Dubie said it’s important to recognize these issues are results of the residential school system and the Sixties Scoop: “Canada did this to our people.
“The Canadian government didn’t want any more Indian ‘problem,’” Stewart said, so that’s why they wanted to take the Indian out of the child.”
And they took away more than just culture, Stewart said – “They disposed of everything. Family. Teachings. Land. Inheritance.”
Dubie said many Indigenous families struggling “don’t even know themselves why they are dysfunctional,” but their parents, grandparents and great grandparents were abused in residential schools and were told they could never speak about it, so turned to drugs, alcohol, gambling and other addictions to try to escape the pain.
“Canada is saying between 150,000 and 200,000 people were in residential schools,” Dubie said. “They have families, those families have families,” and the trauma is passed on from one generation to the next.
Indigenous children were shamed for their culture and told it was “evil devil worship,” which made them “afraid to be who they really are” and speak their traditional languages even after leaving school, Dubie said.
The children also experienced a wide range of physical and sexual abuse.
“They come out as young teens and young adults who don’t know how to be parents because of all those things that they were taught. Those things they were taught became parenting skills,” she said.
‘Knows the history’
“In order to service a family, you’ve got to have someone that understands that culture and knows the history,” Stewart said.
“All their lives they have been told they are a piece of shit,” she said. “We are saying, ‘guess what? You are not a piece of shit, and you do matter. (The Creator doesn’t) make mistakes, and Creator made you. So come on, let’s pull up your socks, let’s go.”
Dubie said organizations such as HSG, Tall Tree and Kamatsiarniq help families “get back in touch with their culture and understand who they are.”
Stewart said some children first learn they are Indigenous after connecting with an advocate through the child welfare system.
“We bring them back to the teachings. Help them build their self esteem. Help them build that spirit in them. Help them live a good life,” Stewart said. “We teach them how they can pray,” and about Indigenous stories and world views.
With ceremonies and traditional medicines, the advocates help families “move away from the drugs and alcohol and abuses. Because that’s not who we are as a people,” Dubie said.
“We are not ‘heathens,’ not ‘dirty Indians,’ we have heart and spirit,” she said. “We are people. We just want to survive – and have an awesome day.”
“Our community has a lot of kindness,” Sheldon added. “That’s our teachings.” But she said kindness can be a hard thing to achieve, “because we weren’t raised with kindness,” and faced lifelong systemic abuse, racism and criticism.
“You were beaten up as a kid when you went to mainstream school,” she said, and many Indigenous mothers had child welfare show up in the hospital as soon as they gave birth, “and you didn’t even do anything wrong.
“So to walk with kindness – it takes a lot.”
Breaking the cycle
Stewart said it’s significant for her when she sees children she worked with grow up to flourish as healthy and happy adults, “knowing that cycle is broken, and they are going to be okay.”
Some of the children grow up to be child welfare advocates themselves, she said.
Dubie said receiving the Merit Award was meaningful as it shows how far they have come along “a very long road.
“The award really recognized our endurance and our dedication to the community. Not just our contributions to child welfare, but the tough journey that we had and our resilience,” she said
Sheldon said it was an honour, particularly to share it with Stewart and Dubie, though it “felt kinda strange, as it’s not really the Inuit way to be awarded or recognized.”
Sheldon said she, Stewart and Dubie often “go beyond what we are asked to do … because we know the need is out there,” and they appreciate being recognized for that.
And she said FCSGW “has really taken a few extra steps, compared to other children’s aid societies, to work in Indigenous well-being.”
“We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate and partner with Wendy, Donna and Tauni; working together to disrupt and change the legacy of child welfare with Indigenous communities,” FCSGW officials state.
Sheldon said she has hope for the future because “we are in a day now of truth and reconciliation.
“We can’t erase the past,” Sheldon said, “but it left a legacy that is impacting Indigenous people.”
And now that the truth is out in the open, “We can work together as all people,” towards a better future.
