A Loving Home

"It is reverse racism."
"I suppose the Metis people would prefer to put a positive spin on it, but I don't know how you can have positive racism. They will say it is cultural rather than racist, but we all know what the facts are and the facts are this: I have two Filipino clients that are ideal parents that can't adopt a child of Metis background -- no matter how long that child has been in their care, because they are not culturally appropriate."
"And it is a tragedy for this little boy."
Paul Walsh, Winnipeg lawyer

"We refer to it as '60s Scoop. Thousands of children were taken away from their culture and their communities, and a lot of communities are still suffering the effects of that."
"Our children are the spirit of our communities. If you don't have that spirit, if you don't have children in your life, you lose all purpose in life."
"I'd be really sad if people could just open the door and say goodb6ye to a child that they have cared for without there being some feeling of loss. But, again, I don't think it has to be the end for them. If everybody is doing this right the adoptive family will see that these [foster parents] are people who need to be involved in the adoptive child's life and be a resource to the family who is adopting them."
"It doesn't matter what your culture is."
Billie Schibler, CEO, Metis Child and Family Services Authority

So there. It doesn't matter what your culture is. It does, though, matter if your ethnicity is not right. And perhaps culture goes along with that. Filipinos are well known to adore their children. Perhaps they adore all children. This couple whom the little boy in question refers to as "Mama" and "Papa", certainly love the child they have raised for two years.

He came to them as a foster child when he was six months of age, and he's now two and a half years old. They love him and want to legally adopt him as their own. But he is part Metis and they are Filipino-Canadians. The twain may meet temporarily, in an anxious pinch for aid, but permanently? Perish the thought. (How ever did Jean Chretien and his wife manage to adopt their last child, a First Nations child? Just asking.)

In this instance, not being Minister of Indian Affairs, the Filipino-Canadian couple will not have Manitoba's Metis Child and Family Services Authority viewing their bid with favour. They consider their aspiration to be a bad cultural fit. This, when it is well enough known that First Nations children returned to the loving bosom of their tribe from a respite in the care of non-Native fosters, all too often suffer maltreatment, child abuse, neglect.

But that child's First Nations identity is oh so much more vital to its well-being than being raised in a supportive, loving household with parents who dote on them and fully intend to honour the child's background by exposing the child when the time is right to the culture from which the child came, so it will not be forgotten; a bi-cultural, privileged child of two world views, as it were.

Too bad, so sad. It is just not to be, if First Nations tribes have anything to say about it. And they do, they have a lot to say about it.