The United Nation's Bizarre Mockery of Women's Rights

Abdulaziz Alwasil, Saudi Arabian representative to the UN Human Rights Council, with Michael Møller(, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva. Switzerland. UN Photo/Pierre Albouy

Infamously, the United Nations, rather than occupy an honourable reputation as an international institution devoted to world peace, equality and the delivery of justice, has become a captive of non-democratic, human-rights-abusing countries which have formed cliques whose numbers and supporters ensure that they have made a mockery of the world body that held out such promise at the time it was developed from an earlier incarnation before the Second World War. 

The League of Nations whose own action on the same files failed to succeed, developed into the United Nations which claimed the high road and took the low road.

The world's worst human rights abusers are regularly voted into positions of power and prestige reflecting the mandate of the United Nations to act as a force for good with the power vested in it by member nations to ensure that the world body would dedicate itself to the promotion of justice and peace, fighting bigotry, delivering aid where it is needed, and sending out its peacekeeping troops where conflict threatened the security and human rights of the oppressed and the downtrodden.

Instead, through self-serving promotion of the very states that fail to respect human rights, the United Nations has become an international club devoted to institutionalizing the status quo.

Just recently a Saudi woman had decided to contest the police who are empowered by misogynistic Saudi law to patrol the streets and arrest women who defy the country's moral codes. And that defiance can take the form of wearing unapproved clothing in public, of having friendly relations with any man not her husband, father or brother, of attempting to drive a car, (a legally outlawed pastime), or to bring attention to herself by any means through which she can demonstrate defiance of Saudi societal norms.

This young woman violated the moral code of the country by appearing in the public arena wearing a dress, a jacket, ankle boots, and no hijab, or abaya, (similar to a floating tent). The idea being that neither her hair or her facial features, save her eyes, should be visible to anyone on the street, much less her bodily form, for to do as she did is to tempt the biological reaction of any passing male who, if they react by violating her through sexual violence, is only reacting normally to her abnormal flaunting of female features.


In Riyadh, police arrested the woman, honouring their sworn duty to monitor and apprehend "violations of general morals". A police spokesman, Fawaz alMaiman, explained that the 20-something Saudi woman deserved imprisonment after posting a photo of herself so garbed, standing beside a Riyadh cafe. She was also, as it happened, "speaking openly about prohibited relations" with unrelated men (on her Twitter account), he explained.

"Riyadh police stress that the action of this woman violates the laws applied in this country". The public was urged by this police spokesman to "adhere to the teachings of Islam" where Saudi women must wear head scarves and loose-fitting garments when in public.  In fact, her tweet, showing herself posed without an abaya or a hijab elicited outraged responses from the public with responses such as "we demand the imprisonment of the rebel Malak al-Shehri".

"We want blood", was another comment, and yet others wrote: "Kill her and throw her corpse to the dogs", as well as "The least punishment for her is beheading her", clearly delineating the civil nature of a mature society. Saudi Arabia is the sole country on Earth that prohibits Saudi women from driving a vehicle. Saudi women must obtain permission from a husband or another male relative to enable them to have a passport, to travel outside of the country, let alone to allow them to marry.

And yet, on November 21, 2016, Saudi Arabia was elected to a three-year term on the United Nations' Human Rights Council. Saudi representative Abdulaziz Alwasil made his entrance to Geneva to embrace his nation's post with the HRC. Saudi Arabia's membership on the UNHRC gives it the right to vote on, to influence, and to oversee various mechanisms, resolutions and initiatives all of which relate to the rights of women on a global scale, including:

• Elimination of discrimination against women
• Equal participation [of women] in political and public affairs
• Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice
• Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences
• Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women
• The right to a nationality: women’s equal nationality rights in law and in practice
• Addressing the impact of multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence in the context of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance on the full enjoyment of all human rights by women and girls
• Annual full day debate on women’s rights
• Annual half-day panel on the integration of a gender perspective

In this March 29, 2010 file photo, Saudi women visit the Saudi Travel and Tourism Investment Market fair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

Sanctimoniously Normalizing Gender Inequality : Islamicizing Canadian Values

"IUMS [International Union for Muslim Scholars] was founded by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading ideologue and a notorious figure who, among other accomplishments, was for many years banned from entering France and endorsed the murder of Israelis."
"That PM Trudeau went to an IUMS-associated mosque is typical of left-leaning politicians, who apply a crude violence filter: if the person has not personally advocated or engaged in violence, then no problem. To put it mildly, that misses the point."
Daniel Pipes, Islamic studies scholar, United States

"Right now we have these political leaders -- ironically, politically liberal leaders -- who are just putting blinders on their eyes about their values."
"That's the big differential for liberals, they fancy themselves as honouring the woman's body and yet the segregation by its very definition hyper-sexualizes women's bodies. That's the great irony."
Asra Nomani, journalist formerly with the Wall Street Journal

"I will meet with Canadians regardless of where they are in Canada. I will speak to inclusive growth, help for the middle class. I will talk about gender equality. I will talk about the rights of the LGBT community."
"We [Liberal Government of Canada] will continue to promote the values which bring us [Canadians of all origins] together."
"Diversity is a source of strength, not just a source of weakness, and as I look at this beautiful room [Ottawa Mosque] -- sisters upstairs -- everyone here [I see] the diversity we have just within this mosque, within the Islamic community, within the Muslim community in Canada."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to members of the Muslim community in Ottawa, Monday September 12, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

"So whether you're in an indigenous community or in a community of faith or in a military community ... there are a number of traditions and cultures and standards that the community upholds and I think the respectful thing is to understand that it might not be your practise but it is theirs."
Patty Hajdu, Minister for the Status of Women

Minister Hajdu chooses to overlook that respect goes both ways. When in Rome... She did not accompany Prime Minister Trudeau on his courtesy visit to the gender-segregated mosque in Ottawa on Monday -- respectfully acknowledging Eid al-Adha, the holy feast day at the conclusion of Ramadan for the world's Muslims -- but three other female Members of Parliament accompanied him when he addressed the gathering at the mosque. Mr. Trudeau entered by the front door of the mosque.

The female Members of Parliament made their arrival through a side door and stood separated from all males present, demurely head-covered; not a Canadian custom, nor were they invited to address the gathering on this splendid social/religious occasion. Men on the main floor of the mosque, where the Prime Minister spoke, and women and girls in other portions of the mosque or on a balcony,

Only men are permitted on the main floor. Women will watch Trudeau from balcony. David Akin

Ms. Nomani, author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam noted that recent surveys reveal that mosques are increasingly separating men from women congregants, an steadily growing trend from a decade earlier. So much for Muslim adaptability to the values and priorities of equality between the sexes, with Islamist values superseding the values and guarantees under the Canadian Charter of Rights.

As for Mr. Trudeau's verbal assurances of his intention to speak of gender equality and the rights of the LGBT community, he somehow managed to overlook doing just that in his remarks, and nor did he blink when he remarked on the separation of "sisters upstairs". His presence and that of the other Members of Parliament, at a mosque whose imam is connected with Islamism, a ferociously radicalizing form of Islam, signals either a lax intelligence or an obtuse executive function in upholding Canadian values.

The lead imam at the Ottawa Muslim Association, Samy Metwally, according to the mosque's own website, is "a member of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS). The United Arab Emirates since 2014 has placed the group on its list of designated terrorist organizations. And the Muslim Brotherhood has also been designated a terrorist organization, by at least half a dozen countries globally, including Egypt.

Canada has yet to do so, though its junior offshoot, Hamas, is on Canada's designated terrorist list. Both the Brotherhood and Hamas have infiltrated Canada. The Ottawa Mosque, just incidentally, was mentioned in an August report issued by co-authors Thomas Quiggin, formerly an intelligence analyst with the Privy Council Office and the RCMP, and Saied Shoaaib, a journalist originally from Egypt who conducted research in mosque libraries and Islamic schools, concluding that Islamist extremist literature exclusively was featured in those venues across Canada.

"The struggle for the soul of Islam between Islamists and humanists goes on in Canada and the U.S.A., not just in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia", the study noted.

The Ottawa Mosque -- ReSearch

The Vulnerability of First Nations Women

"There is an unmistakable connection between homicide and family violence."
RCMP deputy commissioner Janice Armstrong

"The relationship between the victim and the offender was particularly relevant in that over 90 percent of the women represented within the homicide data were known to the victim."
"Most often the offender was a spouse, a family member or an acquaintance."
RCMP Supt. Tyler Bates

RCMP Deputy Commissioner Janice Armstrong, left, answers a question from a reporter as Superintendent Tyler Bates looks on during the release of the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: 2015 Update to the National Operational Overview Report in Ottawa on Friday, June 19, 2015. (Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

"We cannot ignore the evidence or the reality."
"There is a significant and tragic over-representation of indigenous women among the missing and murdered in this country. This is not just a First Nations issue, this is a Canadian issue and we all have a role to play."
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde

"These are terrible crimes against innocent people. The RCMP has said itself in its own study that the vast majority of these cases are addressed and are solved through police investigations."
"We don't need yet another study on top of the some 40 studies that have already been done; we need police to catch those responsible and ensure they're punished."
Andrew McGrath, spokesman for Status of Women Minister Kellie Leitch

A year ago the RCMP issued a report detailing some statistics among which was that between 1980 and 2012, some 1,181 aboriginal women were murdered or missing. That data released yet another barrage of demands that the Government of Canada set up an investigative commission to look into the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women. The government has consistently resisted these demands, and so they should; more than ample evidence exists that the reality needs no further investigation.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt, meeting with aboriginal leaders last March stated that 70 percent of murdered aboriginal women were killed by aboriginal men. His statement unleashed another tsunami of blame; not against the aboriginal community in which women are devalued and violated, but against the government for not 'doing something' about the situation, and doing something seemed always to come back to launching an official enquiry.

First Nations leaders are disinterested in the reality that their culture has stagnated to the point where dysfunction is the order of the day, every day. And included in that dysfunction is the violence directed toward aboriginal women, and usually from and by men they know and trust, who betray that trust. The chiefs, hearing Mr. Valcourt tell it like it is were outraged; they had no intention of taking any blame, nor of having aboriginals blamed for their cultural dystopia.

Now, another report has been released by the RCMP. Which stated last Friday that female victims, irrespective of their ethnic origin continue to be targets by men within their own homes and communities. This data was based on findings under the force's jurisdiction. And those findings indicate that homicides of aboriginal women are solved in 81 percent of instances as opposed to the 83 percent of cases solved involving non-aboriginal women.

And critically, since the release of the original report, yet another 32 aboriginal women in the space of a year have been murdered, with eleven more having disappeared. First Nations simply refuse to take ownership of the situation. And AFN National Chief Bellegarde insists that this is no First Nations problem, but rather a Canadian problem, one that involves all Canadians, as though it is non-aboriginal Canadians who have someone manipulated and inspired aboriginal culture to produce this end.

RCMP Supt. Bates explained the 'acquaintance' category he attributes some of the violence against aboriginal women to by identifying them as "primarily neighbours" or associates, not discounting "criminal relationships". And so, the Assembly of First Nations calls this a national crisis; which in a sense it is, but in the AFN stating this to be so, it passes the buck, once again; since implicit in its statement is the belief that the Government of Canada must solve the problem, not First Nations leaders.

The irony here being that the AFN and its chiefs forever at one another's throats, repudiate, resent and reject interference by the Government of Canada and provincial governments in First Nations affairs; just send cash, and more of it, thank you very much, and they'll run with it to provide all the supports and services required by reserve aboriginals whose family lives are absolute horrors of dysfunctional pathology.

But it remains politically incorrect, and is not supported by the opposition political parties to call the AFN, let alone the First Nations communities to task for themselves not seeking to find a solution to a problem that is primarily theirs to solve.

Political Correctness Outrage

"There will be situations and have been situations where, largely, men will see themselves as able to press themselves onto our women members."
"It would be a trite answer, but it's because we are biologically wired in a certain way, and there will be those who believe it is a reasonable thing to press themselves and their desires on others."
"We need to do everything we can to deal with any issues that stand in the way of someone coming forward [to report sexual misconduct]."
"I think what we've not been able to get across is that we've gotten much much better than we were years ago."
Chief of the Defence Staff General Tom Lawson, Ottawa

Chief of the National Defence Staff Gen. Tom Lawson prepares to appear at a House of Commons committee on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Wednesday, June 17, 2015. (Fred Chartrand / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

"At the most serious extreme, these reports of sexual violence highlighted the use of sex to enforce power relationships and to punish and ostracize a member of a unit."
"[A] hostile sexualized environment [exists in the military, from sexual innuendo to] dubious relationships [between women and their male superiors]."
Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps -- report on the Canadian Armed Forces' 'underlying sexual culture'

"Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry."
Professor Sir Tim Hunt, British biologist, Nobel Laureate, 72

Sir Tim Hunt has been forced to resign his position at University College London over the female faux-pas -- Mail Online

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"The first step is to recognize that these emotional differences do indeed exist, and to be honest about them. Sir Tim Hunt was doing what he has done all his life -- pointing out a natural phenomenon he had observed He did not deserve to be pilloried, and should be reinstated forthwith to his academic positions."

Boris Johnson, London (a man of uncommon good sense)

That little bit of truth delivered with a dollop of wry humour by Sir Tim Hunt went, as they say, viral. Following the delivery of that statement and the infuriated reaction of the politically correct left that permeates academia and much of society today echoing feminist sensitivities, the good professor has suffered the indignity of having been stripped of honourary positions at University College London and the Royal Society. We simply cannot have anyone so discredited honoured now, can we?

Well, in actual fact, the genders are indeed biologically differentiated. Men and women act differently from one another, think differently, appear different physically and react to one another's physical differentiation differently, depending on which sex they represent. Both can be amorous, though women tend to be more cautious and men more aggressively demanding. And when men and women are thrown together in workplace situations, social situations can arise from them.

Revelations of sexual misconduct on the part of men toward women in the Armed Forces are hardly surprising; they reflect the general population on steroids. Men in uniform tend for the most part to be more physically assertive and hormonally charged; their very profession ramps up their testosterone. When women were first introduced into the military it was predicted that complications in reaction would ensue, and they did. This is by no means a Canadian phenomenon; it happens all over the world.

This doesn't excuse the violence, the oppression, the threats that emanate from some men toward some women, but it does express a situation of endowments with which nature has addressed the genders for the purpose of inciting to procreation, as animals. General Lawson simply stated forthrightly what he knows to be the truth of biology and interactions between the sexes. For that he too has been pilloried.

Causing him to attempt to explain himself further by issuing an apology for "awkward characterization" of the issue, as he put it. He will not be forgiven in certain quarters. The living truth, as evolutionary biologists point out, is that some men inherit traits predisposing them to sexual violence. Society trusts that social mores impinge upon them to restrain their impulses, that cultural and workplace influences can cause them to moderate their actions, but this is not always so.

Professor Hunt has seen his academic credentials trashed because of a light-hearted comment on the 'differences' between the sexes. At the age of 72, it has been made clear to him that honours in recognition of the outstanding scientific work he is known for internationally do not balance the horror of his statement on the scale of social justice. And he must now accommodate himself to carrying a legacy other than those he earned with distinction.

General Tom Lawson is on the cusp of retiring as Chief of the Defence Staff; his replacement has been named. He can only hope that this injudicious statement of his however reflective of reality, given the tenor of times, will not haunt his future, nor blacken his legacy. Sometimes a tempest in a teapot becomes a hurricane of nasty wretchedness, unearned but unstoppable.

The Culture of Misogyny

"A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy."
"When being raped, she shouldn't fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they'd have dropped her off after 'doing her', and only hit the boy."
"You can't clap with one hand -- it takes two hands. A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal."
"Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 percent of girls are good."
Mukesh Singh, one of the six Indian men convicted of the Delhi bus gang rape

"If my daughter or sister engaged in premarital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight."
A.P. Singh, defence lawyer, India

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images   In this photograph taken on September 11, 2013, Indian Defence lawyer AP Singh addresses the media outside the Saket Court complex in New Delhi.

The gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, 23, a university student returning from an evening out at the cinema with a male friend, horrified the world. India was embarrassed enough that its parliament voted in new laws on punishment for rape. The atrocity where this young woman was beaten, gang-raped and had iron bars inserted in her stomach cavity destroying her viscera and killing her, was an expression of the contempt in which certain members of Indian society view women.

Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP/Getty Images   Indian activists from the Social Unity Center of India (SUCI) shout slogans against the state government in protest against the gang-rape and murder of two girls in the district of Badaun in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and recent rapes in the eastern state of West Bengal, in Kolkata on June 7, 2014. The protests came amid a growing uproar over the killings in Uttar Pradesh, with the United Nations saying violence against women should be regarded as a matter of basic human rights. The two cousins, aged 14 and 15. 

 

Despite a toughening of the laws against rape, women and girls continue to be attacked, raped, and murdered. Low-caste girls and women have few protections against the predators that think nothing of committing these crimes. Indian police notoriously are disinterested in pressing charges, much less investigating complaints. The shame inherent in a girl or woman having been raped -- if she survives -- is such that families make every effort to conceal the event.

AP Photo

The interview where this convicted rapist/murderer made his statements was for the production of a BBC documentary. Mukesh Singh claimed that Jyoti Singh, the victim, was the criminal, not the victim, and by extension the six men who brutalized and murdered her are victims of her criminal act of resisting them. Had she and her friend not attempted to fight back to protect her from what occurred, the gang would have had no reason to inflict the savagery she experienced.

The killing was a mere "accident", according to this odious man. Indian courts passed death sentences on the gang. Mukesh Singh, 26 at the time of the carnage, was a slum-dweller and he drove the bus the gang had commandeered. The presiding judge at his trial rejected his claims of non-involvement in the gang rape, stating that the case had "shocked the collective conscience" of India.

Evidently not the conscience of those like Mukesh Singh, and lawyers like A.P. Singh -- representing low and high social order -- who will continue to believe they did nothing wrong, and that custom validates that belief, evident in the ongoing reports of repulsively vicious attacks on girls and women throughout India, including unfortunate tourists, innocent in their belief that they can be safe as women in public in India.

Upholding Islamic Values

"It was very annoying."
"They did cause a big problem. However, it is the law I suppose, so we just have to put up with it."
Saudi Arabian store clerk, Riyadh

"All roads lead to Mohammed bin Nayef when it comes to the people who are in prison for political reasons."
"They say he's very effective in fighting terrorism. From my point of view that is not true, but in any case otherwise it seems that civil society is over."
Saudi activist, selfp-protectively anonymous

The new Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is losing no time in alerting Saudis to the fact that the old rule is gone, and the new rule is beginning. Under King Abdullah, who died last month at a respectable 90, a cautious, slow and hopeful relaxation of the venerated misogyny inherent in the culture surrounding Islam had begun to creep into Saudi society. Not too soon, never enough, for the liberated women of Saudi Arabia who are anything but liberated.

But a law had been enacted giving them permission to run for public office at the municipal level; eventually. And a more tolerant view of some day permitting Saudi women to drive, to go off on trips without their husband's specific permission, and to take employment in places where, for example, women's lingerie is sold. But still, women must be modest and wear the all-concealing abayas.

Under the impression that their country was slowly but inevitably drawing itself into the 20th Century while other parts of the world were solidly in the 21st Century, Saudi women were beginning to think they were butterflies, not merely moths, and the flame they were attracted to was colour; not necessarily vibrant colour, but colours other than black. Black is the approved colour for the abayas.

Some are avialable now in grey, in blue, in brown; not earth-shatteringly flamboyant and expressive of joy, but a tad different. Forget it; colour is seen as a violation of the modesty code. Sending public decency officers sweeping through Riyadh's shopping malls streaming into stores selling the abayas that Saudi women by law must wear to ensure that vulnerable men are not sent out of their minds with desire if they see a bit of female flesh.

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is not as encumbered with concern over permitting women a bit of equality; he knows where they belong, and it is definitely behind a black abaya, quietly accompanied by a male relative in public if she is not at home tending to the house and children. Known familiarly, but not evidently fondly as "MBN" this man is the first of the generation of princes who will become king.

At age 55, he is grooming himself for the grim purpose of taking the absolute monarch into the future by echoing the past. He has been busy seeing that dissidents are being securely locked up. Lawyers and writers who succeeded in the recent past in insisting on due legal process, or those who argued for a constitutional monarchy are now thinking about the errors of their ways as they serve their punishing decade in prison.

Montreal city council is lending its support to Raif Badawi, as well as his wife and three children who are currently living in Quebec. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

Among them is Raif Badawi, sentenced to prison but also to a thousand lashes, to mercilessly flog the insolence of criticism out of his very core. And the beheading videos that have so appalled the world that ISIS so proudly places on YouTube for the delectation of their appreciative audience? It is simply a common sentence handed down to those whom Saudi justice recognizes as a deviant and devious threat to the state.

Killing Christmas

"For any of us who have kids, and I have three little girls all around the same age, it's just unbelievable what's taken place. We're all trying to get through it."
"I just remember a girl that was smiling from ear to ear and I recall her sitting on Santa's knee."
"They're hurting right now [child's parents] big time, as I think all of us are who know the little girl."
Shane Pospisil, co-manager, Paul band

"They called him Boss. He would sing powow, he would sing at most of the funerals and wakes around here."
"He was one of those kids who always wanted to go partying. When he would get drunk, he would black out."
Band member asking for anonymity

"It's so devastating. I have no words for it. It killed our Christmas."
Child's great-grandmother

"Everyone should be there for our little ones. When you're in a community like this, you're all family. We have to find healing, we have to find understanding."
Elder Kirby Bird

On Saturday the Paul Band First Nation west of Edmonton called in an emergency. And medical crews responded to pick up a six-year-old girl with blunt trauma injuries. A child who had been kidnapped, sexually assaulted, left naked in the snow in the woods, to be discovered by family members out searching for "several hours", to find the child close to death.

Air ambulance rushed her to Edmonton's Stollery Children's Hospital to attend to the "very serious injuries she sustained during the attack". Still unconscious, but the hope is that the little girl will recover. The child's parents are devastated and remain by her bedside. Native elders have appeared at the hospital as well, praying for her.

And on Monday, a 21-year-old local man was charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and attempted murder. His name James Clifford Paul, arrested on the Alexis First Nation, about 40 kilometres northeast of the Paul Band First Nation. Remanded in custody until January 7 for his first court appearance in Stony Plain.

"The arrest came about so quickly because local citizens picked up the phone and called investigators with the information they needed", explained Superintendent Gary Steinke with the RCMP Serious Crimes Unit. The arrested man has some history of criminal activity; scheduled to appear in court in Cochrane on an assault charge and in Glenevis a small hamlet, on a charge of assault and mischief to property.

The man and the girl knew one another. "The relationship to the family is still under investigation", advised Superintendent Steinke. The child's great-grandmother also said that the man accused is known to the child, a member of Paul Band. The entire band, said the great-grandmother, is supporting each other. She saw the girl once in a while, but the little girl was being cared for by another family on the reserve.

Yet another of the many horrific instances that destroy the lives of girls and women on First Nations band reserves where violence is prevalent, and women are victimized incessantly. And where family dysfunction finds children not living with their parents who for one reason or another seem incapable of caring for them.

And the question once again looms: when are these communities going to take possession of their social dysfunction? Not that such horrible events don't happen elsewhere, because they most certainly do. But First Nations peoples are too swift to point to White discrimination as the source of all that ails First Nations.