NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Word would go out early that there'd be a dance at Rode River's hall.

Breath freezing as it mixed with the long winter night, an entire community would tramp up to the hall to dance the night away.

Wind and water have worn the long resettled community back to the land from which it sprang and Bertha Francis's 70 years have taken her through sunlight and shadow, but the Fort McPherson elder can still hear the fiddle music in that hall.

"There were 12 to 14 of us, but we had a good upbringing," said Francis. "My parents stood together. When my mom said something, we had to listen, had to work together."

She turned to those lessons from her parents in the decades to come while raising her own seven children. But to get back to her culture's knowledge on community and parenting, she had to peer through years of darkness.

"At seven years I was dragged down the river by a mission boat to a residential school," she said, her voice cracking. "I would look up at the mountains ... and wonder where my parents were, if they were up there.

I don't want to talk about it anymore."

At the height of Canada's residential school system, 1949, there were 8,900 aboriginal children in 130 residential schools. According to the Report on the Review of the Child and Family Services Act released last Thursday, in 2003 there were 30,000 aboriginal children in out-of-home care across Canada. The report condemns the widespread practice of removing children from remote communities to distant foster homes, comparing the effects on both the child and their community to the damage done by the residential school system.

"Families lose their children instead of getting help to cope; children are sent away to distant foster parents instead of to the homes of extended family," reads the report by the Standing Committee on Social Programs. "Alcohol and other addictions ravage families and communities but there are few practical avenues for treatment, and little or no local support for those who do strive to break free."

The report came after committee members held public meetings in communities across the NWT, were briefed by social workers, former and present clients of the child welfare system, studied how services are delivered in other Canadian jurisdictions and reviewed written submissions. Tabled in the legislative assembly, the report makes 70 recommendations calling for a change in priorities for social services when removing children from homes, more preventative care and better counseling and legal aid services to rural communities.

The report is filled with testimonials describing the trauma of having children removed from families, the lingering destruction of parenting skills by the residential school system and communities struggling to cope.

"They weren't taken away, they were stolen; put on a plane and taken from the community," Fred Sangris of Ndilo told the committee. "That's kidnapping. This kind of thing starts war. We have lost trust in government."

When social workers seek to remove a child from their parents, they develop a Plan of Care Agreement with them. These agreements, which often demand parental sobriety before the child is returned, came under criticism in the report because addictions counselling programs aren't available in many communities.

"Plan of Care Agreements are blackmail," Arlene Hache, executive director of the Centre for Northern Families in Yellowknife told the committee. "Either you sign today or we keep your child; but if you sign, it means that you have agreed that your child is in need of protection."

The report didn't put a price tag on implementing its recommendations. Currently, the territory spends $12 million annually on the more than 600 children it has in care. Frame Lake MLA Wendy Bisaro said it would take an initial outlay of cash to implement the report, but that in the long run there would be savings.

"Look at what the residential school system is costing the government of Canada today," said Mackenzie Delta MLA David Krutko. "Most of us who grew up in the residential era now have our own children and we know what it's like to be taken away. The question is, can we afford not to fix the system?"

But there are many obstacles blocking that recovery, some of which are beyond the mandate of social services.

MLA Tom Beaulieu's district of Tu Nedhe only has 35 to 39 per cent employment.

"You can only get up at 7 a.m. and hope for a job every day for so long," said Beaulieu. "People get frustrated, lose hope and resort to addictions. If you're up half the night drinking, you're not going to be up at 8 a.m. to get your child to school. So the child misses half a day of school and by the end of the year is too far behind and the cycle repeats itself."

Beaulieu spent his early years in Rocher River, where his father trapped. But life's more expensive now and trapping, which supported the old the culture and society, isn't profitable enough to raise a family on anymore.

"The government can decentralize 70 to 80 positions into the small communities - positions like environmental officers, tradespeople etc," said Beaulieu. "In some of these small communities, a few more jobs would make a huge difference."

The other big obstacle to recovery is whether or not the traditional wisdoms of maintaining stable families and caring communities can be recovered.

Francis recovered from her years in residential school so she could raise her own seven children.

But Francis could reach back to her youth for the lessons of her parents - what about those for whom the lessons and values of a healthy family are generations away?

"Now they say, 'learn the language, teach them the traditional and cultural way of living'. I don't know if it works backwards," said Francis. "But some are starting to go back to the land and I think they really enjoy it."

The report speaks to the former prominence of elders in community decisions and that through local Child and Family Services Committees, it hopes hopes they can take over that role again.

"We all love our children," Lutselk'e elder Pierre Marlow told the committee. "Even poor parents."

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