Is the child's best interest considered here?

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Somewhere, there's a little five-year-old girl who's angry, sad and confused.

She's wandering why she's been taken from her foster parents. She's worried about what's going to happen next because her life has been topsy-turvy for some time now.

It all started when she was taken away from home by someone called a social worker to live with this new 'mom and dad' for three days and then taken back home. Then there were all the visits her social worker took her on ? two hour slots of time when they'd go to McDonald's and she'd be told she is Indian and her foster parents are white.

Now, she feels different and unsure? Are her foster parents bad people? Should she run away from them?

All these question vie for attention in her young mind. She starts to feel funny. Doesn't anybody want her? Will her toys and the room she sleeps in each night be taken away? Will she get to finish the picture she's painting at school?

And why didn't anyone ask her if she wanted to stay with her foster parents?

This week's front page story about the child taken from her home and returned to the reserve should make us all think about the plight of our foster children. Who is right and who is wrong? Native leaders and social workers generally agree that repatriating foster children back to reserves and their own people is good, but there are also arguments that sometimes the child is better off raised by non-Native parents he or she has bonded to.

To this, some say the child may have a better childhood raised off the reserve and with non-Native parents, but there will come a time when he will question who he is, and he will not know. He will feel lost.

So, what is the final test to determine how this foster child should be raised? Is it ultimately how successful she becomes in life? And how do you measure success? In this case, it should depend on whether she's happy or not.

So, let's dispense with government bureaucracy and personal opinions here. Each case must be evaluated on it's own basis, and the happiness of the child recognized as the most important factor.