'I was taken by social workers and not allowed to say good-byes'

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In response to the numerous concerns about our children in the systems of society, I feel I must no longer remain silent to the issues that invade me constantly. I make particular reference to the deaths of our youth while in the care of established and governed institutions, which are legislated to deliver such care.

I myself am a product of the foster care system and was first apprehended by Alberta Social Services in Aug. 1967 at the age of eight and was to go through five more homes by the time I was 15. This included short stays at various youth centers.

In 1967, my mother was serving a 30-day sentence for public drunkenness and my father was left to care for myself an two other brothers. Both are now dead as a result of alcoholism in the family and the community of Lac la Biche or as a result of the psychological damage incurred while in the care of Her Majesties' representatives.

I was picked up off the streets of Lac la Biche by two social workers one evening while I was out looking for my younger brother, Billy, who constantly ran away from home in search of our mother. The workers did not inform me why I was being removed. Nor did they allow me to go home to say goodbye to my father or to pick up some clothing.

That night I was yarded out to Wandering River. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't question the workers for fear I would get beaten (something that was not uncommon back then). It seemed to take forever to reach the foster home on the rough gravel road leading to the place that was to be my residence for the next year.

The workers simply told me to forget about my family because this was where I was now going to be living and that these new people in my life were now to be known as "mom and dad".

The following morning the foster father woke me up bright and early and told me he was now going to teach me how to wash. After pouring some water into a basin, he proceeded to twist my ears and told me "we don't like dirty ears around here". Next he twisted one arm of mine up around my back and said "we don't like dirty elbows around here either". I found this very offensive since my mother and father took pride in teaching us how to wash our bodies and maintain personal cleanliness.

This introduction to the foster care system was the beginning of a life of turmoil for me that lasted for the next 20 years. At that point I realized how helpless my parents would be in trying to help me. The turmoil was to lead me to a life of alcoholism, skid row and prisons for numerous years.

I became a lost soul traveling through the Stations of the lost, which Janet P. Wiseman writes about. I was lost, because I was forced to give up the love I had for my family. I then denied my cultural heritage for many years and became angry at my own people for not being there to help when I needed them the most.

Today, the abridgment of the fundamental human rights of our people is still continuing.

It is my belief that because of the complex nature of our socioeconomic problems we are the unsuspecting victims of the systems designed to help us. We are being exploited as a means to an end to keep alive and well the various government departments that should be helping us. In particular, our youth are now falling into this category to the tune of about $500 million a year.

Unfortunately, even some of our own agencies and those of white society are constantly seeking new ways to get money for pseudo-helping programs designed to pay high salaries to workers that are not congruent to helping those in need.

When I consider our current crop of youth I acutely see this process taking place and it hurts and angers me greatly, which is why I am now writing about it. After spending a year working with our Native young offenders, I see how dismally government programs are failing in their attempt to alleviate the issues that confront us on many fronts.

The police, judicial, penal and welfare systems our youth come intocontact with are predominantly biased. These groups have their own self-enforcing rules and ways of communication. They are essentially self-loving and only see things in black and white.

It is in this soup we and our children have become mixed to form the kinds of problems we face. I assert we must move away from these ideologies in thought that lead so much destruction for us and our children. We can certainly work with society, but we must be willing to question its systems when we feel uncomfortable about them. We must tell this society what our wants are, not necessarily what our needs are. I also contend that Native youth can be held in facilities or homes that are culturally focused and that more responsibility must be taken to guard ourselves against the rampant exploitation that exists from society and our own kind.

When I decided I had enough of these systems and took responsibility for my problems and got help from my own kind, life seemed to improve immensely. Today, my success is not a second-rate pseudo sort of success but one I have earned and it comes from those who came before me among my people. The basic forms of self-determination that exist for us today is and always was ours; someone just happened to take that away from us because we let them. We must demand this back for our own well-being.

As Gandhi told the British, "you have been master in our home for long enough and it's time we showed you to the door"