First Nations community struggling with the death of another child
2-month-old child died last November at Yellow Quill reserve
Last Updated: Thursday, January 8, 2009 1:31 PM CT Comments0Recommend3
CBC News
The Yellow Quill First Nation, still coping with the freezing deaths of two toddlers a year ago, is now in the grips of another tragedy involving a child.RCMP confirmed Wednesday that on Nov. 29 they received a call about a baby who was not breathing. Police said the two-month-old boy could not be revived.Police are investigating and a coroner is also looking into the case. An autopsy has been ordered.Meanwhile, a social worker on the reserve has raised concerns about the safety of children in the community.Margaret Roper told CBC News that the latest death is not being discussed openly."This one, I think, was kind of, you know, … swept under the rug," Roper said. "It just seems so weird because, who's here to protect our children?"The results of the autopsy are expected to be available in February.The Yellow Quill First Nation is about 270 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon and has an on-reserve population of 900.My response posted along Web Story
My heart goes out to the community of YellowQuill, The parents of this late baby, and for the soul of this little child of our Creator. B 4 anyone begins their diatribe about the issues of this poor child's death, let us not forget how Canada's 1st. People where pushed into a position of containment, dependency, legislative apartheid, and left with useless parcels of land to live their lives in despondency and worthlessness for just "being". Why the death of this child was not acknowledged is tragic, but when assimilative social mechanisms like foster care, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, and residential schools are utilized to kill the "Indian" In the child, we as a society are left with the aftermath of a failed colonial system which perpetuated genocide against our people merely because of the colour of our skin, our cultural and hereditary systems, and because we as a 1st people had the best land and resources when the "settlers came to town" to find the Canadian Dream. To acquire said lands and resources, the governments and churches of the day did their best to assimilate the "Indian" into society, residential schools, forbidding to speak their language, distanciation of former residential students from their family and relatives, 2 the denial of acceptance by the general population of Canada as "Indian" attempted to move to urban centres to find work or a standard of living similar to the euro-centric Canadians who settled into a country which was once part of our first people's ancestors. Needless to say, systemic racism grew larger and more insidious as grandparents passed on the racist views of their forefathers to their children and their children's children because of us simple "being". How did this affect our families, our notion of bringing up our children and providing a future to them? Well not very good as we look back at the statistics of Canadian History, U take away a language, a family, a culture, a land, and pushed them into a racist society of devious Indian Agents, uncaring social workers, and a racist population, bent on using any means of persuasion to subdue the "Indian through alcohol, racist laws, and arbitrary beatings and violence, then what does the Native individual take back to his people; Shame, worthlessness, violence, incest, and no sense of value to oneself because the assimilation and apprehension policies of Canadian Society worked in killing the "Indian' in Canadian society and Canadian History.
Donald Morin, ba
