Episode 30: First Nations Child Welfare with Kenn Richard

Ahkameyimok Podcast with Perry Bellegarde

"If you have a child that is loved and has opportunities and is in their family, you're not going to have child abuse. In fact we have very little real child abuse in the indigenous sector to begin with, what we have is the debilitating impacts of poverty."

Indigenous Child Welfare advocate Kenn Richard joins National Chief Perry Bellegarde to discuss the potential impact and challenges from the federal government's recent allocation of more than half a billion dollars in funding to First Nations peoples to set up their own welfare services for children and families under their jurisdiction and laws. This funding is to implement Bill C-92, “An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families.: It is part of an effort to end the historic and ongoing trauma caused by the removal of First Nations children from their culture and communities. The worst example of this was the genocide of the Residential school system, but it continues to this day through the child welfare system.

Kenn Richard is the founder and former Executive Director of Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, the first and largest indigenous child welfare authority in Canada. A Metis from Manitoba, his work has included time spent in the Children’s Aid Society in Winnipeg, as Vice President of the Caring Society and as an advisor to the Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation. For his work Kenn Richard has been recognised with many awards, including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal and the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Cross.

A big thanks goes out to the Red Dog Singers of Treaty 4 Territory in Saskatchewan for our theme music.

The Ahkameyimok Podcast is produced by David McGuffin of Explore Podcast Productions.