In my many years of reading government reports, continually plowing through layers of government speak found in the endless inquiries, inquests, and investigational and administrative reviews, no report has ever brought the bile to my throat more than the latest B.C Government report entitled “Don’t Look Away”.

“Don’t Look Away” is the report of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth (RCY) which was released this month– to look into the horrific handling of the child welfare case and death of “Colby”, an Indigenous boy, who was tortured, abused and finally beaten to death. By pure happenstance most of it was captured on video. The thought of children being purposely and sadistically hurt, in fits of pointless violence is soul crushing, even for someone hardened by years of dealing with “man’s inhumanity to man.”

This story and the report was released in the past two weeks. I have written previously of my concerns for the welfare of children in this woke inspired and administrative transition to First Nations taking over direct responsibility for child welfare. My reasons were many then and now, but the single greatest concern was my belief in the complete incapacity to logistically handle this responsibility; to be able to adequately protect children if kept within the family structure, in small, isolated and struggling communities. In theory, to remove children to safety from a violent and dysfunctional family and then move them a quarter mile away to an Aunts or an Uncles, in a community far from normal routine services. I predicted then, and still believe that this policy supported by the fragmented structure which makes up Child Protection Services would lead to the death of children. The unconscionable and damnable part of it all is that it was being done solely in the interest of Indigenous politics, not for the children, but for some form of ill-defined “reconciliation”. “Colby” and his death is for me exhibit number one in the growing evidence that this NDP government is willing to take this policy risk, even risking children to support its political agenda.

This story starts, as always seems to do in these child abuse cases, with the disturbed and maladjusted family that Colby was born into and tried to survive. Abject poverty, substance abuse, and violence surrounded him from the beginning. His mother Violet and his father Colton were both violent (Violet used to make money as a “street fighter”)were both using and abusing drugs and alcohol, and neither had the financial means of support or a proper residence to live in. Despite this Colton would be the 2nd oldest of five siblings. Violet would leave Colton after a short time, and then team up with another male, with all the same attributes as Colton. Their children predictably had to be taken away, were sent to Violet’s mother who also had problems coping, and then off to a great Aunt and Uncle– all in keeping with the policy of keeping the children in the community. The Aunt after 9 months was found to have marihuana in her car, so the children were once again moved. “They” decided, despite some arguments from some “professionals” that the children would be better off living back with their mother Violet.

So the kids went back to Violet, who was now pregnant with her fifth child. The back and forth, house to house rhythm, was in full swing. One year later, after further “concerns” were received from the RCMP and the Ministry of Children and Family Development, Violet’s children were taken away once again. This time placed in the care of another but distant “extended family member”, namely, Staci, and her partner Graham. There was no initial “safety visit” for Colby and his sister, despite Colby having some extensive medical issues. In the ensuing time period, while living with Staci and Graham, Colby stopped being sent to school, was not attending doctors appointments, and was becoming a human skeleton from malnutrition. No one was paying serious attention despite all the red flags, or went to any effort to investigate what was going on inside the walls of that house.

I will hold off on the horrendous details, but on February 26, 2021 after being beaten for 9 minutes by Staci, Colby was taken to an Emergency Room where he eventually died as the result of his injuries. The whole matter was caught on an internal house video. Staci and Graham would later be charged with manslaughter and aggravated assault, and receive 10 years for the manslaughter and 6 years for the aggravated assault–to run concurrently. Violet, Colby’s mother would die of a drug overdose 20 months after Colby’s death. It was all so predictable.

So what did RCY and their “investigation” into this matter uncover? We must first understand that this is an office, inside the NDP government of BC, and this is a Provincial government which has a fundamental belief that one can not criticize anything even remotely connected to the Indigenous. Just as importantly, there is currently a Memorandum of Understanding between “The Nation” and the MCFD which is actively promoting the transition to an independent child welfare system to be run and controlled by the Indigenous– which has as one of its central policies “kinship care”. (Since 2008, there are now 3 x more children in “Kinship Care” than in traditional foster care)

The report starts off and overtly states that the authors wanted to view their investigation through “an Indigenous lens” and that it was implicit that they needed to challenge the “implicit colonial and racial mindsets” that they assumed to be in place. The staffing of this investigational group included “cultural advisors” from the Indigenous community who would guide them with their “Sacred Teachings”. They hoped that their report and their investigation would go a long way in helping Colby’s “community” to begin their “healing journey” and that this “investigation” was just part of a “sacred story investigation”.

They described Colby’s story as a story of a family that their “dignity was stripped away, bit by bit, through the use of “stigmatizing language, judgemental attitudes and harmful actions”. That the family suffered from “inter-generational trauma which resulted in violence and substance abuse”. That Violet was a “beautiful spirit” and the father a “creative and talented artist”. That the abuse suffered by Colby at the hands of his relative was “strikingly similar in nature to the horrors inflicted at….residential schools”. They felt that part of their report could be summed up as being the result of “current colonial child welfare practises…”.

They blame the lack of support (although there were a total of seven agencies involved in this family), and they call for the future need for more “wrap around supports”. They also call for “external income supports” and better housing. The authors felt that there was a pressing need to “dismantle the pervasive colonial systems” and for what Dr. Cindy Blackstock, a long time advocate of Indigenous rights used to call “loving justice”.

Clearly they believed if you can’t blame the policy, and if you can’t blame the family, you must blame the colonial system. As to solutions, well, they are also predictable. To develop a “child and youth action plan”, develop an “outcomes based framework for measurement and accountability”, strengthen “information sharing” between agencies, because there was “confusion around transition points”…blah blah blah.

This investigation looked at 14 other children’s cases, involving eight families –three other children had died.

Nevertheless the authors are relieved to state that they can now reinstitute and resume the process of granting jurisdiction of child welfare to the BC Nations.

Not all First Nations, but many, are centres of generational issues of poverty, substance abuse, and violence so ingrained and pervasive that at times it seems insurmountable. They are also often situated in inhospitable and un-economic zones, where hope of a better life is often extinguished at an early age. It does not matter who one chooses to blame for the problems, the question that needs to be addressed is whether or not they are sufficient social resources and viable safe zones under the “kinship” program in such communities. It is a laudable goal, but one has to wonder how on 630 First Nations, where 57 % of those Nations have a population size less than 1000, that logistically they can even come close to independence in the running of a child welfare system. This while knowing that an Indigenous child is 18 times more likely to come into government care, and currently Indigenous children represent 67% of all children in care. The situation is by all real accounts dire. Even the current “colonial” child welfare system is itself overwhelmed and understaffed and hampered by an abundance of government silos. They are in no position to be a supporting authority.

The Indigenous point continuously to their endless struggle to perpetrate their history and customs and they espouse that to do so, they need their own laws, their own government, and their own child welfare system–and right now children it would seem are the acceptable collateral damage for the cause. This report is a disgusting cover-up for a flawed and impossible policy; perpetrated by the leadership of this Provincial NDP government, with the whole-hearted support of the Federal government and the leadership of the Indigenous Nations. Someone needs to save the children.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by Agirard – Some Rights Reserved