The Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights (CDPDJ) has opened “several individual investigations” into the placement of Inuit children in non-native families in southern Quebec and notes that the cultural plans are not always adequate.
In its latest report on the situation of the DPJ in Nunavik, the CDPDJ reported that among all children placed in foster families, 36% were placed outside Nunavik. Of this number, 93% are found in non-native families. In the territory, 76% of youth placements are with Inuit families.
The Nunavik Regional Health and Social Services Board (RRSSSN) indicates for its part that, despite the overall increase in placements in recent years, the number of placements in the South has only increased by 1%, compared to 16% in the territory. “This reflects efforts to keep Inuit children in their cultural community as much as possible,” explains the Régie.
She assures that “the placement of a child in a non-native family in the south of the province constitutes an option of last resort” and that “it is only in very rare situations that children are placed directly in the South”, placements which are sometimes necessary to “reunite siblings or to meet the needs of a child requiring specific care”.
The lack of host families and the difficult living conditions in Nunavik are also cited, both by the Regional Board and the Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights, to explain placement in non-native families from the south. of Quebec.
Deficient cultural plans
Despite the laws and protocols of the DPJ, which aim to maintain links with culture and community, placement in the South necessarily creates a rupture, notes Me Suzanne Arpin, youth vice-president of the CDPDJ, in an interview at Duty. “When it comes to preserving culture, there really is a problem. »
She notes difficulties in the implementation of cultural plans to preserve the heritage of children. In some cases, the cultural plans are downright deficient. “We will see, for example, cases of children moved to the south where there was no cultural security, no contact with the family, or the specialized intervention plan does not talk about how contacts will be done with the family. »
The solution, according to her, is to prevent young people from leaving Nunavik by giving the local population the opportunity to set up structures to look after children in the North.
“Sending a child to the South is really uprooting them,” she said. It’s an incredible trauma. »
New version of residential schools for Aboriginal people?
In his report on the itinerant court in Nunavik, in 2022, retired lawyer Jean-Claude Latraverse made essentially the same observation.
He writes that “the acculturation of these children is real” and that “the repercussions can be dramatic.” He speaks of adolescents “caught between two cultures” who have lost the language and for whom returning to the North, once the DPJ leaves their lives, proves “difficult, even impossible”.
“Is this a new version of residential schools for Aboriginal people? » he adds.
In interview at Duty,Me Latraverse qualifies a little, mentioning the fact that there are still “fine examples” of investments in the South. “It’s tricky to say that it shouldn’t exist,” he says, adding that it’s the whole premise that leads to placement under youth protection that is problematic north of 55e parallel.