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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
First Nations groups and individuals have filed a $1 billion class action lawsuit against the government of Manitoba and the Attorney General of Canada.
As Dan Karpenchuk reports, the lawsuit is related to the child welfare system in the province.
The action was brought by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the First Nations Family Advocate Office, three First Nations communities, and three individual plaintiffs.
They allege the child welfare system in Manitoba failed the children, their families, and First Nations.
Cora Morgan is the First Nations Family Advocate with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
“You know the outcomes for our children in care have been homelessness, incarceration, mental health issues.”
Morgan says her office works to reunite families. She says it’s been successful at reuniting or preventing the apprehension of more than 4,000 children, but there are many still within the system.
The lawsuit covers children living off reserve who were taken by Child and Family Services and placed into foster care going back to 1992.
Of the 11,000 children in care in Manitoba, about 80% are First Nations.
Plaintiffs also want an end to the practices and policies that result in First Nations children being removed from their families.
Morgan says the province has seen 150 years of what she calls stolen children, and the lawsuit finally gives a voice to those young people, and to parents and to First Nations communities.
The U.S. Census Bureau held a tribal consultation this week and a session at the National Congress of American Indians Annual Convention taking place in Sacramento, California.
The agency is sharing information and planning for the 2030 census.
But as Rhonda LeValdo reports, some NCAI attendees say, in tribal communities, there’s still a lack of trust of the federal government.
Counting the Native American population has had problems and Oglala Lakota citizen Cecilia Fire Thunder says the U.S. Census still needs help in engaging with tribes individually.
“We’ve not done a good job in the past census really counting all of our people from our communities, and so every year we talk about how can we do it differently? Today, the same thing. They throw all these PowerPoints up there, but no where did it say this community said this, this community said that. Sometimes the people don’t want to be counted because they said nobody pays attention to them. So, how do we reframe that? That their medicine at the health clinic is dependent on IHS, their children’s education at the tribal school is dependent of the Department of Interior, BIE. How do we create a framework for them to understand why it’s important to be counted?”
The U.S. Census is trying to include more Native voices in the process.
Dee Alexander, tribal affairs coordinator, explains.
“We’ve got tribal specialists we’ve hired full-time that are out there, boots on the ground, meeting with tribes talking about upcoming surveys. We’re also doing tribal consultation on the 2020 data that’s coming out, and so we’re constantly in communication with the tribes of what’s going on with the census.”
With a significant increase from 5.2 million to 9.7 million of Native Americans/Alaskan Natives and the next census eight years away, they are working to make sure every person is counted.
With less than a week before Election Day, Get Out the Native Vote, a non-partisan effort in Alaska, is hosting an absentee polling station this week in Anchorage.
Located at the Cook Inlet Tribal Council building, any registered Alaskan voter can complete their ballot at the location prior to November 8 from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
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