Show Notes
"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.
More from Ahkameyimok Podcast with Perry Bellegarde
This conversation with the late Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney, Canada's 18th Prime Minister, was originally posted in August 2020.
Bryan Trottier needs little introduction. The Hockey Hall of Fame player was a key member and leading scorer for the New York Islanders Stanley Cup dynasty of the 1980's, and then with Pittsburgh Penguins of the early 90's. He is also incredibly proud of his Cree-Metis-Chippewa heritage, and his hometown of Val Marie in southern Saskatchewan. In this fun and fascinating conversation, he talks with Perry Bellegarde about learning to play hockey on the beaver pond on his family ranch, playing bass in his father's country band, his parents advice on overcoming racism as a young hockey player, how the infamous Dave "Tiger" Williams saved his hockey career as a junior player at Swift Current, and of course, his key role in the NY Islanders Cup wins from 1980 to 1983. This is an interview to savour. Bryan's new best selling memoir is called "All Roads Home: A Life On and Off the Ice." The Ahkameyimok Podcast is produced by David McGuffin of Explore Podcast Productions in Ottawa.Our theme music is performed by the Red Dog Singers of Treaty Four Territory in Saskatchewan.
The host of the popular CBC Kuper Island Podcast on the challenges and revelations from reporting about one of Canada's most notorious Residential Schools.
Chief Perry is thrilled to be joined Douglas Sanderson and Andrew Stobo Sniderman for a fascinating and thoughtful conversation about their new book, "The Valley of the Birdtail." It is a heart-rending, true story about racism and reconciliation. Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope. DOUGLAS SANDERSON (AMO BINASHII) is the Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and has served as a senior policy advisor to Ontario’s attorney general and minister of Indigenous affairs. He is Swampy Cree, Beaver clan, of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN is a writer, lawyer, and Rhodes Scholar from Montreal. He has written for the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s. He has also argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, served as the human rights policy advisor to the Canadian minister of foreign affairs, and worked for a judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.
"The survivors felt if this had been white children, the community wouldn't be the ones having to investigate their own genocide." - Kimberly Murray