Left to right: Grace Lore, B.C. minister of children and family development, Patty Hajdu, minister of indigenous services, and Cowichan Tribes Chief Cindy Daniels (Sulsulxumaat) are seen signing a co-ordination agreement that transfers responsibility for child welfare services to the nation.
VICTORIA, B.C.-Last November, The Cowichan Tribes voted to pass new laws to help Indigenous families keep children within their families or with relatives in other Indigenous homes. And now, the Tribes have signed a co-ordination agreement with British Columbia to assume full responsibility over youth and family services for Cowichan citizens. Now, the federal and provincial governments have signed the co-ordination agreement that allows the nation to start phasing in the law. The federal government will provide the nation $207.5 million, and the provincial government will provide $22 million over four years to help the nation construct its own child and family services authority.
The Cowichan Tribes is the largest First Nation in British Columbia with 5,300 members, centered on Vancouver Island.
This is the second First Nation in British Columbia to assume responsibility for child welfare services; the Splatsin First Nation in the Shuswap region was the first.
According to the Indigenous Services Ministry data, more than 5,000 children and youth were in care in B.C. between April 2021 and March 2022, and nearly 3,500 were Indigenous. While Indigenous children and youth are only 12.6 percent of the population of people under 19 in the province, they make up 67.9 per cent of children and youth in care.
CBC News notes that this follows federal legislation in 2020 that allows Indigenous communities to manage their own child welfare systems, along with a provincial law passed in 2022 called the Indigenous Self-Government in Child and Family Services Amendment Act.
The provincial legislation in 2022 was passed with an eye to ending the overrepresentation of Indigenous children and youth in care in B.C., CBC News noted. These children and youth are nearly seven times more likely to be apprehended than non-Indigenous children, according to data from the Ministry of Child and Family Development.
Cowichan Tribes Chief Cindy Daniels (Sulsulxumaat) said the law allows the nation to ensure its teachings and values are passed to future generations.
"We are leaving behind the practice of child apprehension and placements that have alienated children from their families and our community for generations, practices that have repeatedly caused trauma," Daniels said. "By embedding our teachings, family customs and values into our law, we are setting new requirements for how decisions are made-to prioritize keeping our children with their families."
