Blackstock – culturally based equity

While we talk about culturally based equity, I really want to emphasize, we’re not talking about reconciliation. We’re talking about the recognition of a fundamental human right that every other kid in Canada already receives. But First Nations children receiving federal public services, for example, will get as much as 50 percent less for school. They’ll get -some of the communities don’t have clean water to drink or the water that comes out of the tap is contaminated.  

Like in Attawapiskat, they actually have to open the windows when you turn on a tap because of water vapours so toxic to children and to family members. You have overcrowding in homes. You’ll have very little funding for early childhood development services and child and maternal health. All of those things culminate in a backpack of disadvantage. And we have been challenging the federal government to say that if you truly believe in reconciliation, you must not use racial discrimination as fiscal government policy in the provision of fundamental services to community members. 

Government has normalized the treatment of First Nations children as deserving less than everyone else. And so when you have these deep levels of inequality, which have been known to the government for many years going back at least 112 years, for example. What they’ll do is they’ll throw some money at it and a budget one program at a time. But they’ll never deal with the wide swath of inequalities that First Nations children experience.  

And then when they do one of these investments, they’ll call it reconciliation instead of a redress of what is against Canadian law. It’s not legal to discriminate against children in public services by race and yet that has been normalized in Canadian public policy. Sometimes I hear them saying, “Well, we’re making good first steps.” Well, they’ve known about this for 112 years. How long should little children wait to be treated equally in this country and in a way that honours who they are? And then I sometimes also hear that, “Well we can’t change things overnight.” But when it comes to the racial discrimination and federal public policy, yes, they can. They know about these inequalities in many cases, they’ve been well-documented, costed out. All they have to do is commit the money. The question for professionals working with First Nations children and for citizens is what are First Nations children losing out to if we can’t afford to treat them equally?