We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For: Towards the Development of an Indigenous Educational Advocacy Organization for Indigenous Children in Canada's Custody

Abstract

The influential Indian Control of Indian Education (ICIE) policy statement, writtenby the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) in 1972, galvanized widespread Indigenousresistance to Canadian human rights abuses that included child apprehension policiesand practices (Hansen, n.d.). Forty-one years since its release, and three years afterthe Assembly of First Nations re-affirmed its principles in its First Nations Control ofFirst Nations Education (2010) policy document, the ICIE serves as the policy contextfrom which this Indigenist study begins. Two purposes drive this study. The first pur­pose is to examine the implications of the ICIE policy on contemporary urban Indige­nous child populations living at the intersection of Canada's child protection andeducation systems. The second purpose is to evoke the presence of this silenced popu­lation of Indigenous children, and privilege their Canadian educational and child pro­tection experiences in peer-reviewed literature, policy, practice, advocacy, and researchagendas. A clear recommendation for Canada, emerging from this research, is to es­tablish an independent Indigenous advocacy organization to focus solely on the edu­cation of Indigenous children in its child protection system. Its mandate must be toeliminate the educational gap between Indigenous children that have been removedfrom their families and relocated to Canada's child protection system and those thathave not.