{"id":23878,"date":"2017-04-21T03:49:55","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T10:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=23878"},"modified":"2017-04-20T22:03:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T05:03:47","slug":"fighting-for-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/04\/21\/fighting-for-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting for children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bernard Richard, left, Cindy Blackstock and Jerry Nussbaum. (photo from Janusz Korczak Association of Canada)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, Dr. Cindy Blackstock initiated a human rights complaint against the Government of Canada, alleging that the country discriminates against First Nations by consistently underfunding child welfare services on reserves, a complaint her agency filed jointly with the Assembly of First Nations. After nine years of waiting for a decision, Blackstock, who is also a professor of social work at McGill University, was attending a graduation ceremony when she received an email with an attachment bearing the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read the first words of the decision and it said, \u2018This decision is about children,\u2019 underlined. I knew it was a good decision,\u201d Blackstock told an audience at a Richmond hotel April 12, where she was honoured with the Janusz Korczak Medal for Children\u2019s Rights Advocacy.<\/p>\n

She left the ceremony and went home to put on her gumboots and collect a teddy bear, named Spirit Bear, who she said had witnessed the nine-year process with her. Then she bought a bouquet of flowers and drove to Ottawa\u2019s Beechwood Cemetery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked through the snow down a little valley to a modest tombstone with the name Peter Henderson Bryce on it,\u201d she recalled. Bryce was a federal civil servant in the Indian Affairs Department at the turn of the last century who blew the whistle on Canada\u2019s treatment of indigenous peoples, particularly alerting the government and the public to the mortality rate of 14% to 24% at residential schools and a 42% infant mortality rate on reserves. His report, The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921<\/em>, was never made public by the government and Bryce was fired.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sacrificed his career and was retaliated [against] for it, but he would not be silent,\u201d said Blackstock. \u201cHe kept talking even if nobody was listening because he knew that it was our job as adults to stand up for kids, to love children more than we fear for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the cemetery, she read the tribunal decision, which determined that Ottawa discriminates against children on reserves by spending less on child welfare solely because of race and national or ethnic background. As a result, the decision stated, First Nations children suffer adverse impacts from funding service gaps, delays and denials.<\/p>\n

After she read the ruling at the gravesite, she looked back up the hill from where she had just walked.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I saw the one set of footsteps in the snow and although those were made with me and my gumboots and the Spirit Bear, I knew that they also had the spirits of people like Dr. Korczak, of all the families who had stood up to protect their kids and hide them in the bush or prayed for them when they were in the schools, of the people, the non-aboriginal people like Dr. Bryce, who had been allies of justice for the children. So, I hugged his tombstone and I said, \u2018Justice, Dr. Bryce, finally justice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Blackstock, a member of the Gitxsan nation in northern British Columbia, said she was honoured to have her name mentioned in the same sentence as Korczak, who is viewed as the founder of children\u2019s rights. Before she was presented with the medal by Jerry Nussbaum, president of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada, Korczak was described by Lillian Boraks-Nemetz of the Korczak association as \u201ca children\u2019s advocate, their doctor, their friend and teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe penned his own index of children\u2019s rights, which is reflected in the United Nations Charter,\u201d she said. \u201cHis Warsaw Ghetto diary and other writings inform us how he, through self-examination and experience, became a man with deep concern and compassion for a child\u2019s welfare, a child\u2019s healing not only of the body but also of the soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Korczak ran his orphanage in Warsaw as a microcosmic laboratory, Boraks-Nemetz said, \u201cwhere he practised and researched his philosophy on how to love a child and on children\u2019s rights. There, he conducted a child\u2019s court, where children expressed their grievances in front of the judges and jury made up of children.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke of her own experience implementing Korczak\u2019s theories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my children were small, my own children, I adopted this method partially and invited my own children to the family room once a week where they would express their grievances to us, their parents,\u201d she said to laughter from the audience. \u201cWe would hear them out and discuss solutions to all sorts of problems and this worked very well, as our children needed to gain confidence in themselves and to express their feelings and thoughts, to be treated fairly with an acknowledgement of their rights to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Korczak\u2019s philosophy, she said, was that 100 children are 100 human beings \u2013 \u201cnot some day, not \u2018not yet,\u2019 not tomorrow. They are human beings now.\u201d<\/p>\n

She then told the story of Korczak\u2019s ultimate heroism.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would not desert the 200 orphans he cared for in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War,\u201d she said. \u201cThis was at the time when the orphanage was marked for Nazi deportations of Jews.\u2026 Korczak was offered a reprieve from being deported, but he said, \u2018My children need me\u2019 and went with them to Treblinka death camp, where they all perished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boraks-Nemetz quoted Irena Sendler, a Polish rescuer of ghetto children, who said, \u201cWhen, on Aug. 6, 1942, I saw that tragic parade in the street, those innocent children walking obediently in the procession of death and listening to the doctor\u2019s optimistic words, I do not know why, for me and for all the other eyewitnesses, our hearts did not break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernard Richard, British Columbia\u2019s Representative for Children and Youth, said some might think it difficult to make comparisons between a Polish Jewish man who died in the Holocaust and an indigenous Canadian woman who is still living \u2013 \u201cand kicking, some would say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Cindy Blackstock is being given the medal for children\u2019s rights advocacy because her work \u2013 and her life \u2013 has embodied the spirit of the man for whom the medal is named,\u201d Richard said. Throughout the nine-year process, he added, \u201cShe was tenacious, and persistent, determined, passionate and committed, all characteristics shared with Janusz Korczak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marvin Bernstein, UNICEF Canada\u2019s chief policy advisor, said Canada has a longstanding pattern of underfunding child welfare services for First Nations children living on reserves, affecting 165,000 First Nations children and their families. The tribunal decision on Jan. 26, 2016, was a turning point for the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear to UNICEF Canada that Cindy has been on the right side of history from the very beginning and has left an enduring legacy of advancing First Nations children\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernard Richard, left, Cindy Blackstock and Jerry Nussbaum. (photo from Janusz Korczak Association of Canada) As executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, Dr. Cindy Blackstock initiated a human rights complaint against the Government of Canada, alleging that the country discriminates against First Nations by consistently underfunding child welfare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4663,6975,3956,3477],"class_list":["post-23878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-childrens-rights","tag-cindy-blackstock","tag-first-nations","tag-janusz-korczak-association"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}