Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and Child Welfare: An Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial Discourses


The International Indigenous Policy Journal

Volume 7 | Issue 2 Article 4

April 2016

Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential 
Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and Child Welfare: An 
Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial Discourses
Holly A. McKenzie
University of British Columbia, hollymckenz@gmail.com

Colleen Varcoe
University of British Columbia, School of Nursing, colleen.varcoe@nursing.ubc.ca

Annette J. Browne
University of British Columbia, School of Nursing, Annette.Browne@ubc.ca

Linda Day
Aboriginal Mother Centre Society, lindaday.oneida@gmail.com

Recommended Citation
McKenzie, H. A. , Varcoe, C. , Browne, A. J. , Day, L. (2016). Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties 
Scoop, and Child Welfare: An Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial Discourses. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 7(2).
DOI: 10.18584/iipj.2016.7.2.4



Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties
Scoop, and Child Welfare: An Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial
Discourses

Abstract
In Canada, it is estimated that 3 times as many Indigenous children are currently in the care of the state
compared to when the residential schools’ populations were at their peak. It is imperative that action be taken.
This article explores the continuities among residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and child welfare in Canada
today. In particular, we examine how colonial and neocolonial discourses operate through and justify these
policies and practices. We propose nine policy recommendations, which aim to transform child welfare and
support Indigenous families to care for their children. Although transformative policy change is unlikely
within this neocolonial and neoliberal climate, the recent change in federal leadership has made it more
possible to move these policy recommendations forward.

Keywords
Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, Canada, child welfare, Sixties Scoop, residential schools

Acknowledgments
The authors thank Madeleine Dion Stout, Roberta Price, Jane Inyallie and other members of the Canadian
Institutes for Health Research-funded team, “Addressing the consequences of violence and trauma: A health
intervention for women in an Indigenous context” for informing this article’s analysis and particularly Jane
Inyallie for her review of and helpful comments about an earlier draft of the paper. Development of this paper
was supported in part by a fellowship with the above project and a Canadian Institutes for Health Research
doctoral award held by the first author, and an operating grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health
Research held by the second and third author.

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Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop,  

and Child Welfare: An Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial Discourses 

Over the last 30 years, over-involvement of the Canadian child welfare system in Indigenous (First 

Nations, Métis, and Inuit) children’s and families’ lives has been the subject of a number of research and 

policy reports (e.g., Auditor General of Canada, 2008, 2011; Blackstock, Trocmé, & Bennett, 2004; First 

Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, 2005b; Johnston, 1983; Mandell, Carlson, Fine, & 

Blackstock, 2007; McKenzie & Hudson, 1985; Sinha, Trocmé, Blackstock, MacLaurin, & Fallon, 2011). 

Although as of 2006 only 3.8% of people living in Canada identified as Indigenous (Statistics Canada, 

2008), in the 2008 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS), 22% of 

substantiated investigations involved Indigenous children (Trocmé et al., 2010). In other settler–colonial 

states, such as Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, Indigenous children are more likely to be 

involved in investigations of maltreatment and placed in out-of-home care. Euro-Canadian public and 

government discourses are increasingly focusing on residential schools and their well-documented 

harmful effects on Indigenous communities (Bombay, Matheson, & Anisman, 2011; Furniss, 1995; Ing, 

1991; Kirmayer, Gone, & Moses, 2014; Smith, Varcoe, & Edwards, 2005; Truth and Reconciliation 

Commission of Canada, 2015; Warren, 2008). However, in 2004, Blackstock et al. (2004) estimated that 

3 times as many Indigenous children were currently in the care of the state as were in residential 

schools during the peak enrolment period in the 1940s, and more recent studies show that this trend 

persists (Sinha et al., 2011; Sinha, Trocmé, Fallon, & MacLaurin, 2013; Trocmé et al., 2010). Indeed, 

Maxwell (2014) argued that a singular focus on residential schools obscures “the myriad contemporary 

manifestations of colonial dominance and inequities which have profound implications for parenting 

and family relations” (p. 426). This article analyzes colonial and neocolonial discourses that contribute to 

the over-involvement of the child welfare system in Indigenous families’ lives today.  

We analyze how colonial and neocolonial discourses position Indigenous peoples and communities as 

inherently sick and damaged and naturalize Euro-Canadian notions of family. Further, we examine 

neoliberal discourses of risk and how these colonial, neocolonial, and neoliberal discourses operate 

within society, policy, and practice to contribute to the number of Indigenous children in the care of the 

child welfare system today. Throughout, we provide examples from British Columbia (B.C.), as a unique 

case in point, to show how they are informed by the province’s colonial history and present day context. 

We show the continuities among residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and contemporary forms of the 

state’s over-involvement in Indigenous families, and propose nine policy recommendations that aim to 

disrupt these continuities by (a) transforming child welfare legislation and practice, and (b) supporting 

Indigenous families and communities to care for their children. We conclude by discussing strategies to 

move these recommendations forward.   

Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the Colonial Project 

Colonial interventions have purposely undermined Indigenous political, economic, and family 

formations. The forced relocation of Indigenous children to residential schools, for example, is largely 

accepted as one of the most devastating policies to Indigenous communities, affecting not only survivors 

of the schools, but also survivors’ families and communities across multiple generations (Bombay et al., 

2011; Castellano, Archibald, & DeGagné, 2008; Furniss, 1995; Haskell & Randall, 2009; Ing, 1991; Smith 

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et al., 2005; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). As the federal government began to 

phase out residential schools after the Second World War, the state-led apprehension of Indigenous 

children did not end, but rather shifted and took a new form—the widespread practice from the 1960s 

into the 1980s of child welfare workers removing Indigenous children from their homes and placing 

them with non-Indigenous foster and adoptive parents. Johnston (1983) has coined the term Sixties 

Scoop to describe this process. 

Residential schools and the Sixties Scoop emerged within the ongoing project of colonization. As such, 

these policies, practices, and the identities that they (re)produced emerged, and have to be understood, 

in relation to Britain and other colonies, particularly settler-colonial states (Armitage, 1995; Stoler, 

1995). Although colonial disruption of Indigenous families predated the late nineteenth and early 

twentieth century, this was a critical time in the formation of Canadian state sovereignty and identity—

what would later become the Canadian body politic. Through cultural practices, media representations, 

and government policy and practice, the imagined community of Canada proper, along with the identity 

of the patriarchal bourgeois state citizen and family unit, were established and (re)produced. Indeed, 

government, frontier media outlets, and members of the clergy framed the assimilation of Indigenous 

children through residential schooling as a process that was in their best interest (Carter, 1997; Davin, 

1879; de Leeuw, Greenwood, & Cameron, 2010). Kelm (1998), referenced the June 1903 Department of 

Indian Affairs report, to point out:  

The assimilative intent of this education was apparent, and Frank Pedley, deputy superintendent 

of Indian Affairs, praised the schools in 1902 for ensuring “the removal of pupils from the 

retrogressive influence of home life.” Central to this view was the notion that Aboriginal parents 

were negligent parents and especially that unassimilated Native women made poor mothers.  

(p. 61) 

Importantly, the project to eliminate Indigenous people served and continues to serve those who 

benefit from the appropriation and exploitation of Indigenous lands. To gain access to Indigenous lands, 

the Canadian government signed numbered treaties with First Nations people living in (what is now) the 

Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), northeastern B.C., and some of the Territories 

during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the mid-nineteenth century, the 

governor of B.C., James Douglas, also negotiated treaties with some First Nations living on (what is now) 

Vancouver Island (Fisher, 1971). The Canadian government viewed the numbered treaties as real estate 

deals in which First Nations people exchanged their rights to the land for the use of specific reserve 

lands and other provisions (i.e., education and annual payments of five dollars per person)—and, 

indeed, the Canadian state still holds this belief. However, according to First Nations’ oral histories, the 

Crown agreed to share the land with First Nations people and made additional promises unrecorded in 

written accounts. While the Canadian government has not upheld the written (much less the oral) treaty 

agreements (Egan, 2012; Office of the Treaty Commissioner, 1998; Royal Commission on Aboriginal 

Peoples, 1996; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015; Waldram, Herring, & Young, 

2006), the lack of historical treaties in B.C. made it more possible for government officials to reduce and 

reallocate reserve lands (Kelm, 1998). As a result, First Nations people’s access to trapping, hunting, and 

fishing territories was severely constrained and reserve lands “were insufficient to sustain food 

production through agriculture or ranching” by the late nineteenth century (Kelm, 1998,  

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p. 27; see also Fisher, 1971). First Nations in B.C. met these conditions with survival and resistance 

strategies, such as protesting the reallocation of reserve lands and housing conditions and engaging in 

paid labour at canneries, on railroads, and on farms (Fisher, 1971; Kelm, 1998). Following the colonial 

logic invested in appropriating Indigenous lands, assimilating Indigenous people into the Canadian body 

politic through residential schools and other policies is revealed as part of Canada’s ongoing project to 

assert sovereignty over these lands (Thielen-Wilson, 2014). 

Colonial Education and Indigenous Resistance 

Although colonial education of Indigenous children was a practice present as early as the seventeenth 

century, the residential school system did not become an instrument of official government policy until 

the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1879, the Canadian government-funded Report on Industrial 

Schools for Indians and Halfbreeds described the U.S. boarding school system and recommended 

Canada take a similar approach by entering into partnerships with Churches to fund existing schools and 

to open new ones (Davin, 1879). The government quickly implemented the report’s recommendations 

(Milloy, 1999). Davin (1879), the government, and Churches argued that Indigenous children should be 

removed from their parents and communities to facilitate their assimilation into Euro-Western society 

(Milloy, 1999). Therefore, while some day schools were created near First Nations communities, most 

children lived away from their communities at industrial or residential schools for at least 10 months per 

year (Milloy, 1999). The 1920 Indian Act made attendance mandatory for status Indian1 children aged 7 

to 15 (Canada), and in some cases Métis, Inuit, and non-Status First Nations children were also recruited 

in order to bring additional funding (under the per capita formula) and able-bodied workers to these 

schools (Indian Act, 1920, see also Chartrand, Logan, & Daniels, 2006; Dion Stout & Kipling, 2003). 

Importantly, the colonial enterprise equated health and development with Christianity and Whiteness 

(Kelm, 1998). At residential schools, children were forced to attend Christian sermons, practice 

Christianity, and follow other Euro-Western cultural protocols concerning education and behaviour. For 

instance, when first arriving, children had their hair cut short, and they were often required to exchange 

their homemade clothing for school uniforms. At most schools either only English or both English and 

French was spoken, and educational practices were also shockingly different than Indigenous practices 

such as observation and storytelling (Furniss, 1995; Kelm, 1998; Miller, 2003; Milloy, 1999; Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). Even though many children arrived at residential schools 

speaking only their own languages and having been schooled primarily, if not solely, in their own cultural 

protocols, they were often severely punished when they breached the established Euro-Western 

protocols (Kelm, 1998; Miller, 2003; Milloy, 1999; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 

2015).  

                                                           

1 In Canada, First Nations people’s actions and identity continue to be regulated through Indian Act 

legislation. The Indian Act first came into effect in 1876 and continues to define who is and who is not a 

Status Indian and therefore who can access certain programs and funding and who is subject to the Act. 

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Informed by colonial assumptions about Indigenous peoples’ cognitive (in)capabilities, the schools 

provided only basic mathematic and literary education (Fiske, 1996; Milloy, 1999; Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). These assumptions are evident within the writing of 

residential school employees, administrators, and advocates at the time. For instance, Davin (1879) 

quoted Colonel Brown, “one of the Seminoles,” as stating: “They never could, in his opinion, cope with 

the White man in either cunning or industry” (p. 6). Many residential school educational interventions 

and educators focused on shaping Indigenous children’s morality to fit Euro-Western Christian standards 

(Fiske, 1996; Kelm, 1998; Milloy, 1999).  In addition, many schools kept children occupied with 

performing manual labour for long hours, which further compromised their education (Fiske, 1996; 

Kelm, 1998; Milloy, 1999).  

Racist and gendered myths about Indigenous women’s lasciviousness also informed residential school 

employees’ attitudes and practices. For instance, an Oblate priest stated:  

I also consider a school for the Indian girls a far greater benefit here than a school for the boys. 

Both would be required . . . but the girl’s [sic] is undoubtedly the most required. In vain would 

we teach the boys so long as the girls are ignorant and wicked. (Oblate Fathers Records, James 

McGuckin cited in Fiske, 1996, p. 171) 

Indeed, Fiske (1996) stated that at Lejac Residential School, female students faced more rules and 

demands of modest behaviour than male students; girls “wore unbecoming uniforms, were denied 

personal adornment and were subjected to standard hair styles” (p. 172). Further, this particular school 

enforced gender segregation in every possible activity. Gendered segregation was common at 

residential schools, and even brothers and sisters were forbidden from speaking (Fournier & Crey, 1997; 

Furniss, 1995; Milloy, 1999).  

Many Indigenous communities supported and even advocated for Euro-Canadian education for their 

children, envisioning increased economic opportunities and understanding of Euro-Canadian culture for 

their children (Miller, 1996). However, at the same time, community members were critical of the 

inadequate meals children received, the severe discipline and abuse of children, the relocation of 

children to residential and industrial schools far from home, and other practices (Fiske, 1996; Furniss, 

1995; Kelm, 1998; Milloy, 1999). As such, parents and children engaged diverse strategies of resistance. 

For example, parents hid children from authorities despite threats of imprisonment and fines, and they 

advocated for day schools on or near First Nations (Armitage, 1995; Kelm, 1998; Milloy, 1999). Children 

ran away from school, stole food, engaged in distancing techniques, and sometimes simultaneously 

accommodated the demands of priests, nuns, and teachers (Dion Stout & Kipling, 2003; Fiske, 1996; 

Kelm, 1998; Milloy, 1999).  

Colonialist narratives framed residential schools as saving Indigenous children from unhealthy 

communities as well as operating as vehicles for transforming these communities (Kelm, 1998). 

Analyzing archival sources, Kelm (1998) revealed that these schools were sites of public health 

educational interventions. For instance, some schools had public health clubs and taught public health 

nursing to some students. Newsletters were sent home that persuaded parents to learn proper health 

practices from their children, to seek Euro-Western medical doctors to treat illness, and to bring 

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students back to school in good health after holidays. However, most the conditions in most of the 

schools significantly harmed children’s health. The federal government’s per capita funding formula 

“was inadequate particularly in relation to the funding available to other residential child-care facilities” 

(Milloy, 1999, p. 103). As a result, the schools were chronically underfunded, contributing to 

overcrowding and inadequate diets, thereby rendering children vulnerable to tuberculosis and other 

infections as well as contributing to high death rates (Fournier & Crey, 1997; Furniss, 1995; Kelm, 1998; 

Milloy, 1999; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). In the 1940s, scientists conducted 

nutritional experiments, which were informed by colonial-scientific “views of Aboriginal bodies as 

‘experimental materials,’” at six residential schools (Mosby, 2013, p. 148). Mosby (2013) showed that 

the “schools had become, through decades of neglect by Indian Affairs, a possible laboratory for 

studying human requirements for a range of nutrients as well as the effects of dietary interventions on a 

group of malnourished children” (p. 160). These experiments were conducted without informed consent 

from the Indigenous children or their parents, and included control groups of children who received 

(what researchers already knew to be) nutritionally inadequate diets.  

In addition to spiritual, cultural, and emotional abuse and neglect, many children were subjected to 

physical and sexual abuse and exploitation. Milloy’s (1999) analysis revealed a “dearth of explicit 

recorded information” within official government files about the widespread sexual abuse of students 

(p. 296). The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) draws on archival sources to 

demonstrate that both the government and Churches were aware of the risk that staff might sexually 

abuse students. However, into the late twentieth century, Indigenous reports of abuse were dismissed 

and “[i]n some cases, staff members were not fired, even after being convicted of assaulting students” 

(pp. 109-110). The federal government, influenced by the power invested in Churches, also often 

overlooked (or used colonial myths to explain) complaints of severe physical punishment, overcrowding, 

and malnourishment at the schools (Furniss, 1995; Milloy, 1999). These factors produced conditions of 

extreme vulnerability for Indigenous students, conditions that students and communities resisted and 

challenged (Furniss, 1995; Kelm, 1998; Miller, 2003). For example, in 1922, members of the Haisla 

Nation withdrew their children from the Elizabeth Long Home after several Haisla girls attending the 

school died.  

Despite the violence inflicted on Indigenous children and families through residential schools, 

Indigenous people and various scholars concur that the Churches and governments failed in their 

attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples. Fiske (1996) argued that many Dakelh (or Carrier) women 

who attended the Lejac Residential School—in spite of the harsh treatment and limited curriculum—

employed skills and knowledge they acquired in school to advance their social, economic, and political 

roles and opportunities within and outside their communities, “including social roles once abhorred by 

Oblate missionaries” (Fiske, 1996, p. 176). For these women, residential school paradoxically and 

unintentionally provided a foundation upon which they could build their own structures of resistance to 

ongoing colonization. 

Continuing the Violence of the Residential School System: The Sixties Scoop 

 

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Although popular discourses in Canada often position residential schools as an artefact of the past, the 

last government-run school did not close until 1996 (Castellano et al., 2008). As part of a shift from 

segregating Indigenous communities to integrating them into the body politic after the Second World 

War, the federal government took over the administration of residential schools and moved towards 

ending the system; however, this movement was slow (Castellano et al., 2008; Milloy, 1999; Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). Up to this point, residential schools had provided only 

rudimentary scholastic training, but following this move the schools began to function even less as 

schools and more as child welfare institutions for First Nations children whose families the federal 

government deemed unable to care for them (Fournier & Crey, 1997; Milloy, 1999; Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). Simultaneously, government-funded social services 

proliferated across Canada and Euro-Canadian society expressed increasing concern about the disparity 

between services on- and off-reserve. In particular, the Canadian Welfare Council and the Canadian 

Association of Social Workers submitted a joint presentation to the Senate and House of Commons in 

1947 recommending changes to the Indian Act that would ensure that provincial health, welfare, and 

education departments could provide their services to Indigenous people living on-reserve. Johnston 

(1983) recognized that the “best of intentions” lay behind this recommendation, however, “little 

attention was paid to the effect that extending provincial services would have on Indian families and 

communities” (p. 3). Indeed, the 1951 revisions to the Indian Act made Status Indians subject to 

provincial laws that did not contradict the Act, including child welfare laws (Indian Act, 1951; Johnston, 

1983), setting the stage for widespread provincial intervention.  

During the next several years, provincial governments signed various agreements regarding how child 

welfare services on-reserve would be provided and funded. These agreements differed among provinces 

and territories (Johnston, 1983; Sinha & Kozlowki, 2013). For instance, from 1962 until the early 1980s, 

B.C. had an informal agreement with the federal government to provide certain federally funded 

services (specifically child protection and child-in-care services) to First Nations children living on-

reserve. However, preventative services that supported families staying together (e.g., daycare) were 

not included in any agreements and were largely unavailable to First Nations families across the 

province (Fournier & Crey, 1997; Johnston, 1983).  

Euro-Western ideals embedded within Canadian policy, the justice system, and the child welfare system 

were (re)produced by social workers, administrators, lawyers, and judges who viewed their everyday 

practices to be in the best interest of all children (Kimelman, 1985). Indigenous children often were 

apprehended because of the incongruence between Euro-Western notions and cultural practices and 

realities of Indigenous communities. A social worker with the Ministry in B.C. conceded that  

Provincial social workers would, quite literally, scoop children from reserves on the slightest 

pretext . . . [and] she and her colleagues sincerely believed that what they were doing was in the 

best interests of the children. They felt that the apprehension of Indian children from reserves 

would save them from the effects of crushing poverty, unsanitary health conditions, poor 

housing and malnutrition, which were facts of life on many reserves. (cited in Johnston, 1983,  

p. 47)  

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Further, Johnston (1983) related that these social workers did not take into account the long-term 

effects of child apprehension on children, their families, and their communities.  

Often, children were placed in non-Indigenous foster or adoptive homes (in Canada and other countries) 

where they received inferior care and were subjected to abuse and neglect (Badgely, 1991; Fournier & 

Crey, 1997). Some foster parents took children in because of the modest stipend accompanying each 

child, as well as for the opportunity to put children to work in the household or farm. Some Indigenous 

children were sold to adoptive parents in the United States—many of whom were seeking a source of 

labour (Fournier & Crey, 1997). Accompanying this shift in responsibility for child welfare from the 

federal residential schools to provincial child welfare services, some residential schools closed in the 

1960s and 1970s. 

From the mid-twentieth century, the practice of child protection workers apprehending and placing 

Indigenous children in non-Indigenous foster and adopted homes bourgeoned (Johnston, 1983; 

Hamilton, & Sinclair, 1991). In 1955, less than 1% of children in the care of B.C.’s child welfare branch 

were of First Nations ancestry; by 1964, the proportion had increased to 32.2% (Johnston, 1983). These 

practices continued the harms inflicted by the residential school system, whereby children faced 

numerous losses as they were removed from their families and communities while being immersed in 

Euro-Canadian cultural practices and norms, usually without access to Indigenous cultural practices or 

gatherings (Badgely, 1991; Fournier & Crey, 1997; Johnston, 1983; Hamilton & Sinclair, 1991; Sinclair, 

2007).  Many survivors of the Sixties Scoop reported being subjected to spiritual, emotional, physical, 

and sexual abuse and neglect in the very homes in which the child welfare authorities placed them, 

reflecting the colonialist and racist dynamics that continue to shape adoptive family relations (Fournier 

& Crey, 1997; Johnston, 1983; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996; Sinclair, 2007).  

Even when placed in non-Indigenous homes with loving, kind people and environments, Indigenous 

children were (and continue to be) often affected by these multiple losses and racialized power 

dynamics. Today, many adopted Indigenous people experience intense struggles as they try to come to 

terms with their Indigenous identities in a society that discriminates against Indigenous peoples, 

particularly when they are separated from family and communities who share these experiences 

(Sinclair, 2007; Tait et al., 2013). Although generations of families and communities have resisted and 

flourished despite colonial forces, the consequences of these practices are extensive (Bombay et al., 

2011; Bracken, Deane, & Morrissette, 2009; Fast & Collin-Vézina, 2010; Haskell & Randall, 2009; Jacobs 

& Gill, 2002). The effects shape all aspects of life, including access to education, employment, parenting, 

and mental and physical health of those apprehended, members of families from whom children were 

taken, and subsequent generations (Bombay et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2005). These dynamics continue 

as part of Indigenous communities “lived histories,” perpetuated by neocolonial and neoliberal practices 

and discourses. 

Lived Histories: Colonial Child Welfare Policies and Practices Today  

Past colonial discourses resonate today through popular, medical, and scientific discourses that continue 

to pathologize Indigenous peoples (Browne, 2007; Browne & Fiske, 2001; Browne & Smye, 2002; 

Browne, Smye, et al., 2011; Fiske & Browne, 2006; Tait, 2009; Varcoe, Brown, Calam, Harvey, & Tallio, 

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2013). Much epidemiological and biomedical research, health policies, and media coverage frame 

Indigenous people as a homogenous group with higher rates of health and social problems requiring 

individualized biomedical or psychiatric treatment. These discourses both overlook the diversity of 

Indigenous communities and render invisible the relationship between Indigenous people’s social and 

health conditions and historical and present-day colonial processes, a relationship Indigenous people 

and allies have repeatedly highlighted (e.g., Ing, 1991; Kelm, 1998, 2010; Kirmayer & Valaskakis, 2009). 

When epidemiological, biomedical, media, government, and broader public discourses acknowledge the 

relationship between colonialism and Indigenous people’s social and health conditions today, 

colonialism is often constructed as something that occurred only in years past, and solely embodied by 

the residential school system (and less often, by the Sixties Scoop). For example, recent epidemiological 

research exploring the relationship between Indigenous people’s health conditions and colonialism uses 

“residential school attendance” and “removal from biological parent” as the primary indicators of 

colonial violence and trauma (see for instance Cedar Project et al., 2008; Lemstra, Rogers, Thompson, 

Moraros, & Buckingham, 2012; Mehrabadi et al., 2008; Spittal et al., 2007). While these indicators are 

important, given their intergenerational effects, it is equally important to recognize that there is an 

extensive system of colonial policies, practices, and discourses influencing Indigenous people’s lives and 

their profound material and social impacts (Kirmayer et al., 2014; Maxwell, 2014; Tait, 2009). For 

instance, Maxwell (2014) revealed that mental health and child development discourses often 

discursively mobilize historical trauma to justify state-sanctioned interventions into Indigenous families 

“on the grounds of children’s needs for ‘protection’ and parents’ needs for clinical intervention” (p. 

426).  

Past and present colonial violence directly contributes to the intersecting issues of poverty, unstable and 

unsafe housing, systemic discrimination, substance misuse, and other individual, family, and community 

health concerns for Indigenous people (Commission of Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the 

Death of Phoenix Sinclair [Manitoba] & Hughes, 2013]; First Nations Information Governance Centre 

[FNIGC], 2012; Kashaninia & B.C. Stats, 2011; Mitchel & Maracle, 2005). Indigenous families continue to 

be treated differentially than other, non-Indigenous children by child welfare services in Canada, and 

other White-settler states, namely New Zealand, Australia, and the United States (Tilbury & Thoburn, 

2011). In Australia, 5% of children aged 0 to 17 are Indigenous, while 24% of the children in care are 

Indigenous; Indigenous children are both more likely to be involved in maltreatment investigations and 

placed in out-of-home care in comparison with non-Indigenous children (Tilbury, 2009). Similarly, Sinha, 

Trocmé, Fallon, and MacLaurin’s (2013) analysis of the 2008 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child 

Abuse and Neglect (CIS) revealed that, consistent with 2003 and 1998 findings, First Nations families 

were investigated on average 4.2 times more often by child welfare than non-Indigenous families (140.6 

per 1000 compared to 33.5 per 1000). Cases involving First Nations children were more likely to be 

substantiated (Sinha et al., 2011), more likely to remain open, and children were more likely to be 

placed in out-of-home care (Sinha et al., 2011) than children and families who were not First Nations. 

Further, among those households investigated, First Nations households were more often dealing with 

poverty, substance misuse, domestic violence, and “caregiving resource strain” than non-Indigenous 

households (p. 828), and were most often investigated for neglect (41.0 per 1000 households) or risk of 

maltreatment (37.8 per 1000 households) (Sinha, Trocmé, et al., 2013). These rates require some 

context, however: Research shows that child maltreatment, particularly neglect, is strongly linked to 

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poverty (Drake, Lee, & Jonson-Reid, 2009; Trocmé, Knoke, & Blackstock, 2004). Yet, in Canada, dominant 

discourses continue to frame poverty as an individual failing, meanwhile the social safety net continues 

to erode (Redden, 2014; Swift & Callahan, 2009). 

Persistent discourses framing Indigenous peoples as inherently prone to substance use problems and 

violence shape many service providers’ assumptions about and practices with Indigenous mothers and 

families, often with deleterious effects (Browne, 2005; Browne & Fiske, 2001; Browne, Smye, et al., 

2011; Landertinger, 2011; Tang & Browne, 2008). These effects include stereotyping, discrimination, and 

erroneous judgments by service providers, leading to avoidance of healthcare (Browne, Smye, et al., 

2011; Browne, Varcoe, & Fridkin, 2011; Denison, Varcoe, & Browne, 2014). Browne and Fiske (2001) 

related one First Nations woman’s experiences seeking care as follows:   

I went into the emergency . . . I had my daughter, screaming, fever. Her bum was just really red 

and raw, and they took her away from me. They apprehended her from me right there . . . And I 

couldn’t believe it. And it just shows you, I said, just because I’m a Native person that came in 

with a black eye, that looked like I wasn’t, you know, because my child had a really bad, severe 

rash, they just assumed the worse. And I said, “You didn’t even know who I was” . . . It was just 

because of how I looked, eh? (p. 136) 

Mainstream media, government policy, and some ethnographic research have reified the colonial image 

of “the drunken Indian,” whose drinking is distinct from other groups and inherently problematic 

(Anderson & Robertson, 2011; Carter, 1997; Waldram, 2004). For instance, until the late twentieth 

century, Indian Act regulations around First Nations people’s alcohol use were much stricter than laws 

applying to non-First Nations people. In 1874, a First Nations person’s intoxication was made an offence 

punishable by jail under legislation incorporated into the 1876 Indian Act (Royal Commission on 

Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). The 1876 Act also prohibited First Nations people’s possession of alcohol on-

reserve. In 1951, these regulations were loosened, but it was not until the 1970 R v. Drybones case that 

this section of the Indian Act was eliminated because it conflicted with the Canadian Bill of Rights (Royal 

Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). Colonial myths of Indigenous people’s genetic vulnerability to 

the effects of alcohol are perhaps some of the most enduring colonial images, which continue to 

permeate Canadian public consciousness (Furniss, 1999). Furniss (1999) described the extent to which 

Euro-Canadians subscribe to misinformed assumptions about Indigenous people and alcohol use, and 

illustrated that people assume that alcohol abuse is an “inherent part of Indian culture and/or that 

Aboriginal people are biologically predisposed to alcoholism” (p. 109). These discourses stand in 

contrast to actual, lived patterns of Indigenous peoples. According to the First Nations Regional 

Longitudinal Health Survey (RHS), completed between 2008 and 2010, 35.3% of First Nations people 

living on-reserve had not consumed alcohol in the last year in comparison to 23% of the overall 

Canadian population (FNIGC, 2012; Health Canada, 2010). This is not to diminish the issue of substance 

misuse for Indigenous peoples; 82.6% of First Nations people completing this same survey reported 

alcohol and drug use were challenges that their communities were currently facing.  Rather, our 

intention is to draw attention to the ways in which colonial myths reverberate through current 

discourses and underpin assumptions held by many Canadians, as well as to consider the implications 

for human service delivery and interpretation of reports such as the CIS.  

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Risk Assessment: The Intersection of Neocolonial and Neoliberal Discourses  

The shift from overt civilizing discourses to more neutralized language concerning Indigenous peoples’ 

higher rates of health conditions and social problems converged with the increasing focus on risk in the 

late nineteenth century (Douglas, 1992). Indeed, risk and risk management have become predominant 

within child welfare practice since the 1990s (Rutman, Callahan, & Swift, 2007; Strega, 2009; Swift & 

Callahan, 2009). Child welfare workers measure children’s risk of maltreatment using two types of risk 

assessment tools: actuarial risk assessment tools based on statistical research, which correlate families’ 

characteristics and history with risk for child abuse and neglect; and consensus-based models, which are 

based on practitioners’ experience and knowledge. These tools suggest that child welfare workers make 

standardized, objective judgments of children’s risk of being abused or neglected, even though research 

indicates otherwise (Munroe, 1999; Swift & Callahan, 2009). Indeed, risk assessment tools are founded 

on Eurocentric norms that fail to account for socio-cultural, historical, or local community contexts 

(Gerlach, Browne, & Suto, 2014; Rutman et al., 2007), and like any method, measure, or tool, risk 

assessments serve as a prism through which particular aspects of children and families come into focus 

(Haraway, 2004). In this case, social and environmental factors that place families at risk are 

transformed into individual family risks (Rutman et al., 2007; Strega, 2009; Swift & Callahan, 2009). In 

particular, such tools do not recognize how historical and current colonial processes place Indigenous 

families at risk of violence, poverty, substance abuse, and ill-health (Yee cited in Sparrow, 2013). For 

instance, because of colonial policies, Indigenous families are more likely to have low incomes and live in 

unstable and insecure housing (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2013; Commission 

of Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Phoenix Sinclair [Manitoba] & Hughes, 2013; 

Kashaninia & B.C. Stats, 2011; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996), two factors that are 

statistically linked to child neglect; therefore, Indigenous children are more likely to be deemed at 

higher risk from their parents than non-Indigenous children (Drake, Lee, & Jonson-Reid, 2009; Strega, 

2009; Trocmé et al., 2004). Further, colonial stereotypes of Indigenous communities as spaces of 

dysfunction, binge drinking, and sickness continue to circulate in Euro-Canadian society; as such, 

Indigenous children are more likely to be flagged as “at risk” by child welfare workers than Euro-

Canadian children whose families are dealing with the same or similar conditions. In Sinha, Ellenbogen, 

and Trocmé’s (2013) analysis of the 2008 CIS data, among investigations of households in which only 

neglect was suspected (not maltreatment), if child welfare workers confirmed that one of the parents 

was problematically using substances, the workers were much more likely to substantiate neglect in 

First Nations households (odds ratio of 19.97) than they were in non-Indigenous households (odds ratio 

of 3.38). 

This focus on risk within child welfare practice conflicts with holistic Indigenous views of wellness, 

childrearing, family, and community, and many Indigenous organizations resist this narrow view of risk, 

grounding their policies and practices in Indigenous community values and realities (McKenzie & 

Shangreaux, 2011; Thomas, Hummerstey, Rutman, Hume, & Van Bibber, 2009; Walmsley, 2005b). 

Similarly, Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations are also using (and adapting) the strength-based 

Signs of Safety assessment approach (Caslor, 2011; Skrypek, Otteson, & Owen, 2010; Turnell, 2012). This 

Australian-developed, collaborative approach emphasizes critical thinking, a spirit of inquiry, and 

practicality. The tools and techniques have been developed with on-the-ground service providers and 

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are constantly being refined and redeveloped in response to practice realities in different locations 

(Turnell, 2012). As such, it is more consistent with Indigenous worldviews than other non-Indigenous 

developed assessment models. 

Universalizing Euro-Canadian Notions of Family and Children’s “Best Interests” 

Legislation governing child welfare in B.C. and other locations in Canada furthers the over-involvement 

of child welfare authorities in Indigenous families. In B.C., most Indigenous child welfare service 

agencies and provincial agencies must adhere to B.C.’s Child, Family and Community Services Act, 

embedded with Euro-Western notions of families and liberal, individualistic discourse. Two exceptions 

to this trend are the Splats’in First Nation, which asserted control over their child welfare services in 

1980 through a provision of the Indian Act that decrees bands can make their own by-laws (Indian Act, 

1970; Johnston, 1983), and the Nisga’a Nation, whose members signed a treaty in 1999 with the B.C. 

and Canadian governments asserting the Nisga’a’s authority to pass laws concerning child and family 

welfare on their lands as long as these laws are “comparable” to provincial standards (Sinha & Kozlowki, 

2013, p. 8). Within B.C.’s Act and legislation from some other provinces, the importance of maintaining 

children’s cultural identity and kinship ties to extended family are recognized as part of determining 

what is in Indigenous children’s best interest, and provisions are made for the involvement of 

Indigenous communities in decisions (Government of British Columbia, 1996; Sinha & Kozlowki, 2013). 

In practice, judges’ considerations of Indigenous children’s culture, identity, and community connections 

remain limited (Walkem, 2015). Further, Walkem (2015) related that lawyers’ arguments and judges’ 

decisions often employ essentialized notions of Indigenous identity to represent only some Indigenous 

families as authentic, thereby dismissing the importance of certain children’s cultural identities and 

kinship ties. Similarly, Indigenous communities’ interests are often constructed as separable from and as 

conflicting with their children’s interests (Walkem, 2015). This contrasts with Indigenous relational 

understandings of family and community (Mandell et al., 2007; Walkem, 2015). Further, legislation and 

many court cases do not consider past and present colonial violence (de Leeuw et al., 2010; Walkem, 

2015).  

The consequences of this legislation are extensive. Since the early 1980s, Indigenous organizations in 

B.C. and other areas of Canada have increasingly taken responsibility for providing child and welfare 

services for Indigenous children on- and off-reserve. However, with the exceptions of Splats’in First 

Nation and Nisga’a Nation, B.C. Indigenous organizations provide child and welfare services through 

authorities that are delegated by the province (Sinha & Kozlowki, 2013). As of 2013, 31 Indigenous 

agencies in B.C. were providing some level of child and family services, and 18 agencies were providing 

comprehensive child and family services, including child welfare investigations (Sinha & Kozlowski, 

2013). During Walmsley’s (2005a, 2005b) interviews, some child welfare workers with Indigenous 

organizations described how Indigenous values inform their organizations and practices. However, as 

Mandell et al. (2007) pointed out, while the increasing number of Indigenous child and family service 

agencies provide more families with culturally-relevant options, the requirement to follow provincial 

legislation has produced a “lack of cultural fit between child welfare ideology, law, and services 

delivered” (p. 152) to Indigenous peoples. For instance, a non-Indigenous employee working with an 

Indigenous child welfare organization stated that people in the organization:  

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Do perceive this as a branch of the Ministry because we are mandated under the Family and 

Children Services Act and so although we try and maybe incorporate some of the Native 

teachings into it, when it comes right down to it, that's what we're living by and that . . . [is a] . . .  

very White piece of legislation. (Walmsley, 2005a, p. 105) 

Neo-Colonial Resentment and the Underfunding of Indigenous Child Welfare 

The colonial relations of the child welfare system are further perpetuated by inadequate funding 

provided to on-reserve child welfare services, in tandem with colonial myths that distract public 

consciousness from this underfunding. For example, it is common for Euro-Canadian people to express 

resentments about Indigenous people’s relationship with the federal government, claiming that 

Indigenous peoples receive free housing and university education, do not pay taxes, and are provided 

with an abundance of government payments on-reserve (Furniss, 1999). These “common criticisms” 

reveal how discourses of egalitarianism operate simultaneously with settler-colonial denial of 

Indigenous presence, history, and rights in order to construct Euro-Canadian society and governments 

as the victims of Indigenous people’s entitlements and “special treatment.” At the same time that Euro-

Canadian resentment towards Indigenous peoples’ “special treatment” permeates public discourse 

(Browne, 2005; Fiske & Browne, 2006; Furniss, 1999), research continues to document the underfunding 

of First Nations child welfare services, housing, education, and other social services on-reserve (First 

Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, 2005a, 2005b; McDonald & Ladd, 2000).  

In the First Nations Child and Family Services Joint National Policy Review Final Report, MacDonald and 

Ladd (2000) stated that as of March 31, 1999, the federal government spent $34,600 annually for each 

First Nations child in care on-reserve (through the Directive 20-1 funding formula)2 while B.C. provided 

$54,331 for each child in care (including First Nations children living off-reserve, Métis, and non-

Indigenous children). In response, a National Advisory Committee was formed in 2004 and a three-phase 

research project was commissioned to investigate how to improve the funding of First Nations Child and 

Family Service Agencies (First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, 2005a, 2005b). The 

First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (FNCFCS) recommended immediately revising the Directive 

20-1 formula so it could more effectively take into account inflation and remoteness and increase 

resources for preventative services. FNCFCS (2005b) also recommended developing a new funding 

formula grounded in First Nations communities’ needs and realities. In 2007, the federal government 

started signing agreements with some provinces to implement a new funding model, the Enhanced-

Prevention-Focused-Approach, which addressed some of Directive 20-1’s shortcomings and perpetuates 

others (Auditor General of Canada, 2011; First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada et. al. 

v. Attorney General of Canada [for the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada], 2016). 

                                                           

2 Directive 20-1 was established in 1988 and is based on the number of children living on-reserve. It 

assumes that 6% of the children from each community are in care and 20% of families are receiving 

services of some kind. It has not been changed in response to legislation and practice standards 

revisions, nor does it take into account differences between communities (such as support services 

available) (Auditor General of Canada, 2008; First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada et. 

al. v. Attorney General of Canada (for the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada), 2016).   

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Furthermore, as of 2014, B.C., New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Yukon still received 

funding through the out-of-date and much-criticized Directive 20-1 formula.  

The underfunding of First Nations child welfare services has been challenged repeatedly. For instance, in 

the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Case, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada et al. 

v. Attorney General of Canada (for the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) (2016), 

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada was ordered “to cease its discriminatory 

practices” and reform the First Nations Child and Family Services program (p. 168). With this decision in 

mind, we propose the following nine recommendations. 

Transforming Euro-Centric Policy to Support Indigenous Families:  

Recommended Policy Approaches 

These recommendations take into account the impacts of colonial relations and processes on Indigenous 

communities, accountability to Indigenous communities, and Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-

determination. These recommendations involve significant upstream investments, but would contribute 

to downstream savings for the child welfare system. First, we make five recommendations addressing 

child welfare, social service, and health care practice. Then, we make four recommendations to increase 

resources for Indigenous families, communities, and child welfare agencies as well as to support 

Indigenous communities’ self-determination. These recommendations will work most effectively 

together. For instance, providing equitable funding for First Nations child and family services will 

facilitate the transformation of practice standards and foster culturally safe practices, as defined below. 

Furthermore, if governments increase resources for First Nations child welfare services but colonial 

discourses continue to shape child welfare legislation and practice, the overrepresentation of 

Indigenous children in the care of the state is bound to continue. The recommendations are as follows: 

a. Transform child and welfare legislation and practice standards across the provinces so they 
reflect Indigenous values and are responsive to community contexts (Commission of Inquiry 

into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Phoenix Sinclair [Manitoba] & Hughes, 

2013).  

b. Improve training to foster culturally safe practice by social workers and other providers. 
Cultural safety engages a complex understanding of culture (as shaped by historical and 

socio-political factors, ethnicity, socio-economic conditions, gender, sexuality, etc.) and 

emphasizes critical self-reflexivity by providers. It also recognizes and addresses power 

inequalities between care providers and clients (Gerlach, 2012; Gerlach, Sullivan, Valavaara, 

& McNeil, 2014; Harding, 2013; Health Council of Canada, 2012; Josewski, 2012; Papps & 

Ramsden, 1996; Varcoe & Browne, 2015). Cultural safety requires attention to the impacts 

of colonial processes and practices. As such, enhanced training that fosters culturally safe 

practices will enable social workers and others, such as health care providers, to better 

support Indigenous families.  

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c. Increase the availability of culturally safe early childhood support services and programs 
that are grounded in Indigenous communities’ contexts and draw on Indigenous 

knowledges. 

d. Increase culturally safe primary health care services for Indigenous peoples, particularly 
women-centred, family-centred, and child-centred services. These services require 

organizational support (Browne, Varcoe, Ford-Gilboe, Wathen, & EQUIP Research Team, 

2015; Browne et al., 2012). 

e. Move from the current models of risk assessment to holistic strength-based assessment 
models, which emphasize collaboration and are consistent with Indigenous worldviews, 

particularly Indigenous community models and the Signs of Safety approach (Caslor, 2011; 

Skrypek et al., 2010; Turnell, 2012).  

f. Fund community development initiatives and provide everyone with a minimum income 
comparable to a living wage so people have more resources to provide for themselves and 

their families. 

g. Increase affordable, safe housing and reduce barriers to affordable housing. 

h. Provide equitable funding for First Nations children on-reserve and children living off-
reserve. A new, flexible funding formula that emphasizes improving family support services 

should be developed in consultation with organizations providing services to First Nations 

children on- and off-reserve (Blackstock, 2007; First Nations Child and Family Caring Society 

of Canada, 2005b; Mandell et al., 2007).  

i. Support Indigenous communities’ right to self-determination (particularly regarding child 
welfare services).  

Although these policy recommendations may seem unrealistic in the neoliberal, neocolonial context we 

are working in, with a new Liberal government and a Prime Minister who speaks to renewing a nation-

to-nation relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples, transformative policy change is more 

possible now than in recent public memory. It is critical to use creative and multiple actions to move 

these recommendations forward, ranging from public education and advocacy to public protests and 

direct action resisting colonial systems. Whatever strategies engaged and whether governments 

implement these policy changes, Indigenous people and allies will continue to resist neocolonial and 

neoliberal violence and build decolonized futures through numerous practices, including: destabilizing 

Eurocentric health and social service practices, revising standards of practice and policies to take into 

account Indigenous contexts, familial relations, and knowledges, and working together to envision what 

decolonized relationships and structures might look like on Turtle Island/the land (now) called Canada. 

  

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	The International Indigenous Policy Journal
	April 2016

	Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and Child Welfare: An Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial Discourses
	Holly A. McKenzie
	Colleen Varcoe
	Annette J. Browne
	Linda Day
	Recommended Citation

	Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and Child Welfare: An Analysis of Colonial and Neocolonial Discourses
	Abstract
	Keywords
	Acknowledgments
	Creative Commons License


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