From this article --- ( http://www.macleans.ca/first-nations-fighting-foster-care/ )
"In late January, Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott will hold an emergency meeting of First Nations leaders, child-welfare agencies and advocacy groups to confront what she has called a “humanitarian crisis.” Indigenous children are, to put it mildly, overrepresented in Canada’s child-welfare system. In 2016, First Nations, Metis and Inuit youth made up 52 per cent of foster children younger than 14 in Canada, despite representing just eight per cent of that age group, according to Statistics Canada. That’s four points higher than in 2011, reflecting the fact that more Indigenous children have been entering foster care than leaving it. Between 1989 and 2012, Indigenous children have spent more than 66 million nights in foster care—the equivalent of 180,000 years. These national statistics, however, only account for children living in private households. If they included those who live in group homes, shelters or mental health facilities, say advocates, the total would be far higher.
The numbers vary between provinces and territories, but the imbalance applies across the country, and has reached crisis proportions in the West. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, nearly 90 per cent of children in care are Indigenous. Of the roughly 11,000 in care in Manitoba, according to a 2016-17 provincial government report, nearly 10,000 are Indigenous and nearly 6,000 of those are permanent wards. (Manitoba’s total includes children in foster homes, places of safety, group facilities, independent living and other types of care.)"
This is just a snippet that jumped out at me. My work on the Pursuance of this Project is going to involve my gathering up of as much news and journal articles as I can about this subject in the next little while to better familiarize myself with the subject.
I am trying to join Barrett Brown's PURSUANCE PROJECT with this effort. Barrett Brown is a journalist in the US who has developed the Pursuance Project as a medium for journalists, bloggers, activists and resources to collaborate on investigating various subjects. So I am posting the info here and on Facebook and soon on the Pursuance project sub-reddit.
Anyways, I just thought people would be interested in the article in question. It came up in my feed just a few minutes ago. I am going to reach out to the author of the article to see where they got their statistics and research for this article.