Melanie_

To go back to the original question, regarding deaths of aboriginal children, here’s an update on Christopher Pauchay….. Winnipeg Free Press I do feel sorry for this man, who will have to live his life bearing the burden of guilt for his children’s deaths. His wife says they were alcoholics before this tragedy, and now are clean and sober; however, she was drinking throughout her recent pregnancy, and gave birth two weeks ago to another daughter. He has been charged with criminal negligence causing death, but his family and the people on the reserve seem to feel he has suffered enough and shouldn’t have any charges against him. As I said, I feel sorry for him, but I can’t support sending the message that being drunk is an excuse for negligent parenting. Kids are vulnerable, and they need their parents to be responsible and protective of them. This wasn’t an accident, it was totally preventable, and the choices he made led to the death of his children – he needs to be held accountable.

You're probably right, Guyser, it won't be the last time, and that is partially what makes this so disturbing. Where else is this happening right under the noses of the rest of us? This poor woman was victimized from childhood, and no one noticed. I read in a different report that these two boys were 18 and 19, and there was a 5 year old as well who had never been out of the basement. Imagine being 19 years old and never having left that windowless basement dungeon. I don't know how these kids can even adjust to life above the ground, particularly the two older ones. I find it really hard to believe no one else knew about this. The wife must have had some idea that something was going on - why did they keep "finding" children to raise? Didn't she ever hear the other children who were locked up in her basement? But then, I wonder what her life was like, married to this guy. Pure speculation at this point, but I'd be willing to bet he wasn't husband of the year material.

Aw, Leafy, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I'll try to be nicer to you.

How many children are you willing to sit back and watch die while they are sorting all of this out? These kids can't be sacrificed as collateral damage to building up their parents' self esteem and self worth. If the parents need help, by all means give it to them, but not at the expense of their kids. Children are not best cared for in their communities, they are best cared for by people who aren't abusive. If that can be found in the communites, wonderful. If it can be supported and fostered in the communities, great. But if it can't (and you have pointed out that these communities are difficult to find), the children can't be abandoned to lives of abuse, simply because of their race. The larger community can't turn their back on these kids, anymore than we can turn our back on white kids, black kids, asian kids, or any other demographic you can come up with. Abuse isn't an aboriginal issue, and we can't just overlook it or excuse it because of race. There are plenty of aboriginal parents who are raising their children free of abuse, which is important to recognize. They may be able to take in foster kids in their communities, or they may not be able to. Sometimes the problem with keeping kids in their communities is that the communities are small and everyone's related to each other. This can make it hard to maintain the neccessary distance between an abusive parent and their child. My preference would be to remove the parent from the community rather than the child, but that doesn't seem to be a very popular position.

First off, I have never denied the atrocities of the residential schools. I agree, there were horrible abuses; children were scooped up from their homes and families and forced to change their language, culture and way of life. They were subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuses, which continue to impact their lives as parents and grandparents. Children were also taken from their homes and adopted by families who tried to eradicate their culture and heritage, pretending they were the same as everyone else. I recognize there were injustices that continue to impact aboriginal communities today. What you need to recognize is that the injustices, indignities, atrocities these people suffered doesn't give them the right to subject their children to the same treatment. No matter what happened to any one individual, and I know they suffered, they can't just continue these patterns. You are saying that we should just turn a blind eye to children's suffering, because we caused their parents' suffering - I reject this arguement absolutely. Yes, this could be interpreted as continuing the patriarchal attitude that started the problems in the first place, and I have no solution for this. But children are children first, regardless of their culture. You are advocating for disposable children in favour of giving communities time to figure out what to do, and I can't justify that at all.

I'm interested in the protection of living children. Culture and race are irrelevent if a child is in danger. I agree, there is much to answer for regarding residential school abuses, but looking backwards does nothing to help the kids living with abuse today. I really don't care if a child is white, aboriginal, black, asian, or whatever. The first priority has to be safety, not race or culture.

It had to happen sooner or later - the law of averages and all. He isn't due again for at least a couple of years, though.

With the recent capture of Alan Schoenborn (not convicted of anything just yet), it’s important to recognize that parental dysfunction isn’t limited to aboriginals. And we need to recognize that there are countless loving and capable aboriginal parents. But there certainly have been a number of high profile deaths of aboriginal children here in Manitoba lately. I’ve talked about Gage Guimond in another thread, a little boy who was placed in a loving and stable foster home when he was an infant, but was removed from it because the family wasn’t aboriginal. He was given to some distant relatives he didn’t even know, and was killed just before his second birthday. Manitoba has recently changed the policy of keeping children in their communities and within their culture regardless of whether or not other options are available, and instead has decided that the good of the child comes first. I’m cautiously optimistic about this change; it is a step in the right direction.

No, WB, it isn't another example, because your first example was of a clerical error, not a Muslim plot. But I have a hard time believing a story that starts out... and then continues on to explain how the emailer's friend went to an airport and there were no porters around and a stranger gave her an explanation based on racism and therefore all Muslims are bad! From the bio of the author of the article: Sounds like she has an agenda.

But that's not what happened here. Even if there were 1000 Muslim men there, the pool was supposed to be open to all.

WB - This was an error on the part of the employee of the pool, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Student: You marked my paper wrong! Don't you know anything? Me: Are you feeling lucky, punk? Go ahead, make my day!

Your political compass Economic Left/Right: -4.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.54 Just south of the Dalai Lama.... My results from June 1, 2005 (this thread has been around a long time!) The graph seems to have disappeared, though, August.

Thanks, Guyser, I feel so much better now!! I don't know how many meetings, memos, committees, etc my little Ivory Tower of Academia has devoted to the issue of gun violence on campus, but my general feeling is lets not have guns around. I know, if someone is going to go postal they will find a way to do it, but having more guns just seems to invite more opportunity. We're also talking about a demographic where there are thousands of late adolescent/early adult males, trying to impress each other with how tough they are (you can tell the really tough ones by the number of creative ways they find to use the word "fuck" in every sentence). It just feels like a disaster waiting to happen.

Yeah, that should be really good for her skin condition.

I wonder how comfortable I would feel bringing students into my office to talk about their grades, if I knew that they just might be carrying a weapon with them. And if they asked for extensions? I might be pretty tolerant of late papers all of a sudden!

But who is burning down the mosques? Are you saying that violence towards Muslims is a good reason to deny them entry into a country? This is an example of blaming the victim. If there are other reasons why you feel Muslims shouldn't be granted entry into the Netherlands, fine. I just don't see the reason you're giving as being valid.

Far be it from me to defend this scumbag. But I live in Winnipeg, and this was covered widely at the time. I also don't see the word rape anywhere in the post, and from what I remember of the coverage it wasn't called rape at all. However, he had sex with many women and young girls (an argument for statutory rape can be made in these cases), knowing he was HIV positive, and that makes him a disgusting piece of garbage. I'm sure when the trial commences we will get to read all the lurid details.

I'm assuming you're for it as long as you and your loved ones aren't the victims.

Welcome to the forum, Qwerty, but you may find yourself in for a bumpy ride with comments like this... You're sitting at your keyboard, gleefully anticipating disaster on your fellow Canadians? Whose the terrorist now? If half of the 13 "at risk" neighbourhoods have significant Muslim populations (what constitutes "significant"?), what is the population mix of the other half? Also from your link... So it sounds like the second generation Muslims are the haves, who have integrated into the system. That seems like a multicultural success story. And if 14% of these visible minorities are unemployed, that means that 86% are working in Canada. Not a bad number for people who are trying to figure out a new country, with new rules and laws, different expectations, and weather they have never dreamed possible.

You have your head in the sand, if you think children are removed for minor reasons. The Child Welfare System leaves children in their homes whenever possible - there just aren't enough foster families to remove all the children who are in danger. Many children who can't be left in their homes end up in hotels with a revolving door of respite workers, whoever is on call that night, because there are no foster families to take them in. Here are some names for you to look up, when you say children aren't in danger: Gage Guimond Tracia Owens Fonessa Bruyere Pheonix Sinclair These are just the first few that come to me off the top of my head, and they are just the high profile deaths here in Manitoba. We only read about the deaths in the paper, but there are also so many kids who fly under the radar, living lives of abuse and neglect that never get reported. I'm not saying they are all Native, by the way - abuse and neglect occur in every type of family - but as the previous link showed there is a higher proportion of Native children in care. There are social reasons for this - it isn't because they are Native, it has more to do with the living conditions and family dysfunction that has resulted from government policy towards Canada's aboriginals. So you and I are on the same page there. But to deny the truth, that children are being victimized, is to perpetuate the problem rather than dealing with it.

Safety is the most important issue. I'm not sure what you mean when you say it isn't important? If you read the article, you'll see that there was a lot more to the story of Gage Guimond and Tracia Owens than not sending a child to school or being poor. Children are removed from homes because the parents can't care for them adequately - this happens to all types of families, not just Native families. But Native families are overrepresented in the Child Welfare System, and that is likely to be the legacy of the residential schools. It will take a long time and a lot of healing for the dysfunction caused by residential schools to be overcome, but in the meantime we have to stop more kids from becoming victims. Pathways to the Overrepresentation of Aboriginal Children in Care From the website Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare

Interesting article, Renegade! I know there are many on this forum who take the position that people who can't afford kids shouldn't have them, but this article really shows what that means. Is this really the best option? Should the only couples who have babies be the ones where one income is high enough to replace the other? Or, as this couple did, have one parent set up shop in her basement, trying to run a business while raising a newborn and a toddler. When my two youngest kids were small, I worked from home, taking small contracts and teaching night classes, but I had a career that could be flexible (although we lived in a tiny house, drove an ancient car, and barely scraped by from paycheque to paycheque). I doubt that is a viable option for many. What is the solution? Other countries recognize that helping families in the short term empowers them to be more economically productive in the long term. Of course, economic productivity is not the only important factor here, but it is the one that many like to trot out when they say they don't want to support other people's choice to have children. I like the suggestions proposed by the article:

Today Manitoba recognized where the real priority has to be - the safety of the children. Safety comes before culture, safety comes before family, safety comes before community. Whenever possible, family, culture and community can be kept as intact as possible, but only if the safety of the child is reasonably certain. Law will protect kids in care Gage Guimond's death was a tragedy - here was a happy, well loved toddler who was removed from his stable and caring foster family and given to extended family who told the social workers they didn't want him. His death is a direct result of placing family and culture ahead of children's safety, and unfortunately that is what it took to wake this province up to the injustice we were doing to our children.

Not absurd at all, just different from your view. Less concrete, more abstract. I don't feel the need for absolute boundaries and rigid definitions; obviously we have different visions of what culture needs to be, and why it needs to be. I see a problem in your view that culture binds people together through commonalities. Its the misunderstanding of those commonalities that leads to stereotypes, or to the comments you are making in the first part of your post. Leave your prejudices behind, and see people as individuals, responsible only for their own actions, rather than as representatives of their "race".