Anishinabek circles a traditional yet new way to smooth out the 'injustices of the system'

Six women sit in a circle, passing around a feather, discussing how to a help a single mother struggling to balance the needs of her two kids while working two jobs.

One woman, who says she is the children's grandmother, struggles to remember her own daughter's name and the crowded meeting room breaks out in laughter.

This role play scenario is part of the training for facilitators and elders from across Ontario who will soon be taking the circle program to their home communities.

The Anishinabek Nation is turning to one of its most ancient traditions, the sharing circles, to solve some of the stickiest child welfare disputes. 

The training is being led by Vicky Laforge-Enright of Nipissing First Nation, who says the goal is to make sure that everyone involved in the child's life, including birth parents and extended family, is heard by the circle, and that a solution is made at the community level, instead of by outside authorities.

"The CAS worker takes the circle report over to the court and the judge says 'If you guys got all of those people in the room to agree, who am I to say that you're wrong?'" she said.

Laforge-Enright has years of experience working in the child welfare system, but she also brings a much more personal perspective to the new circle program.

She and her then partner adopted a 21-month-old girl with African and Indigenous roots, who is now a 13-year-old named Sierra.

"Sierra could use the circle process to meet her family, the ones she's never met before, even her mother, to bring everybody together," said Laforge-Enright.

Child welfare officials told her during the adoption process that they had contacted Sierra's mother's home First Nation, but had "no information to pass along."

But Laforge-Enright worked the phones, asked around and eventually found out Sierra had lots of family in Moose Cree First Nation on the James Bay Coast.

"So we learned the truth that they weren't informed, they didn't know Sierra was born. She was taken from the hospital from the mom and placed in foster care," she said. 

"[Her uncle] said 'I didn't know Sierra was born and if we had known, we would have considered taking her.'

"I think feeling that pain after I finally found her family, 'I took something from them. And it's too late. She's here. How can I make it better?'"

Laforge-Enright tried to make it better by making long drives up to Mushkegowuk territory so Sierra could spend time with one of her brothers and by inviting her extended family down to Nipissing for the annual pow wow. 

"I always say that to them: 'We're all family now. There'll never be anything that can divide us because Sierra has married these families together," she said. 

"We were successful in allowing her to grow her spirit and to be who she's meant to be."

But despite that, Laforge-Enright continues to "battle it out" with child protection officials, wanting them to open Sierra's file and allow her to meet her two other brothers, one of whom was born just a few years ago.  

"She deserves this. You haven't taken anything from me. You have taken it from this child. And her siblings. And they deserve to have each other," she said.

"Because these are the injustices of the system. Because she should know her siblings, at the least. It's like it's against the law."

And while she's proud of how connected Sierra is to her culture, including recently spending 48 hours in the bush alone during a traditional berry fast, Laforge-Enright says there are things she can't do for her daughter. 

"I want it to be a family member that will give her her name. Because right now she has her name 'Sierra Jade Sky' and we have never changed that because it's the only thing she received from her mother," she said. 

"It came from her mother looking at her when she was born and saying 'This is your name.'"

Laforge-Enright has now trained more than 100 circle facilitators and requests are already coming in from across Anishinabek territory for the program to get going.

"We know how to care for our families. We have done that since time immemorial," said Stan Cloud, director of social services for the Anishinabek Nation. 

"The communities are fully in charge in developing those standards, recognizing that our communities and our leadership would not knowingly place any of our children at risk within our communities."

Cloud says he gets frustrated when he hears provincial government officials talk about the circle process as something that originates with the Maori people of New Zealand, failing to recognize its the traditional way children from troubled families have always been cared for on what is now called Ontario. 

"It's our own process to help deal with some of these issues and come to some resolution on some of these issues and make decisions on some of these issues," said Reg Niganobe, grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation. 

"And it's done in our traditional ways."