Long before European contact, customary adoption was common among the Cree and other Indigenous people. It traditionally involved placing a child with another family for survival purposes when the parents were for some reason unable to properly care for them.
After lobbying by Cree authorities since the early 1980s to legally recognize this practice, Quebec began consulting with Indigenous groups in the early 2000s when it was reviewing its own adoption laws. With Bill 113 passed in 2017, the province’s Indigenous Nations now have the ability to create their own unique systems that oversee and document this process.
As the provincially designated “competent authority” in Eeyou Istchee, the Cree Nation Government is working with communities to establish local committees and reaching out to families who may be interested in the certification process. This would give families the option of adoption or guardianship without the involvement of courts, lawyers or government officials.
“We’re trying to redevelop a custom, not to enforce it upon a community,” said CNG regional coordinator James Bobbish. “We’ve discussed with the health board and other organizations to help develop all this and we’ve just finalized it within the last few months. The next steps will be to reach out to the communities to ask how many people are actually interested in pursuing customary adoption.”
A former leader of the Cree Health Board, Bobbish has been working on this initiative since 2007. Now working under the CNG’s social and cultural department, Bobbish has coordinated with Joanne Ottereyes in the communications department to develop the necessary documents and consulted with legal counsel to ensure requirements are met.
“We are changing somebody’s status, so the file has to be held in a very secure and confidential manner,” Bobbish told the Nation. “It’s very important that the people who do live with the child have parental authority whenever it’s needed. It clarifies for medical or school issues.”
Recognition as primary caregivers enables adoptive parents to give consent for the child’s medical care, enrol them in schools or extracurricular programs, sign passport applications and manage their bank accounts. It also ensures childcare benefits are being appropriately directed.
Customary adoption is a consensual and collective process that often keeps a child within the community or with extended family so biological parents may maintain a relationship. Growing up around people who know their culture, language and spiritual practices helps to nurture a child’s feelings of security, belonging and identity.
Once the two families have consented to transfer parental authority and submit the application, they will sit with the local committee to reach a formal agreement. Then the justice system conducts background checks of all adults in the household to ensure the child isn’t being put at risk.
“We’ll come to an arrangement that is suitable for everybody,” said Bobbish. “If there’s anything out of the ordinary, it’s up to the families if they want to continue or not. It could be a certain uncle was caught drunk driving five years ago, but he’s cleaned up his act so the family determines it’s not going to be an issue.”
When Bill 113 was unveiled, the CNG and other Indigenous stakeholders requested amendments to recognize customary guardianship, which involves placing a child with another family temporarily until a situation is resolved. This can now be certified according to the same process and then reversed when that phase has passed.
“We never determine how long this temporary adoption will be,” Bobbish explained. “During that period, the people actually living with the child have parental authority. It’s all based on how the local parents decide.”
Additional reference checks may be necessary in some cases and a child in youth protection may require the director’s recommendation to determine where lies their best interest. With greater self-determination in childcare, the CNG hopes to avoid further children falling through the system’s cracks.
“At one point there were three children seeing a parent in Montreal and got called on by youth protection services down there,” recalled Bobbish. “The two older ones were sent back to the community and the youngest who was a baby was put into an adoption bank – when it was dealt with seriously, it could not be turned back.”
As customary adoption isn’t legally recognized in most provinces, Cree members in MoCreebec, Ontario aren’t eligible for the program. For the CNG to support certification processes, the adoptive parents must reside in Quebec and at least one parent must be Cree. If two Indigenous Nations are involved, both groups must sit together to decide which system they will use.
“There are Inuit children living with people in Chisasibi, so we need to make an arrangement with the Inuit,” said Bobbish, who said he’s waiting to hear back from them. “It’s usually the system where the child comes from so the community has a hand in their movement.”
Mixed culture arrangements can quickly get complicated. Jaaji Okpik spent summers with his Mohawk father when he was growing up and the rest of the year with his adopted family, his maternal Inuit grandparents. His health-care card had a different identity than his passport.
While it’s unclear how many families throughout Eeyou Istchee may already be practicing customary adoption, about one in six children born every year in Nunavik end up in customary adoption.
So far, five communities have formed a local committee and one has already designated members. Each will require training before getting into a case. Committees may include advisors, such as Elders and knowledge holders, who are familiar with ancestral adoption practices.
Cree families will continue to have the option of going through Quebec’s formal adoption process. The present Call for Interest intends to assess necessary resources and connect interested persons with Bobbish, then eventually the local committees.
“I’m really looking forward to once one of the customary adoption processes is done,” said Bobbish. “When there’s an adoption within the regular courts, there’s usually a feast around the family. I would imagine some kind of ceremony will develop to signify the child is officially with these people.”