how to comment on this statement: Statistics Canada reveal that 81 percent of boys incarcerated as minors are Indigenous. For girls, that rate is 82 percent. However, about 19.8 percent of Winnipeg's under-14 population was Indigenous, showing how heavily over-represented Indigenous people are in the prison system. How do you think this over-representation of Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system relates to the residential school system?
I can answer this with one statement: intergenerational trauma. Indigenous people suffered for year and years, generation after generation. The trauma that is involved with the survivors of the residential schools is horrific. The survivors did not receive any type of care after years of abuse, that abuse needed to be addressed and it was not. Let's think about the parents whose children were taken from them, they did not know if they were coming home and when they did return, their child would have just been a shell of who they used to be. How were these families expected to cope with no resources? Living in fear, unsure how to parent your own children and most likely living in poverty, no wonder Indigenous people turned to crime. When this trend is repeated generation after generation, it is no surprise to see higher number of Indigenous youth in the prison system.
It is just so sad how the government and the churches failed our children, the further generation!!