OUR DIRECTION

Guiding Values

• Love: We support families in wellness by loving and nurturing our children and recognizing their importance in all that we do.

• Accountability: We are honest and ethical in all our interactions and we practice integrity being consistent, accountable, and transparent.

• Respect: We role-model respect, encouraging participation, honoring each person's strengths, and actively engaging in solution-oriented dialogue. 

• Culture & Language: We practice our cultural teachings understanding that a strong sense of identity and belonging contributes to healthy quality of life.

• Responsibility: We look out seven generations, considering the impacts of our work to current and future generations and doing the right things for the right reasons. 

• Holistic: We utilize a community-driven and strength-based approach, building upon what is working with our families, our organization and our communities. 

OUR DIRECTION

Our Call to Action

We are at a critical moment in time. A great deal of change is taking place within the current political climate in which we exist. Bold steps are required to actualize the changes necessary for the communities we represent. For the first time since colonization, our action will fundamentally alter the foundation upon which outside governments have imposed political interests of assimilation through the systemic removal of our children. For generations, our children have been the ones on the front line of federally and provincially legislated cultural genocidal regimes. Our families and communities were fractured but never broken. To achieve healing, justice and hope for each child ever removed from their parents, families and communities, it is up to us to provide a new reality for generations to come. Through the wisdom of our Ancestors, we have been taught the ways to care for one another. We must work towards a future markedly different from the current state wherein there are more Indigenous children in care now than at the height of the residential school era. While the current system is derived of legislation and policy not of the Indigenous origin at a community level or otherwise, we undertake the process of decolonization and bring traditional knowledge, guidance and practices of the nłeʔkepmx and syilx forward in collaboration and guidance of our communities. It is our responsibility to create the necessary change to ensure children currently in care have the advocates they deserve and seven (7) generations from now, the need for a child welfare system will no longer exist as our families will be whole and healthy. nłeʔkepmx and syilx ancestors have anticipated this change and passed their wisdom and knowledge on as we respond to this call to action. This very legacy is now ours to nurture and protect as we build a new platform where today’s children and families will remain together and rekindle their cultural ways of being.