Hub 14 : Innu youth protection institutions

The over-representation of Aboriginal children in the youth protection system and placement of such children in non-Aboriginal homes are recurring problems that affect the vitality and renewal of Aboriginal communities.

The researchers have already undertaken work designed to gain a better understanding of Innu practices concerning education of children, customary adoption and therapeutic stays on the land: practices that are now marginalized, ignored and sometimes fought against by Québec youth protection institutions. This project is designed to develop, in collaboration with Uauitshitun, the social services centre of the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam (in Sept-Îles and Malioténam), an institutional legal framework that would allow these special Innu traditions to be fully expressed within an Innu youth protection system that would be substituted for the Québec system under Section 37.5 of the Youth Protection Act.