Ontario Native Women’s Association   27
 CHILD WELFARE
niagara chapter - native women inc.
niagara chapter - native women inc.
serving indigenous women and their
families in Niagara for 42 years.
serving indigenous women and their
families in Niagara for 42 years.
“There’s no kind of central line that 
people can call and say, ‘I’m home-
less. Where can I go?’” Maracle says. 
“Wouldn’t it be great if there was somebody 
with a system like that in a GIS system, which 
said, ‘Okay, the closest place to you is here, 
but they don’t have beds. Here’s the next 
closest place. Go.’”
For Indigenous families, appropriate 
housing can help determine whether chil-
dren are able to remain with their families, 
communities and cultures. Maracle saw that 
gap up close during her time with Native 
Child and Family Services.
“When I was there, I remember that 
many of the parents fostering kids were 
relatively new immigrants to Canada who 
were very financially well off,” she says. 
“They could not only afford housing, 
they could afford housing with an extra 
bedroom, where they could house 
Indigenous children. And that, to me, is 
one of the biggest injustices.”
Her question is simple: “Why don’t we 
have housing that enables us to support 
children from our own communities? 
Nobody’s put that together.”
soup and still somehow buy a home, and 
today, when even professional stability does 
not guarantee secure housing.
“My parents bought their house in 1965 
in Belleville, and the cost was $8,000,” she 
says. “It took them 18 years to pay it off, and 
the total amount that they paid was $18,000 
with interest. That’s not even a down 
payment today.”
Now, she says, “I’m looking for a two-
bedroom for my daughter and I, and 
average two-bedroom [rentals] in Toronto 
are typically $2,700 to $5,700. There’s just 
absolutely no comparison.”
Maracle has known housing from both 
sides of that divide. “I’ve had periods where 
I’ve had very secure housing, where I’ve 
owned a home,” she says. “But since the 
cost of living has gone up so incredibly, so 
exponentially, I’ve been priced out of the 
housing market. When I moved back to 
Toronto over a decade ago, I’ve been rela-
tively precariously housed since then, even 
as a professional who does well.”
That is one of the cruelest truths of the 
housing crisis: stability can be lost even 
after it has been achieved. It does not 
only affect those already pushed to the 
margins; it follows people into adulthood, 
parenthood and professional life. And 
for Indigenous women and families, inad-
equate housing is not simply a private hard-
ship. It can become the doorway through 
which child welfare systems enter.
Maracle was never apprehended as a child, 
but she knows the child welfare system 
intimately, both from knowing others with 
lived experience and from her six-year role 
on the board of Native Child and Family 
Services of Toronto, which covered its 
transition “from just a service agency into a 
child welfare agency.”
When asked about the biggest breakdowns 
between housing and child welfare, 
Maracle does not hesitate. For her, the 
issue is structural.
“The institutions of Canada created all 
the circumstances that we see today that 
require the need for us to have child 
welfare and Indigenous child welfare,” she 
says. “It’s not just residential schools. It’s 
also the Indian Act. It’s also societal institu-
tions and practices and policies, too.”
Those systems leave families navigating 
gaps at nearly every turn: no clear point of 
access in a crisis, not enough emergency 
options, young people aging out and a cost 
of living that can push caregivers past the 
breaking point.

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