Minister Nahanni Fontaine praises Manitoba’s efforts on landfill search, CFS changes in CityNews year-end interview

As 2024 comes to a close, CityNews reporter Joanne Roberts sat down with Manitoba’s Minister of Families, Nahanni Fontaine, to ask her about some of the biggest moves made by her ministry and the NDP government, and gain some insight into plans for the new year.

Joanne Roberts (JR): In October you led the charge for your government to amend the Child and Family Services Act to help keep children out of the child welfare system and in their homes. This also fulfilled calls, not only from families, but calls that have been put forth through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. We know that this has been long-standing in terms of wanting to give governments and Indigenous governments their own agencies, to help families that are within jurisdiction. How did your government finally make this happen?

Minister Nahanni Fontaine (NF): It’s important to note, in 2020, the federal government came forward with Bill C-92. So that provided the federal legislative framework in which provinces and territories could now engage with First Nation, Métis and Inuit rights holders to transfer child welfare back to where it rightfully belongs. Which is in our communities, with our people, in our lands and obviously, immersed in our culture. So that provided the legislative framework. So we just passed Bill 38 and what it does is it ensures that here in Manitoba, that those legislative changes are moving us towards jurisdiction — towards transferring child welfare back to where it rightfully belongs. So we’re really excited about this, because certainly it is generations and generations for this to happen and needs to happen.

If you look at child welfare right now, as it exists, in the next five to 10 years in Manitoba, child welfare will look incredibly different and actually if you look across the country, child welfare will look incredibly different. So I’m proud that our government is taking a lead in ensuring that we’re working with rights holders to ensure that they’re standing up their Indigenous law, and that we’re an equal partner of ensuring that they have jurisdiction over their children. So, we’re working with a variety of First Nations. There’s a lot that are in the queue that are ready to go; they’re working on their Indigenous laws. Some of them have their Indigenous laws. Some of them are in the engagement process with their citizens. We’re on the cusp of signing a very historic jurisdiction, or coordination agreement, and that was literally from Day 1 as minister my No. 1 priority, is to push Manitoba to ensure that we’re enacting jurisdiction and that we are returning back the rights and the care of children back to our communities.

JR: I feel another big moment for you and your government was also when you had also formed the Matriarch Circle earlier this year to help the province guide their strategy toward MMIWG2S+ as well. I remember you saying that the Matriarch Circle would be meeting at every solstice and given that the Winter Solstice is coming up, I’m wondering what conversations you and the Matriarchs have been having in terms of steps you want to take next year.

NF: The creation of the Matriarch Circle is the first time ever — across Canada in any jurisdiction — that a government has established a Matriarch Circle to help guide and inform and work with government to do the work we collectively have to do. That’s never been done before. It certainly has never been done here in Manitoba. So I’m really proud of that. I’m really proud of the Matriarchs that agreed to participate and walk this path with government and myself as Minister and our Special Advisor on Indigenous women’s issues.

I know initially we had said we’d meet four times a year on the solstice, we’ve met many, many times. So, what we’ve done is we’ve had several engagements with the Matriarch Circle on where we need to go in respect to prioritizing the protection of Indigenous, Women, Girls and Two-Spirited, but also where the province needs to go in respect of empowering and healing Indigenous women as a means of our liberation. You can’t only respond to the violence in a reactionary way. You also have to be responding to ensure that you’re working upstream, so that the violence ends against Indigenous women. So the Matriarch Circle was pivotal in our strategy in Mino’Ayaawag Ikwewag, which means: “All Women Doing Well.” And we just launched the strategy on Nov. 22, so it really is a good example of first off: we stick to our promises; and when I say something, I mean it and we do it. So we’ve engaged with the Matriarch Circle and in that engagement they have played a fundamental role, in our strategy — our provincial strategy — to empower and heal Indigenous women. What’s also important to note is that Manitoba’s Mino’Ayaawag Ikwewag Strategy is only the second bonafide strategy across the country.

Of course, the first being the Government of Yukon. So the Government of Yukon was the first province that came out after the National Inquiry with a strategy. If you look across the country, there’s no other jurisdiction that has a strategy and so Manitoba is now the second across the country; and the Matriarch Circle was pivotal in that work.

I have to share with you, we hosted, and we had got the strategy ready, we had done all the design work, we did everything, so we hosted a meeting with the Matriarch Circle and if I could relay to you, or just even show you, I wish I could have shown you, when we unveiled everything, and to see the reactions on the faces of the Matriarchs. Some of them were crying, some of them were saying how beautiful it was. And to me, that was a really important moment, because it was like: ‘This is your work. This is your work, but it’s going to help guide our province for years to come.’ This is their work to help transform the lives of Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirited. So we take the Matriarch Circle very, very seriously in their role.

JR: Are there conversations now with other provinces in terms of adopting Matriarch Circles across the country?

NF: We’ve had a couple of conversations with some folks. There’s an FPT — a Federal Provincial Territorial meeting — coming up in January in Ottawa specifically on MMIWG2S+ and right now, our special advisor Cora Morgan is trying to get us on the agenda so that we can share Mino’Ayaawag Ikwewag. To be able to disseminate the work that we’re doing and the process that we had in executing and developing this strategy, so we’re hoping that there’s an opportunity for us so we can get on the agenda so that we can share that and it gives other folks opportunities to: ‘Maybe we need to go a little further. Maybe we need a special advisor. Maybe we can establish a Matriarch Circle’ or something to that end, so we’re hoping to do that.

JR: Another pivotal moment I feel in your government’s history is the fact that now the landfill search is underway. What was your reaction, the very first day, when finally ground was broken.

NF: You can’t separate the search of the landfill without contemplating what happened in the last provincial election, and what the former government did as a means to try and keep government.

As a means to try and keep government, they manipulated the murders of Indigenous women by a serial killer. To try and induce Manitobans, and get Manitobans on board, that Indigenous women’s lives don’t matter. That their families don’t matter. That Manitoba is not on this path of reconciliation. And yet Manitobans rejected that.

RELATED: Human rights complaint filed against city of Winnipeg over search of landfills

So, we’re at phase four of the landfill of the search, that almost didn’t happen. If the former PC government had gotten their way, that historic meeting, or that historic moment, just last week, might not have ever happened. So, for me, what I go back to is a couple of things. For everything that is said — every derogatory, negative thing that is said about Indigenous Women, Girls or Two-Spirited — and yet in that, those women that are in a landfill helped to change government. Helped a province to come together and reject a divisive, hateful, anti-Indigenous government. That’s how powerful Indigenous women are. That even in their death, Indigenous women make transformative change. So for me, that’s where I always go.

But I also want to say something else: our premier has been really committed and dedicated to this process. We met when we were still in Opposition almost two years ago, we met with the families in his office, the Official Leader’s office, and we had a pipe ceremony. Then the election happened, we announced that we were going to do the landfill, we had another pipe ceremony at the landfill. He has done another one at the start of the search. I can’t think of another example of a Premier, or a government, doing that type of work.

And that’s why, again, it’s so important people elect people to represent them, and to do good, on behalf of all Manitobans. And so I’m really proud to be part of a team that is really doing sacred, restorative, reconciliatory work on behalf of all Manitobans.

JR: I know Manitobans struggle. We’ve all got all of our own struggles and I know you are not exempt from criticism coming from all corners. From Opposition, from everyday Manitobans. I remember there was a time during a trip to New York in March of last year, where there were many critics saying: ‘Where is Minister Fontaine?’ As there was, unfortunately, a teen who was killed in CFS custody in Carman. So a lot of people were saying: ‘Why isn’t she available to speak to the public?’ I have also seen many critics in terms of how you interact with people. Whether that’s in person, or how you post on social media, and interact with the world that way. What would you say to critics who seem to be, I would say, judging you harshly and perhaps more harshly than your colleagues?

NF: Let me say this about New York. People may not know this. My first degree is Environmental Studies and International Development and my second is in Native Studies, Women’s Studies and Critical Theory. I graduated in ’97 with my first degree and that was the first year I had the opportunity to go to the U.N. At the time, I was working as an environmental researcher for my First Nation of Sagkeeng Anicinabe First Nation, and I was sent to Palais des Nations in Geneva. At that time, it was the 15th annual working group on the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. So since 1997, I’ve been going to the U.N. long before I was in this position.

I’ve gone to UNESCO in Paris to talk about Indigenous education and the right to access education. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been at the headquarters in New York for the Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues and for the Status of Women Commission, the U.N. Status of Women Commission. For years and years, in a variety of different roles, I did that long before I was minister and I will continue to do that work long after I’m a minister. It is important and critical work. That leadership, including members of a cabinet, are at that international level, to ensure that our issues and our voices are heard. And I’ll give you a perfect example why.

Years ago, there were what I would say are our founding mothers of the Indigenous women’s movement. One of them is a woman by the name of Sandra Lovelace. And at the time, these four Indigenous women were fighting the sexual discrimination found in the Indian Act. So if you were an Indigenous woman and you married a white man, you lost your status. Although if you were an Indigenous man, and you married a white woman, she became status. So clearly, it was discriminatory. And all of these women took up the mantle to fight that discrimination in a variety of ways. Some did it domestically. Sandra Lovelace, who was a single mom, went to the U.N. multiple times. She lobbied at the U.N. and what ended up happening is that at some point, the U.N. chastised and internationally embarrassed Canada, that they were sexually discriminating against Indigenous women because of Sandra Lovelace. And you know what happened after that? Bill C-31. Because of her work at the U.N. level, Bill C-31 came into existence. And what happened? Thousands of Indigenous people were reinstated with their status, including my grandmother, my mother and myself.

There is a fundamental role to be played at the U.N. level and here’s the other piece about me. Is that, yes I’m the minister for Manitoba, but none of us are liberated until all of us are liberated, and so that includes doing work at the U.N. level.

Fighting for abortion access — last time I was there in March, there were a whole bunch of anti-choice activists, and I only posted one, but they tried to ambush me about four times. You have to be at that level to fight for women’s rights and I will continue to do that. And the other piece: about the way that I post, the way that I dress, or the way that I talk, or the way that I, whatever it is. None of that bothers me. I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

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A post shared by Nahanni Fontaine (@nahannifontaine)

It means I can be the minister of families, working 24/7, 365 days a year, but I can also post videos that take me literally a couple of minutes to do. And the criticism doesn’t bother me. Particularly as an Indigenous woman in a country, in a land, in which we are not safe and we are actively preyed upon and we are actively fighting against an ongoing genocide.

Nobody is going to tell me how I’m going to live my life. Ever. I’ve survived too much in my childhood to now, in this position, have predominantly men tell me how they think I need to behave in this role. That’s never going to happen.

JR: My final question for you, given that it’s the new year. It’s a new start for many people. What are you hoping for, for the next year?

NF: I think for the new year, my hope is that we move further along for jurisdiction, and honestly, we are working on so many amazing things under Mino’Ayaawag Ikwewag that I can’t wait. We’re doing such good work. Honestly, and I say this all the time, I feel like I sound like a broken record, but I have the best team in government and the things that our team is working on is so exciting, so transformative, so engaging and also, see women. See little girls. See the LGBTQ2I community. The thing that I love most about this role is being in a position where you can acknowledge people. People that are, more often than not, made invisible, or voices are not heard. I love being in this position to lift people up and I can’t wait to continue to do that this year.