Children and Cultural Survival
Like other agencies for aboriginal child protection world-wide, Weechi-it-te-win is focused on the protection of children within a modern aboriginal and also bi-cultural context. "The mission of Weechi-it-te-win is to preserve Indian (Anishinaabe) culture and identity among our people; to strengthen and maintain Indian (Anishinaabe) families and through them our communities; and to assure the growth, support and development of all children within our families and communities." This mission must be understood in the context of a history of both the systemic use of aboriginal child protection for genocidal purposes and the participation of Anishinaabe communities in mainstream society in Canada. Denying a people the right to raise its own children is a method for culturally extinguishing it.
Read more about this topic: Weechi-it-te-win Family Services
Famous quotes containing the words children and, children, cultural and/or survival:
“What we often take to be family values—the work ethic, honesty, clean living, marital fidelity, and individual responsibility—are in fact social, religious, or cultural values. To be sure, these values are transmitted by parents to their children and are familial in that sense. They do not, however, originate within the family. It is the value of close relationships with other family members, and the importance of these bonds relative to other needs.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to “dress up like daddy.””
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and superseded by elements of lower quality.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)