Groups slam province for funding non-Indigenous-led organization working to keep youth out of justice system

A coalition of Indigenous-led organizations say they were shocked to learn the Manitoba government has awarded $2.25 million through a social impact bond to a non-Indigenous-led organization to help keep Indigenous youth out of the justice system, while the province says the program itself is guided by an Indigenous team.

On Monday, the province announced a partnership with social service organization Marymound to work with at least 45 Indigenous youth — 15 in Thompson and 30 in Winnipeg — over the next three years to help reduce recidivism rates.

The Winnipeg Indigenous Executive Circle, which is made up of 32 organizations that work to support the city's Indigenous population, criticized the provincial government on Friday for not partnering with or including Indigenous-led non-profits in the consultation process.

"We were shocked, concerned and saddened that yet another government and these foundations are handing over the administration of an Indigenous-focused program to a church-based organization," Dodie Jordaan, executive director of Ka Ni Kanichihk and a Winnipeg Indigenous Executive Circle member, said in a statement.

"This is a missed opportunity to renew efforts to reverse the lasting effects of residential schools."

In a statement, the province said Marymound's program will be culturally informed and "guided and delivered by an Indigenous team."

Marymound, founded over a century ago by the Catholic Sisters of the Good Shepherd, was originally conceived as a way of keeping young women and girls out of the justice system, the organization's website says.

Girls judged delinquent by the courts could be sentenced to Marymound, and parents and social agencies could also send girls to the reform school, historian Tanya Woloschuk wrote for the Manitoba Historical Society.

The last nuns left the organization in 2014.

Marymound provides crisis supports, youth addictions and sexual abuse treatment programs, group housing, foster care, clinical supports and cultural health services for at-risk youth and families, among other services.

The province's social impact bond will include a wraparound approach that will use input from family, friends, ceremonies and other activities to help decide what supports are most appropriate for individual youth in the program, Marymound said.

Marymound elder-in-residence Louise Lavallee named the program Zaagiwe Oshinawe Inaakonigewin, which translates to "love (the) youth (in) justice" in Anishinaabemowin. At the Monday announcement, she suggested the program will incorporate Indigenous knowledge to address the root causes of crime.

The province says the program incorporates recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action, the calls to justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and commitments in Manitoba's criminal justice modernization strategy.

Through Indigenous leadership, a "wraparound model has been modified into an Indigenous framework, identifying this program as a 'two-eyed seeing' approach that is grounded in Indigenous research and knowledge," the province says.