Cindy Blackstock

It was January 26, 2016, in Canada.

That day, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered its decision. For nine years, one woman had carried this case. At the hearings, a small teddy bear had come with her.

Her name was Cindy Blackstock.

She was born around 1964, in Burns Lake, British Columbia. Her mother was not Indigenous. Her father was Gitxsan. She is a member of the Gitxsan Nation.

Her father worked for the forest service. The family moved often.

As a child, she knew the sting of anti-Indigenous racism. She saw how stereotypes shaped the way Indigenous children thought about themselves and their future.

She studied at the University of British Columbia. Then she became a social worker, in child protection.

She came to a conclusion. Behind the struggles of many Indigenous children lay deeper roots: addictions, trauma, poverty.

She co-founded the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, and became its executive director.

There was also the story of Jordan River Anderson, a little boy from Norway House Cree Nation, in Manitoba. He died in 2005, at the age of five. All that time, governments had been arguing over who would pay for his care.

From this came Jordan's Principle: the child's needs first, the bill afterward.

In 2007, with the Assembly of First Nations, the Caring Society filed a complaint. It accused Canada of discriminating against First Nations children by underfunding child welfare services on reserves.

Thirty days later, the federal government cut the Caring Society's funding. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs put Cindy Blackstock under surveillance.

She did not back down.

In 2011, the complaint was dismissed. In 2012, the Federal Court overturned that dismissal. In 2013, the Federal Court of Appeal rejected Canada's appeal. The hearings could begin.

The fight had a mascot: a teddy bear named Spirit Bear. Cindy Blackstock brought him to the Tribunal hearings. On Parliament Hill, she stood with children holding teddy bears.

The law is not naturally just, she said.

And that link, she said, is what children and their teddy bears bring.

In 2012, on Parliament Hill, the first Have a Heart Day was held. It returns every February 14.

Then came January 26, 2016. The Tribunal ruled. The underfunding of services, and the failure to apply Jordan's Principle, were discriminatory. One hundred and sixty-three thousand children were affected.

The fight did not end there. From 2016 to 2019, the Tribunal issued further follow-up orders.

In 2019, she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. In October 2023, a federal judge approved an agreement worth more than 23 billion dollars.

She earned a doctorate in social work from the University of Toronto. She teaches at the McGill University School of Social Work, in Montreal. Spirit Bear also became the hero of children's books.

The struggle of this Gitxsan woman echoes Ubuntu without merging with it: when one child is left behind, the whole community suffers.

At the Tribunal hearings, there was a small teddy bear.

It reminded everyone who they were there for.