A Discussion Paper on Indigenous Custom Adoption Part 2: Honouring Our Caretaking Traditions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper forms Part 2 of a two-part discussion paper. Part 1 outlined a short history of adoption in Canada, examined the impact of forced, closed, and external adoptions on Indigenous adoptees and families, and traced the move toward more open statutory adoptions and greater cultural continuity in adoptions. Having zeroed in on the entangled histories of adoption and colonization in Part 1, here we explore traditional and contemporary practices of Indigenous custom adoption and caretaking. We first recount Western understandings and impositions, then feature Indigenous perspectives that centre spiritual and ceremonial protocols, values regarding child well-being and community connectedness, and the importance of kinship and customary forms of caretaking. We consider both the promises and complexities involved in designing and implementing custom adoptions, and the urgent need for adequate, equitable funding and supports to ensure their feasibility and sustainability. Finally, we highlight the resurgence of Indigenous authority over child welfare within a context of Indigenous self-determination and self-governance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.017 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".