First Nation Moms Fined $5k for Feeding Their Kids

Mere days before the Freedom Convoy, Canada was a basket case.

January 20th, 2022. A Thursday. Eight women from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation - a remote community in northern Manitoba - drive an hour to Thompson, Manitoba where they purchase food and diapers. On their return, they are intercepted by the RCMP and members of their local police force.

As CBC reported two days later “an attempt was made to prevent them from returning to the community.” Why? The shopping trip violated the reserve’s “current lockdown restrictions, which have been in place since Dec. 23. They bar people from leaving their homes and the community, in an effort to help curb the spread of COVID-19” (bold added by me).

The grocery store and gas station on the reserve were closed. Seven individuals had apparently been appointed “to make grocery store runs for the roughly 2,300 community members.”

Although there hadn’t been a single recorded death on that reserve from COVID during the entire pandemic, people there spent the entire 2021 Christmas holidays confined to their homes. You know, like criminals under house arrest.

Two weeks later, CBC reported that these women - one of whom had six children, including a nine-month-old at the time - were each fined five thousand dollars.

Anyone who has retained her sanity after being confined indoors for a month with six kids deserves a medal, not a fine. I invite you to read these two news stories in full. Read them and weep.

First Nation mothers defy community restrictions by leaving for essentials

and

$5K fines given to Manitoba First Nations mothers who defied COVID-19 lockdown to buy groceries