Not monstrous but procedural: accounting for cruelty to First Nations children

Purpose This paper examines how accounting-implicated funding practices produced and normalized unequal treatment of First Nations children and families under the 1965 Canada-Ontario Agreement, and how these practices were publicly scrutinized in the 2013–2014 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) hearings. Design/methodology/approach Using an interpretive case–study approach, the study draws on close reading of CHRT transcripts, focusing on the testimony of a senior Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada official, plus related policy and audit documents. The analysis is informed by governance, bureaucratic banality and diagrammatic perspectives. Findings The findings show that the 1965 Agreement's reimbursement formula and eligibility rules resulted in prevention and culturally grounded services being underfunded while rewarding the apprehension of children into care. Accounting classifications, per-capita comparisons and reimbursement cycles linked calculation and language in ways that normalized discrimination, obscured harm and embedded these effects in routine administrative procedure. The CHRT hearings brought these mechanisms into public view, revealing how long-standing, taken-for-granted accounting practices had operated in discriminatory ways. Research limitations/implications The study focuses on a single-program, single-jurisdiction case based on documentary materials; future studies could compare similar funding architectures and hearings in other settler states and Indigenous-led forums. Social implications The findings show how seemingly neutral accounting practices can procedurally enact cruelty toward Indigenous children and families, while also illustrating how human-rights forums may create limited openings for recognition and change. Originality/value This study conceptualizes accounting as a diagrammatic, anticipatory technology that organizes what can be seen, said and contested within settler-colonial child-welfare regimes and offers a linguistic analysis of senior bureaucratic testimony on Indigenous child welfare.