FRAUD AND IDENTITY: 60s Scoop Canada | Residential school death records to be shared

EDITOR NOTE:  Open our records and give us our papers, including our adoption file and original birth certificate!  Then we won't be accused of fraud or an undetermined identity... Trace

OPINION:

Fraudulent claims of Indigenous identity are risking community for the rest of us

"By the late 1950s, more Indigenous kids in the south were finally living at home. This concerned the mostly white folks who were social workers, and they ‘scooped’ kids, or stole kids out of Indigenous communities because the houses didn’t have perfect picket fences, the stay-at-home moms and working dads, or the kitchens with chrome-plated tables. Blatant racism in social work called Indigenous parents ‘bad’ and their kids were adopted or sold to white families—good families. Hopefully those kids would lose that pesky Indigenous identity. The ’60s Scoop kids were separated from families, and adopted out across Canada, the United States, and around the world. It’s estimated that 22,500 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were removed from the homes in the ’60 Scoop. Any connection to culture and belonging was severed completely." 

Flash forward to the 1980s and the ’60s Scoop survivors were reaching adulthood, assuming they survived. No Indigenous language left. No knowledge about their own culture. And most were completely lost about their identity.  

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Residential school death records to be shared

Action 71 calls upon chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies to make their records on the deaths of Indigenous children in care of residential school authorities available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

As the organization entrusted to receive, hold and archive the commission’s records, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation will add the newly acquired documents to the permanent record of what happened in the residential school system.

The agreement will have a positive impact on survivors and their families who are searching for more information as a means to heal, Debbie Huntinghawk told the Sun on Monday morning.

“That’s a beautiful game changer for a lot of people,” she said.