Sindy Ruperthouse was last seen on April 23, 2014, in the Val-d’Or hospital in northwestern Quebec. (Submitted by Johnny Wylde)
In 10 years, Johnny Wylde has never changed his phone number.
He says he never will.
It's the same one he had on April 23, 2014, the day his daughter, Sindy Ruperthouse, went missing.
Even though a decade has passed, he still keeps the ringer on, the phone glued to his hip.
"She knows what my number is if she's still alive," said Wylde, taking a pause. "I don't know what to think."
All
Wylde wants to hear is Ruperthouse's voice on the other end of the line
— a woman his family remembers as a caring big sister who loved life
and made her parents proud.
He says his family needs closure and that it was not like her to skip town.
Wylde thinks there's only a one per cent chance she's still alive.
Ruperthouse,
an Algonquin woman from the Pikogan community in northwestern Quebec,
was last seen April 23, 2014, at the hospital in Val-d'Or, Que. The
44-year-old had been injured with multiple broken ribs.
Wylde and
his wife, Émilie Ruperthouse Wylde, last spoke to her by phone, when she
asked for money to bail her boyfriend out of jail, says Wylde. They had
refused.
"Today we think about that," said Wylde.
Her parents allege she was beaten by her boyfriend — who they have since written to, begging for information.
For
years, Wylde travelled across Quebec, putting up billboards and
conducting searches in forests and cities in the James Bay area,
Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa.
Joan
Wylde, her mother, Émilie Ruperthouse-Wylde and sister Kathy
Ruperthouse want answers to what happened to Sindy Ruperthouse. (Jessica Gélinas/Radio-Canada)
"Every big city [but] I didn't find her," said Wylde.
"The family encouraged me to do that. If I'm still alive, I'm going to do everything."
A few days before the anniversary of her disappearance, Wylde received a call from provincial police who informed him that the $40,000 reward first issuedby Sun Youth would be reinstated for anyone who has information that can lead to finding Ruperthouse.
A
news release from provincial police says Ruperthouse's case remains the
subject of an investigation, and since April 1, 2020, has been under
the division of disappearances and unsolved cases.
"Since the start, several searches and verifications have been carried out in an attempt to find her," read the release.
But Wylde says not enough was done to find her.
"We just want to know," he said.
'It's like running out of air,' says sister
Radio-Canada's investigative program Enquête looked into her case, in the process, uncovering a larger story about allegations of assault by police against Indigenous women.
"If I put my energy on the SQ [Sûreté du Québec], I'm gonna get mad all the time," said Wylde.
John
Wylde and Emily Ruperthouse Wylde have been searching for their
daughter for more than two years. They say police have not done enough
to help. (CBC)
"They do what they want to do, and I do what I have to do. I've been waiting for 10 years … and nothing happened."
He says the case has changed investigators five times. No one has ever been charged.
Joan Wylde, Ruperthouse's youngest sister, says they didn't get answers from police.
"The police never told us anything," said Wylde.
She says her sister's disappearance "hurts like it was yesterday."
"We
need to know. You can't live like this. It's like running out of air.
That's how we feel," said Wylde, speaking with Radio-Canada.
WATCH | Joan Wylde describes sister as 'someone who loved life':
Sindy Ruperthouse's sister still prays for her to come home
A decade after her sister disappeared, Joan Wylde says her family is still trying to heal.
She says finding out what happened will provide the family with closure.
But she fears that her parents, now elderly, won't be around when the truth finally comes to light.
A billboard, pictured years ago with the photo of Sindy Ruperthouse outside her hometown of Pikogan, Que. (Julia Page/CBC)
"My father doesn't even go into the woods anymore because there's no signal," says Wylde.
She says he's always looking at his cell phone, "afraid he'll miss the call if they ever find Sindy."
"It
shakes us so much that we don't even have words, you don't even know
how to continue living," said Wylde, her voice quivering.
"I want my sister to come home. That's what I always say. I pray all the time that Sindy returns. It's time."
'There is no mechanism for accountability,' says senator
The
family's efforts have had far-reaching consequences, helping to shine a
light on policing problems in the Val-d'Or area and, ultimately,
prompting the Viens Commission — the provincial inquiry into the way
Indigenous people are treated by police and other authorities.
Channelling
his grief, in 2018, Johnny Wylde travelled to Montreal to testify at
the federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
to tell his daughter's story. Over the years, he says he's helped
search for other missing Indigenous women.
Senator Michèle
Audette, one of the five commissioners responsible for the federal
inquiry, says cases like Ruperthouse's which have dragged on for years
act as a reminder for the need to "shake the system from inside."
Audette,
who is Innu from Uashat mak Mani-Utenam, says there is still an absence
of data for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, as well as
a lack of commitment.
Joan
Wylde wears a pendant of a woman wearing a red dress, symbolizing
Indigenous women and children who have disappeared or were killed. (Jessica Gélinas/Radio-Canada)
"There's always a new face, a new beautiful person on Facebook that we're looking for," said Audette.
"It doesn't stop, it doesn't slow down. My feeling [is] it's not stable. My feeling is it's increasing."
She says it's frustrating not having the same power as some levels of government to enact change in policy and approach.
"I can ask, I can demand, but they're the one with the priorities," said Audette.
"There is no mechanism for accountability."
Support
is available for anyone affected by these reports and the issue of
missing and murdered Indigenous people. Immediate emotional assistance
and crisis support are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week
through a national hotline at 1-844-413-6649.
You can also access, through the government of Canada, health support services
such as mental health counselling, community-based support and cultural
services, and some travel costs to see elders and traditional healers.
Family members seeking information about a missing or murdered loved one
can access Family Information Liaison Units.
Three
Indigenous children separated during the Sixties Scoop struggle to find
their own identities, their other siblings and each other. They finally
reconnect with their brother, whose two names reflect the family’s
divide and his own fragile role as a bridge between two sides, only to
lose him to the opioid crisis and the justice system. READ IT HERE
In a photo of Mary Ellen and three children, she looks like a girl
herself. Her eyes don’t quite catch the lens. Apparently lost in
thought, her tough guard is down. Or maybe she’s just exhausted.
Mary Ellen Bissonnette, 22, holds her baby Danny. On the right, her son Stan, and in the middle is the boys’ cousin Bobby.
I uploaded a new and expanded edition of the Kindle ebook (2.99) and paperbackon Amazon. The paperback is available now. (I had one correction to make about SCALPS and added even more history.)
The new size will allow this book to be sold on Bookshop and purchased by libraries.
NEW ISBN: 979-821838400-5
(With a lower price for the paperback: $15.00)
I also redesigned the paperback book cover... it's been a wacky crazy day.
Want to read the pdf? Shoot me an email: tracelara@pm.me
XOX
Trace
p.s. - the first edition, if you have one, is now a collector item! 😁
By Odette Auger, Windspeaker Buffalo Spirit Reporter
Haida storyteller and cedar weaver Giihlgiigaa, Todd DeVries, is
Tsiij Git'anne (Eagle) clan, Old Massett. Along with cedar weaving, he
teaches how people can use dreams as a powerful tool, both sleeping
dreams and waking dreams.
“That ‘village back there,’ or void, is that space between
everything, between the molecules, between atoms, between universes,” he
tells Windspeaker.
“That's what scientists are trying to call dark matter or dark
energy. Scientists say there's something there, but in our view, there's
nothing there,” explained Giihlgiigaa. “But scientists still can't
believe it. There's got to be something there, right?”
March was Full Crow Moon
“But recall that the void, the darkness, from darkness comes light,”
he said. “So we [Haida] call that Raven. Raven is everywhere, but
nowhere, yet brought everything into being.”
That void is referred to as the fourth dimension, said Giihlgiigaa.
“When you go into the fourth dimension, there's no need, no relevance
to distance anymore. Time is irrelevant because time is a factor of
distance and space. That's a formula, so it's not really a dimension in
our view,” he explained.
“In most Indigenous views, time is irrelevant in the fourth
dimension, and that's where we go when we dream. That's where we go when
we die.”
“When we dream and when we die, both can be used to connect with ancestors and receive guidance,” Giihlgiigaa said.
There are four stages of sleeping and they are very similar to the four stages of dying, said Giihlgiigaa.
“First your body goes a little stiff or it gets heavy.” Then “your
breathing slows down. It gets harder to breathe through your nose, so
you breathe through your mouth.”
“So you got the dissolution of air, the dissolution of fire,
dissolution of water, dissolution of earth,” explained Giihlgiigaa. Your
body temperature “begins to drop a couple of degrees. And that's why we
have a blanket. Then your breathing drops and you're slowing down for
the night.” “It's exactly the same stages when you're going—when you're
dying. So that's how we dream and how we go through the Spirit World,”
he explained.
Reconnecting with Haida dreaming
Giihlgiigaa was one of the Sixties Scoop children, and it wasn’t
until he was an adult that he reconnected with his Haida mom, family,
and culture.
When he met his mom, he began to dream.
“I started having these wild dreams when I found my mom, all very
prophetic. Everything I dreamt about those first two weeks after meeting
my mom has been happening for the last 25 years.”
“Everything's aligned right up, just like a prophecy, almost déja vu dreaming,” he said.
While some cultures use psychedelic plant medicines to access visions or guidance, the Haida have other tools, said Giihlgiigaa.
“We don't have any psychedelics up in Haida,” Giihlgiigaa said. “We
have mushrooms, but they were never used in ceremony. There's no stories
of them being used in ceremony.”
“We have a different way of attaining that dream state,” he said.
“For one, everyone knew it was very common to have dreams, but not
everyone dreamt every day because people had to get work done.”
So it was usually the Spirit man that did all the dreaming,
Giihlgiigaa said. “You would have visions and he would see things that
might happen before they happen and be able to warn the people and make
proper decisions to change course.”
Plant medicine, dream aids
Some plant medicines are a cleansing tool, and Giihlgiigaa says one
of the most common was Devil's Club, “because it acts like an herbal
cleanse. It washes out all the toxins in your body.”
“You do a herbal cleanse once every other month, or four times a
year, whatever, twice a year,” he said. Once a body doesn't have all
these toxins “inhibiting all your spiritual senses, then you'll have
better dreams and you'll be remembering your dreams every night.”
Dreaming is a very powerful tool to guide us, said Giihlgiigaa.
“Every night, even though you may not remember your dreams, you're
dreaming and you're planning your next nine months of life. What you're
going to do every day.”
“So one night you'd be planning on two weeks. ‘I'll do this next
night. Oh, three months down the road, I got to do this’,” he explained.
“Before you know it, you're doing those things that you dream about.
You have to dream it before you manifest it.”
“Western culture doesn't give dreams a lot of credit,” he said. “It's been pounded out of us.”
There are plant medicines that can be used as dream aids, ”so we can go talk to the Ancestors ‘in the village back there’.”
Giihlgiigaa explained we can ask the Ancestors “if they can guide us through the twists and turns of the pathways to our goals.”
While Devil's Club is the tried and true one, Giihlgiigaa said there is another medicine found all across the country in swamps.
“The swampy, marshy, boggy areas. The name of this plant, ts'áhla, is
a word that we use for sinker. The sinker you put on the hook,” said
Giihlgiigaa.
“So when you put the bait on the hook, the sinker will take the bait
down to the depths of the water where you can't see,” he said.
Ts'áhla is also the word for pillow. “So why would all those three
things have the same name? What's the concept here? Haida is a very
conceptual language. We try to use one concept to describe many things,”
he said.
“That sinker takes the bait to another dimension. We can't see it
down there. We know there's fish down there somewhere. And then when
your head hits the pillow, your mind goes to another dimension. It
dreams, right?”
“So when you make a medicine from that plant, it takes your mind to another dimension so your body can heal,” Giihlgiigaa said.
In English, he says, the plant is called Sweet Gale “and it's a dream
key that will help you remember your dreams,” to help impact the length
and strength of dreams, so they can be remembered more frequently, he
said.
“Dreams are your Spirit talking to you in the dream world, and most
people are separated from the Spirit. They call that their inner child
because they haven't really given it any attention and haven't really
guided it and worked on their spiritual powers. So it's kind of like a
child yet not grown up,” he explained.
“Once we start giving it more and more attention, it'll merge with
our waking brain and we'll be one again,” said Giihlgiigaa. “It might
look like you’re looking back at yourself, but you’re not exiting
yourself.”
“Spirit just gets bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Giihlgiigaa. “You are Spirit.”
👉Editor’s Note: It’s important to be well informed
about any plant medicine that you choose to use and how it will affect
your own body. Do your own research.
Our plant guide Carrie Armstrong shared some plant picking tips in a previous column:
When picking plants for your own use, please pick with care, ensuring
you correctly identify the plant prior to use. Take only what you need.
Break leaves, flowers, stems off gently as opposed to pulling out by
roots.
Please be aware that you pick in a safe, chemical-free area and know
that some plants can be toxic at certain times of year. Do not gather
any endangered species of plants.
In some Indigenous cultures, tobacco is offered to Mother Earth as a way of showing gratitude for the medicines.
A high-speed police chase. A 17-year-old Crow boy, dead. The police
report? Nowhere to be found. The entire police department? Vanished. The
excruciating question that emerged: What happened to Braven Glenn?
The hunt for answers is at the heart of our searing new short filmAfter the Crash, by reporter Samantha Michaels and filmmaker Mark Helenowski.
Blossom
Old Bull was raising her son Braven, a diligent student and passionate
basketballer, in the Crow Nation in Montana. On a dark, chilly night in
November 2020, a police pursuit began while Braven was driving to meet
his girlfriend. Blossom was told her son was speeding and collided with a
train, but she had few other details. Despite his cries for help,
witnesses say they didn’t see law enforcement offer him medical
assistance. He didn’t survive.
Within
days, the police department that pursued Braven shuttered, leaving
behind no answers, only taped-up windows and locked doors. The force was
formed to increase law enforcement presence on the reservation, but by
the time of Braven’s death, after just five months in operation, it was
still under-resourced. Its sudden disappearance soon after a deadly
chase left Braven’s family and community desperately searching for
answers—a familiar agony, since official silence after deaths and
disappearances on Native reservations is painfully routine. And it
speaks to the federal government’s more than century-long practice of
grossly underfunding public safety and law enforcement on reservations,
while also under-investing in tribal health care, education, housing,
and infrastructure.
Read the full investigation—the cover story of our March+April 2024 print magazine—here.
Imprisoned for what exactly, you might ask... Being Indian was enough of a reason... TLH
Contested Native Artworks Resurface at Art Fair, Drawing Scrutiny
The drawings, taken from ledger books made by Native people
imprisoned in the 19th century, were sold at auction in 2022 against
tribal members’ wishes.
“Cheyennes Chasing Antelope” at the Donald Ellis Gallery booth at Expo Chicago 2024, from A complete Fort Marion drawing book
(1876) illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nockkoist, Tsis tsis’tas) and
Ohet-Toint (Ohettoint / High Forehead) (Bonhams lot 20) (all images used
with permission)
Earlier this year, David Nolan Gallery in New York mounted the exhibition Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings, 1865–1900,
gathering over 100 works on paper by Native artists from the Arapaho,
Cheyenne, Hidatsa, Kiowa, and Lakota tribes. Co-organized with Donald
Ellis Gallery, the show prominently featured works by Nokkoist (Bear’s
Heart) of the Cheyenne Nation and Ohettoint of the Kiowa Tribe, two of
72 Indigenous warriors who were imprisoned without trial at Fort Marion
in Florida between 1875 and 1878 after the Red River War. The United
States military campaign “aimed at the forced displacement and migration
of Southern Plains tribes onto reservations,” according to a press
release. Art critics called the show “plaintive, pathos-filled” and “heartbreaking,” and Hyperallergic’s John Yau remarked that “the drawings of Nokkoist and Ohettoit … belong in an art museum.”
What was not mentioned, by either the galleries or critics, is that
the exhibition featured several drawings from ledger books that were auctioned off by Bonhams in Los Angeles in 2022. Representatives for the Kiowa and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes attempted
unsuccessfully to halt the sale, based on the arguments that the ledger
books represented “significant cultural patrimony” and were created by
incarcerated artists, calling into question the “chain of custody of the
objects,” as Chairman of the Kiowa Tribe Lawrence SpottedBird wrote in a
letter to Bonhams.
The auction house did not disclose the identities of the buyer or
buyers of the four books, which sold for a total of $908,700 including
premiums. However, drawings by Nokkoist and Ohettoint were taken from
three of the books — which had been unbound, and the artworks
individually framed — and included in the Fort Marion and Beyond exhibition.
This past weekend, they were also featured in the Expo Chicago booth of dealer Donald Ellis, who confirmed to Hyperallergic that he was the buyer of those three books at Bonhams in 2022.
Donald Ellis Gallery booth at Expo Chicago this weekend
Members of the Kiowa and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, as well as
other Native individuals with knowledge of ledger drawings, reacted with
alarm and frustration when they learned of the recent displays.
“When I read your email, my heart dropped,” Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw), the CEO of the Association on American Indian Affairs, told Hyperallergic.
“It provides another level of evidence of how people are taking control
of our cultural heritage, working to create their own narrative that is
separate from the Native peoples who should be the true holders of this
type of cultural heritage.”
“It just feels wrong that they’re here,” Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez
Pueblo/Korean), co-founder and director of exhibitions and programs at
the Center for Native Futures, a Chicago-based Native arts nonprofit that also had a booth at Expo.
Top:
“showing three distinctly attired warriors on hoseback”; bottom:
“depicting a procession of warriors wearing fur turbans and other
distinctive headdresses, a flag bearer at the head of the group,” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book (1876), illustrated by Ohet-Toint / Ohettoint (Bonhams lot 23)
Yepa-Pappan and her colleagues confronted Ellis at his booth, asking
him where the ledger drawings came from and whether any Native groups or
descendants of the artists were benefitting from the sales of the works
the gallery was offering at the fair, which she says were priced
between $8,000 and $80,000. She described his reaction as “defensive”
and “rude.”
On Saturday, April 13, Casey Brown (Ho-Chunk), an artist and member
of the Center for Native Futures, wrote an email to Expo Chicago staff,
raising concerns about the ethics of selling ledger drawings at the
fair.
“I was surprised to see ledger art outside of a tribal cultural
center, museum or archive and also available for purchase,” his letter
read. “This art was made under duress while these men were unjustly
imprisoned; ownership of any of these works is problematic.”
When members of the Center approached Ellis and his assistant, they
were “unable to explain where the collection came from and unwilling to
let them copy down the names of who created these pieces for further
study,” Brown said. “When asked if he had contacted any family of the
unjustly imprisoned men, Ellis said he has ‘strong relations’ with
‘plains tribes’ but openly said he’s the only person profiting from
these pieces.”
Within half an hour of sending the email, Brown was contacted by Tony
Karman, the president and director of Expo Chicago, who spoke with
members of the Center about their concerns.
“We are grateful to the Center for Native Futures for drawing our
attention to the Ledger Books and to Donald Ellis Gallery for
participating in a conversation with the Center around the complex
issues involved,” a spokesperson for the fair told Hyperallergic.
“Expo Chicago has committed to engaging with the appropriate
organizations on the development of guidelines on the display of these
types of materials, affirming our commitment to the proper handling of
cultural property.”
“Sun Dance” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book (1876), illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nock-ko-ist, Tsis tsis’tas (Bonhams lot 22)
Max Bear, the tribal historic preservation officer of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, echoed the Center’s dismay.
“When the books were sold, they became art pieces in Pratt’s narrative, not ours,” he told Hyperallergic,
referring to Richard Henry Pratt, the Army officer who oversaw the
prison at Fort Marion. Pratt commissioned and purchased many of the
ledger books — which included depictions of battle, the warriors’
journey as detainees from the Plains to Florida, and prison life —
directly from the incarcerated artists, considering them examples that
his attempts to assimilate and “civilize” Native Americans were
successful.
Bear bristled at the term “ledger art,” adding: “These are historical
accounts from our people, and should be kept by our people.”
Although there has been a growing movement over the past several
years towards repatriation of objects, art, and artifacts to Native
Peoples, the ledger books reside in a legal gray area, said Ross Frank, a
professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of
California San Diego (UCSD).
“In the letter of law, as it stands now, it’s a hard row to ask all
ledger material to go back to the tribes. It is a kind of cultural
patrimony, but in these cases, there was some kind of sale, which was
legal at the time,” Frank told Hyperallergic. But the works’
legal status aside, Frank noted, “there may be ethical concerns about
coercion” because the artists were imprisoned.
Frank explained that there are seemingly two systems that apply to US
cultural institutions on the one hand, and private dealers on the
other. Institutions should adhere to best practices, involving
consulting with tribes regarding the exhibition and responsible
stewardship of objects related to their culture.
“Recounting
a meeting between two warriors on horseback carrying eagle feather fan
tails, likely representing Tsis tsis’tas (Cheyenne) and Chaticks Si
Chaticks (Pawnee) leaders,” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book, illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nock-ko-ist, Tsis tsis’tas) (Bonhams lot 22)
The tribal historic preservation officers of the Kiowa and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes told Hyperallergic that they had not been contacted by either gallery prior to the exhibition.
According to Ellis, he was approached by “an intermediary on behalf
of the Kiowa” after the auction and offered them the ledger book with
drawings by Ohettoint at his cost (it was sold for $138,975 with premium),
but received no response. He added that his gallery is “supporting
financially and with loans” an upcoming exhibition on Fort Marion which
“dozens of direct descendants of the Cheyenne prisoners” are involved
with.
“They are aware of my activities and involvement in the exhibition and we are not aware of any pushback,” Ellis said.
But as Frank of UCSD explained, “with private collectors, it’s a
whole different world. We’re at the mercy of a global capitalist
system…which values the pages separately far more than the book staying
together,” he said about the decision to unbind the books and display
the drawings separately. (Frank is the founder of the Plains Indian Ledger Art (PILA) project, which digitizes complete ledger books, making them accessible online.)
Ellis defended the choice to detach the drawings, arguing that “one
of the unique aspects of the Fort Marion sketchbooks is that there is no
narrative arch between individual sheets, linear or otherwise, unlike
most books that predate them.”
Karen Kramer, the curator of Native American and Oceanic Art and
Culture at the Peabody Essex Museum, offered a counter perspective,
telling Hyperallergic that “to separate these drawings is to dismantle cultural heritage.”
“Breaking apart ledger books that have Plains Indian drawings
short-changes the possibility of understanding each drawing as a part of
a whole story,” Kramer said. “In the context of Fort Marion, these
prisoner-warrior artists conveyed personal experiences and remembrances
of tribal rituals and histories within the broader story of colonization
and ledger art production under imprisonment and its radical aesthetic
evolution between 1875–78.”
“Depicting
a group of men around a campfire on a wooded beach, likely Fort Marion
prisoners on an excursion to Anastasia Island,” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book, illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nock-ko-ist, Tsis tsis’tas) (Bonhams lot 22)
It is also worth noting that at least two drawings that were
originally two-page spreads in the ledger books were framed and
exhibited as single sheets, splitting the original image in half, at
Ellis’s Expo Chicago booth.
In his communications with Hyperallergic, however, Ellis made clear that he considers himself more as a caretaker than a dismantler of Native cultural heritage.
“With the possible exception of Ross Frank and PILA, my gallery was
most instrumental in the preservation of complete ledger books over a
20-25 year period before the advent of digitization,” he said. “The
decision to exhibit the drawings as individual works (our first
experience in doing so) was a long and difficult process. Ultimately we
decided the end justified the means.” That end aim, according to Ellis,
is “to bring them to widespread institutional and private attention.” He
noted that PILA has complete files of the three books he purchased and
that he plans to produce facsimile versions.
Institutions that receive federal funding are bound by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA),
a 1990 law which facilitates the “protection and return of Native
American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of
cultural patrimony.” Private sales are not subject to NAGPRA, but they
do fall under the recently passed Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP)
Act, which helps prevent international trafficking of objects of
significant cultural patrimony, although that legislation would likely
not apply in this case.
Despite the technical legality of the books’ ownership, O’Loughlin
sees the original terms of the sales by the incarcerated Native artists
to Pratt as reason to reconsider grounds for repatriation.
“If the original transfer does not hold up, if it was considered a
kind of theft, then every transaction after that would be colored by
that,” O’Loughlin said. She considers the books’ current owners
complicit “because they know all the history, they know how the Tribes
fought the purchase.”
Top:
drawing “titled ‘Kiowas’ in pencil, the name ‘Saul’ written in ink
above one of the figures;” bottom: drawing with “‘Kiowa and Wife’ in
pencil, ‘Saul’ in ink above the horseman,” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book (1876) illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nockkoist, Tsis tsis’tas) and Ohet-Toint (Ohettoint / High Forehead) (Bonhams lot 20)Top: “Cheyenne Feast”; bottom: drawing inscribed “Medicine Dance (Cheyenne),” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book (1876) illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nockkoist, Tsis tsis’tas) and Ohet-Toint (Ohettoint / High Forehead) (Bonhams lot 20)
CT man taken from First Nation family as child finds purpose in sharing story: ‘I’m not the only one’
WILTON, CONNECTICUT
— Ripped from his sister’s arms and taken to a new country over a
half-century ago, Canada native Taber Gregory said he’s still
reconciling with how and why he wound up in Wilton.
About 20 years ago, the longtime Wiltonian and owner of Gregory’s Sawmill on Pimpewaug Road said he learned he was one of thousands of survivors of what’s known as the Sixties Scoop.
The
Sixties Scoop refers to a decades-long period in Canadian history, from
about 1951 and until as late as the 1990s, marked by the mass removal
of Aboriginal children from their homes — in most cases without the
consent of their families — into the child welfare system.
Many
of the children were placed in non-Indigenous households in Canada,
while others — including Taber Gregory, who was born Henry Desjarlais in
the Canadian province of Alberta in 1968 — were relocated and adopted
out to families outside the country.
Gregory,
now 55, said he always knew he was adopted but didn’t know about the
early years of his life until connecting with biological family members
in his early- to mid-30s.
“I
started getting some random calls saying somebody wanted to talk to me,
and the person claimed he was my father,” Gregory said. “I was a little
confused and didn’t accept the phone call because I didn’t know what to
think about it.”
The calls kept coming, and Gregory said he kept refusing.
Then
one day, he finally accepted and learned that the person calling was,
in fact, his biological father, Louis Desjarlais. Gregory said his
biological father has since died, but he has stayed in touch with one of
his biological siblings in Canada.
Through
telephone conversations, Gregory said he learned he was the youngest of
seven children and had been taken from his family’s home in Canada when
he was about one-and-a-half years old. He said his adopted parents had
been unaware that he had been forcibly removed from his biological
family.
“My sister walked me through everything, and it kind of snowballed from there,” he said.
Gregory showed Hearst Connecticut Media an August 2001 letter from the Cold Lake First Nations,
verifying his Cold Lake First Nation Registry List membership and
identifying his biological parents, as well as their own membership. The
letter said that since his biological parents were “of 100% North
American Indian Blood Quantum,” Gregory “has at least a 100% North
American Indian Blood Quantum” himself.
One
of Gregory’s four biological sisters, Alicia Minoose, claimed to have
been holding him when social service workers came into the house, took
him out of her arms, put him in a vehicle and left.
“She
told me she ran out the door, chasing after me, and that was the last
time she ever saw me,” Gregory said. “She was the last one to hold me.”
According
to Tony Merchant — a Canadian attorney whose law firm was involved in a
Sixties Scoop survivors class-action lawsuit several years ago that
Gregory benefited from — government-funded social services agencies
involved in the removal of Indigenous children from their homes were not
closely supervised and “intensified their search for likely
candidates/victims for adoption” over time.
“Grabbing
children became a need-for-supply phenomenon, and this was particularly
true for boys,” he said, noting that they were “significantly more
popular for adoption than girls.”
According
to Gregory’s sister, two of their siblings were taken as well. She said
they were placed with foster parents and eventually brought home — but
the family couldn’t find Gregory, whom she still refers to by his birth
name of Henry.
“Somehow,
mom found David and Margaret ... but they couldn’t find you,” she said
over the phone during Gregory’s interview. “They didn’t know what
happened to you. We were searching and searching, but there was no
information.”
Gregory
said he was told that his biological mother, Bella Desjarlais, “cried
and cried” after he was taken and he believes stress and heartbreak from
what happened may have contributed to her death — which he said
occurred before he reconnected with his biological family.
Later learning what he and his family in Canada went through, Gregory said he “went into survival mode.”
“I
went through some depression, but I was able to get help and kind of
turn that around and stay motivated and positive,” he said. “I did have
to take a step back and kind of digest everything.”
Adoption and life in Wilton
Wilton has been the only home he knows — or at least remembers.
Gregory
said he has no recollection of his time in the Canadian foster care
system, traveling to the U.S. or when his name was changed from Henry
to Taber — but he knows he ended up at an adoption agency in
Pennsylvania.
From
there, Gregory said he was adopted by Steve and Judy Meier when he was
around 3 years old, moved to Wilton and had two brothers — both of whom
were also adopted, but from different places. One was born in Vietnam,
and the other was born in Bridgeport, he said.
Gregory said his adoptive parents didn’t know he had been forcibly taken from his home.
“The
Welcome House in Pennsylvania was like the first stop, and they just
adopted me from there,” he said. “They had no idea how I got there, so I
can’t blame them for anything like that. They had no idea what
happened.”
According to the website of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation
— the parent organization of Welcome House — the adoption program
“matched more than 7,000 orphans and children from around the globe with
adoptive families in the United States,” and was phased out in June
2014 “because of changes in international adoption regulations.”
Samantha
Freis, a curator with the foundation, said the organization does not
know what the adoption process was like during that period.
After
his adoptive parents divorced, Gregory said his mother Judy Meier ended
up working at Gregory’s Sawmill and meeting John Gregory.
“They
made a connection, and we ended up here with Mr. Gregory and kind of
became a family,” he said. “We grew up on the Gregory farm (where) we
had draft horses, oxen, pigs and chickens.”
After
their adoptive mother died in 1985, Taber Gregory said he and his
brothers stayed with John Gregory, whom he considered a father figure
and legally changed his last name from Meier to Gregory at his request.
When
John Gregory retired in the mid- to late-1990s and moved to Ohio, where
he later died in 2006, Taber Gregory said he took over the sawmill
business — which has been in the Gregory family since the 1850s — and has been keeping the family legacy alive ever since.
“I became a Gregory and have been continuing the family business,” he said.
Gregory
said he never knew, nor suspected, that his separation from his
biological family and subsequent adoption were forced — but he’s
grateful to have learned the truth about his past, “survived the ordeal”
and reconnect with his family in Canada, who he said he has not yet
visited in person but hopes to see in the near future.
In
the meantime, he said his sister keeps him informed about what’s going
on with family members in Canada — many of whom Gregory said still
reside on a First Nations reservation and speak Chipewyan.
Class-action settlement
Several
years ago, the Canadian government reached an $800 million class-action
agreement with Sixties Scoop survivors — $750 million of which was set
aside for individual compensation — the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported in 2017.
The
settlement, through which all First Nations and Inuit children who
“were removed from their homes — and lost their cultural identities as a
result — between 1951 and 1991 (were) entitled to compensation,” was
less than the $1.3 billion sought on behalf of about 16,000 Indigenous
children in Canada’s Ontario province, according to the CBC article.
The
settlement agreement followed an Ontario Superior Court judge’s
February 2017 ruling that the Canadian government not only “breached its
‘duty of care’ to the children and ignored the damaging effect” of the
child welfare program, but also “breached part of the agreement that
required consultation with First Nations” about it, the CBC reported.
Gregory
— who showed Hearst a questionnaire he filled out for Merchant Law
Group LLP, one of the law firms involved in the class action — said his
claim was among the ones approved. He wouldn’t disclose the exact payout
amount he received — saying only that it was over $10,000.
“Everything I know is consistent with him being a (Sixties) Scoop survivor who received compensation,” Merchant said.
He
said Gregory did not become a client “because obtaining compensation
was something done directly with the claims service providers,” but said
his firm did provide assistance to Gregory.
Gregory,
who feels the Sixties Scoop settlement payout isn’t enough to
compensate for the harm caused to those taken from their biological
families, said he shares his story not for pity, but for purpose — to
raise awareness about what he and thousands of other Indigenous children
went through and help prevent something like it from ever happening
again.
“I know I’m not the only one, and I don’t want anybody going through what I did,” he said.
