Jay
Mitchell by the Yukon River in Whitehorse. Mitchell has spent most of
his life in Alberta and Ontario and believed he was Métis — until a DNA
test helped him find his true biological family in the Yukon, and
prompted him to pick up and move to the North. (Cali McTavish/CBC)
Having
spent his whole life in bigger cities, Jay Mitchell says he's still
getting used to the pace of life in the relatively small town of
Whitehorse.
"It's a shock. I'm so used to city life," said Mitchell.
He's
also getting used to meeting new members of his extended biological
family. He says people often come up to him on the street in Whitehorse
and tell him, "you're my cousin," "you're my second cousin," or "you're
my nephew."
Mitchell moved to the Yukon last May after discovering
errors in his Sixties Scoop adoption papers and then learning the truth
about his ancestry. He spent most of his life believing he was Métis,
only to have a DNA test reveal that both of his biological parents were
from Yukon First Nations.
Mitchell says he misses his wife and son
back home in Oshawa, Ont., but he says they'll join him soon. He's
grateful to the Kwanlin Dün First Nation in Whitehorse for embracing him
and giving him a job, and a place to live, while he waits for his
family. He is now a citizen of Kwanlin Dün, and works as a records
keeper for the First Nation.
Mitchell's family's move to the
North is about building connections with his biological family,
and finding support for Mitchell's 17-year-old son Nicholas who has
autism.
A photo of a younger Mitchell with his wife Lisa Hughes and their son, Nicholas Hughes Mitchell who is now 17 years old. (Submitted by Jay Mitchell)
"We're
doing this for my son," says Mitchell, "to make sure that, you know,
there's family to take care of him, if anything happens to us."
A case of mistaken identity
Mitchell,
57, was born in Edmonton and raised there by his adoptive family before
they moved to Oshawa. He was 10 years old when his mother told him he
had been adopted. He says it was a shock.
"I had no idea," said Mitchell.
His
mother also then showed him his birth certificate which said
Mitchell was Métis. That set him on a path to discover his cultural
roots.
"I went to Métis celebrations, and I met the Ontario Métis chief in Oshawa," he recalled.
When
he was in his 50s, a health issue prompted a doctor
to encourage Mitchell to try to learn about his biological family's
medical history. That led to another surprise for Mitchell, when a DNA
test and an ancestry research service revealed that he was not in
fact Métis.
He learned that his biological family were Yukon First
Nations members. He soon connected with his biological half-brother
Jeffrey Kalles in Whitehorse, and eventually his two half-sisters as
well.
Jay Mitchell, centre, with his adoptive mother Barb Mitchell, and his son Nicholas Hughes Mitchell. (Submitted by Jay Mitchell)
Kalles describes the first time he talked on the phone with Mitchell.
"Hearing that voice, and just really realizing that's [my] big brother — it's surreal," Kalles recalled.
It was also surreal for Mitchell to learn about his biological family.
"The
funny thing is that with my adopted family, I'm the baby of all the
siblings — and in my biological family, I'm the oldest. It's kind of
weird how that works," said Mitchell.
Kwanlin
Dün First Nation members welcome Mitchell to Whitehorse last year.
Mitchell is standing at the back with a ball cap and red vest on. (Submitted by Jay Mitchell)
Putting the pieces together
Through
a Freedom of Information request, Mitchell was able to get his adoption
records from the Alberta government and confirm the identities of his
biological parents as Yukon First Nations.
"I don't understand
why they didn't put me as First Nations. It's kind of puzzling, but a
lot of people say that things were different back then, in the '60s,"
said Mitchell.
The Sixties Scoop refers to the practice from the
1950s to the 1980s of removing First Nations and Inuit children from
their families and communities and placing them in foster care or
adopting them out to non-Indigenous families. According to Sixties Scoop class action lawsuit settlement website, many claimants described being cut off from their culture and language.
Mitchell
says when he learned about the class action lawsuit he was told he
didn't qualify because of his Métis status. By the time he found out the
truth about his Indigenous ancestry, the deadline to join the claim had
passed.
'A lot of people were shocked ... that I existed'
After
moving to Whitehorse and reuniting with biological family, Mitchell
learned there were two people he would not be able to meet: his
biological parents. Dennis Ladue and Joyce Jonathan had both died a few
years earlier.
"A lot of people were shocked about who I was, and that I existed," says Mitchell.
Duran Henry is one of Mitchell's cousins. He thinks Ladue would have loved to meet Mitchell.
Mitchell, left, with his cousin Duran Henry. (Submitted by Jay Mitchell)
"I think he would have been surprised, and then just overwhelmed by joy and love," says Henry.
He says sometimes Mitchell reminds him of Ladue.
"The way he laughs and, you know, the way we joke around — he's just a happy guy, and [Ladue] was like that."
Kalles was
also adopted and also never met Joyce Jonathan, his biological mother.
But he says their parents live on through the siblings.
Jay Mitchell's biological parents Dennis Ladue and Joyce Jonathan who both died before Mitchell had a chance to meet them. (Submitted by Jay Mitchell)
"There
are these idiosyncrasies — we didn't grow up together, but the way we
talk and the way he looks around and stuff like that. I guess, when I
talk to him and look at him, I just know, that's my brother,"
said Kalles.
Mitchell says he can't wait for his family to join him in Whitehorse this summer.
"Every day I miss my wife and son. My son and I do everything together," he said.
Kalles says he's also excited to meet more of his extended family.
"I'm going to retire here shortly, so I'll have a lot of time to hopefully show them around the Yukon," said Kalles.
Powerhouse restaurateur Inez Cook (traditional name: Snitsmana) is originally from Bella
Coola’s Nuxalk Nation, but she grew up in Vancouver and went on to
spend 33 years in the airline industry, tasting her way around global
cities (Paris, naturally, was a favourite). In 2022, Cook left airlines
to dedicate herself full-time to running the wildly delicious Salmon n’ Bannock Bistro—Vancouver’s
only Indigenous restaurant—as well as opening Salmon n’ Bannock on the
Fly at YVR and penning two children’s books about her experience as a
child of the Sixties Scoop. When she’s not busy hosting customers at
“SnB,” this is where Cook’s dining around town.
Founder of the NWT Native Court Workers Association, former
Yellowknife city councillor and member of the NWT Human Rights
Commission passed away this week at the age of 71.
Gail Cyr and son Jesse Wheeler. (Photo courtesy Jesse Wheeler via Facebook)
Gail Cyr was known for her unwavering bravery fighting for
Indigenous people in the North, and her life’s work was recognized
nationally in 2022, when she was invested into the Order of Canada.
Cyr passed away on Tuesday, her son Jesse Wheeler posted to social media. She was 71.
“Thank you for your kind words and your sharing of stories,” Wheeler
stated. “She led an incredibly full life. She leaves this place much
better than she found it.
Gail Cyr, on the right, works with an unidentified woman in 1983. (Photo courtesy of NWT Archives/Arthur Boutilier fonds)
“That is all we can ask of a person. She did it tenfold. One-hundred fold.”
Cyr is originally from Nelson House, MB. A survivor of the Sixties
Scoop, Gail was one of seven siblings all apprehended from her Cree
parents.
In a 2022 profile in UpHere Magazine, Cyr stated: “There were a lot of rough times, and there were a lot of lonely times.”
The racism and sexism she recalled after moving to Winnipeg, led her to move to Yellowknife in 1974.
Cyr wrote a series of columns for Northern News Services in recent
years, one detailed her early experiences in her new home of Yellowknife
— on the Range.
“I started work at the Gold Range behind the bar pouring drinks as I
had at the Spaghetti Factory in Winnipeg, with the one exception that
hot pants and high heels were required as hostess wear,” she wrote in
her column.
“I made it to the floor from bartending. I loved it. We walked miles
every night carrying a tray of 16 of the largest draft glasses in
Canada, perhaps 14 ounces – not like the wimpy glasses from down south –
and ashtrays, change and a walled folder for bills.”
Cyr later was a coordinator with the Indian Brotherhood of the NWT,
and was the first executive director of the NWT Native Court Workers
Association.
Gail
Cyr, a St. John Ambulance volunteer, at the 2011 visit of the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge. (Photo courtesy of NWT Archives/Arthur Boutilier
fonds)
She served on Yellowknife city council, worked for the territorial
government and was a special advisor on Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women and Girls.
She also enjoyed live performances, producing costumes for the
Northern Arts and Cultural Centre and performing with her son, Jesse.
Cyr was the former executive director of the Native Women’s
Association and up until her passing, was on the NWT Human Rights
Commission.
Charles Dent currently chairs the commission. He recalls first
meeting Cyr at one of the first Folk on the Rocks festivals in the 1980s
when Cyr was with St. John Ambulance and he was a volunteer
firefighter.
Later on, when the pair were on Yellowknife City Council in the
1980s, with Cyr being the only Indigenous councillor. Dent said Cyr
impressed by doing all the required reading and really made an effort to
make good decisions to help the city develop.
Then, when Cyr joined the Human Rights Commission, Dent said she translated her personal experiences into leadership.
“She brought her … understanding and empathy that goes with having
experienced the discrimination she personally went through during the
Sixties Scoop,” he said.
“She was never afraid to talk about her experiences, never afraid to
talk about how that affected her and others like her that you know had
experienced the same sorts of things.
“She was courageous, because she was willing to share her experience.
She tried to help people empathize with what people have gone through,
and help along our path to reconciliation.
“As we developed the Commission, we developed our reconciliation
strategy, she was key to helping us set that up, and I’m gonna miss her.
We’re gonna miss her.”
CKLB will update this story when Cyr’s funeral arrangements are known.
“You will be told you are ugly or
‘too beautiful to be Indigenous!’ If you were fostered into a white
home, you will be told to your parents were drinkers, and you will be
told to ignore any pull to your family you lost.”
– Gail Cyr, on growing up in a non-Indigenous community
Gail Cyr as a teenager. (Photo courtesy of Cyr family via Facebook)
Lori Long Chase disappeared in 1983, and so did much of her life story.
Her body had been unknowingly found almost a month after she was last seen by family. But she remained nameless for decades and her homicide went unsolved.
Now after 41 years, Lori is able to reclaim her name, as the details of her life and death begin to unfold.
Lori was adopted out of the San Carlos Apache Reservation in about 1965 when she was only days old, her little sister, Memory Long Chase, says. Memory was also adopted 13 years later as a baby out of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. She’s now one of the last surviving people ever to know Lori.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).
“I want to think that she knows I didn’t forget her,” says Memory, who was only 5 years old when Lori went missing. Most of what she knows is based on her childhood memory and bits of information she’s heard from their family over the years.
Lori Long Chase (Phoenix Police Department)
“Maybe I’ve invented some in my mind as I’m kind of piecing things together but I want to think that they’re real,” she says of her memories of her big sister Lori.
Lori was a distance swimmer, and a really good one, Memory says. She swam the 1500-meter butterfly and might’ve held a state record at one point. Memory remembers a detective with the Phoenix Police Department sharing a yearbook photo they found of Lori “in that Michael Phelps pose.”
One memory that stands out in Memory’s mind is the time Lori used the money she made from her first job to buy her a book about Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “It was a really big book … it had all these artist drawings and storyboards. It was the coolest thing ever,” she says before becoming silent for a moment.
“It’s so unfair that those are the only memories I have of her,” Memory says, her voice quavering. “But they were pretty great, the ones I do have.”
Missing since 1983
On the first Saturday in October, about a dozen people attended a memorial service honoring Lori, even though most had never met her.
They gathered under a ramada outside the St. John the Baptist Parish on the Gila River Indian Community where a rosary and mass had just ended. Nearly everyone who showed up for Memory and Lori wore red — a color that’s come to symbolize the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s movement.
“I think one of the hardest parts about this was knowing that there’s so few alive that remember who she was and so I wanted to keep (Lori’s memory) alive because it mattered to me that she lived,” Memory says as everyone sat around a few folding tables to listen to her talk. “I’m sorry that her life was brief and I’m sorry it was difficult.”
Lori was just a few months shy of her 18th birthday when she went missing in Phoenix on about July 21, 1983. It was the same day she started a new job at a pizza restaurant, Memory and a spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department told Arizona Luminaria. When her mom went to pick up Lori at the end of her shift, she was told her daughter had been fired because her boyfriend kept showing up and being disruptive.
That was the last time anyone in their family saw or heard from Lori, Memory says. At the memorial people around her quietly nibbled on slices of pizza, which Memory picked to signify the day Lori went missing.
Candles bearing the words "We love you" and "Gone too soon" at Lori Long Chase's memorial service at the St. John the Baptist Parish on the Gila River Indian Community on Oct. 5, 2024.
Until recently, most of what was known publicly about Lori was written across a missing person flyer from the Phoenix Police Department. At its center is a cropped photo of Lori that Memory says was taken outside her family’s new home on the Gila River Indian Community weeks, maybe even days, before her disappearance.
The uncropped version of the photo shows Lori sitting against the hood of a Triumph Spitfire and staring directly at the camera. Her brown hair is fluffed and feathered, like many teens her age styled it in the 1980s.
And while her smile illuminates through the old photo’s fading color, it’d likely been a tough time for Lori. Several months earlier she lost her baby boy shortly after he was born.
Reclaiming her name
Lori’s disappearance would go unsolved for the next four decades, though she wasn’t officially reported missing to the Phoenix Police Department until 2021. Memory says she doesn’t know if their mom, who died in 2016, ever tried to report Lori missing before then.
“My mom wouldn’t want to talk about it,” Memory says.
Four years ago, Memory contacted detectives because she believed an unidentified girl listed on the police department’s website could be Lori. The girl — known at the time only as Ahwatukee Jane Doe — was believed to be affiliated with the San Carlos Apache Tribe and had been found dead nearly a month after Lori disappeared.
“The first composite drawing has really tightly curly hair. I didn’t remember Lori having curly hair. But, page 2, that composite drawing is almost identical to that last picture that we have of her,” Memory says.
Because Memory wasn’t biologically related to Lori she couldn’t undergo DNA tests to help confirm the girl’s identity. Ahwatukee Jane Doe remained unnamed. Lori remained missing.
In May 2022, the department released a video with photos of Lori and a plea on National Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s Awareness Day. They described a young woman found on the banks of a canal in Ahwatukee and asked for information to help locate potential biological relatives of Lori for DNA testing.
"Last year, a family came forward saying this might be their adopted sister, Lori Megan Long Chase, who went missing around the same time period in the early 80s," said Ryan Cody, a spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department. "Now, almost 40 years later, we are asking the public for their help again to identify this Jane Doe."
No one has yet come forward.
The department decided to find the burial place for Lori’s infant son, Bronson Hawk Long Chase. With help from the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner, Lori’s baby and her only known blood relative was exhumed for DNA testing.
More than a year passed as Memory waited. And on Sept. 5 her phone rang. The DNA testing had confirmed Ahwatukee Jane Doe was indeed Lori, closing the chapter on her missing person case but opening another into her death.
“This leg of the journey is over, but Part 2 begins,” Memory says. “It’s so surreal because her being missing has been a fact in my existence for most of my existence so now it’s like I don’t even know what to do with myself.”
“It took 41 years for science to give Lori her name back and so I think we have every reason to hope that science will give her justice,” she later added.
Heurich, who helped launch the program in the early 2000s, described NamUs as “a one-stop-shop tool” that helps law enforcement, medical examiners, coroners, and the general public track missing, unidentified and unclaimed persons cases. The program can also help resolve cases by offering resources such as investigative support, training and outreach and forensic sciences similar to what investigators used to identify Lori.
Heurich has worked on hundreds of cases over the past two decades. Finding resolution in missing and unidentified person cases, he said, can bring about feelings of immense gratitude for the family and investigators involved.
Even in instances when a missing person is later discovered to have been a victim of a violent crime, he said, families may be comforted in the fact that they’re closer to justice and can lay their loved one to rest.
“It's undescribable when you have a family member come up and hug you … and they cry on your shoulder,” Heurich said. “I've cried with a lot of family members whose cases have been solved and whose cases have been unsolved and it's probably one of the most impactful experiences I have had through my career.”
NamUs is a voluntary program, meaning there is no federal law requiring agencies to enter cases into the database, he said. Sixteen states including Arizona have legislation mandating the use of NamUs for either missing and/or unidentified person cases, according to the program’s website. However, none of those state statutes include an enforcement component making it difficult to ensure agencies are complying with the law, Heurich said.
In Arizona, law enforcement agencies are required to submit information about a missing, kidnapped or runaway child to NamUs, among others, within two hours of receiving a report. No other Arizona laws specifically mention NamUs and it is not clear if any Tribal Nations in Arizona have laws related to NamUs.
“The numbers of cases in NamUs are vastly different from the numbers of cases we’re hearing out in the United States,” Heurich said, adding that the missing people in its system only represent cases reported to the program.
In order for a case to be published in the database, there has to be an active missing person report created by a law enforcement agency, he said. As part of the services the program provides, NamUS staff can work with law enforcement to create a report for a missing person at the request of families.
“We do understand there is a very large issue out there not just in the tribal communities but in the law enforcement community, in general, with actually taking missing persons reports, especially with people over the age of 18 who are considered adults,” he said.
“For lack of a better word, there’s a stigma out there that people who are over 18 are allowed to go missing for whatever reason they want to,” Heurich continued. “Sometimes those cases are taken less seriously until there is actual proof that that person is probably and most likely endangered.”
A T-shirt bearing the words "You are not forgotten" and "MMIW" at Lori Long Chase's memorial service at the St. John the Baptist Parish on the Gila River Indian Community on Oct. 5, 2024.
‘The database is only as good as the number of cases in it’
Closing gaps in state laws that would require and enforce reporting of missing people of all ages could help increase the number of successfully resolved cases. It’s especially important for Indigenous communities in Arizona, a state that was identified in a 2017 study from the Urban Indian Health Institute as having the third highest number of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the country.
Native Americans, particularly Native American women, rank the high rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women among the most important issues facing their communities, according to the First Nations Development Institute’s 2023 National Native American Justice survey.
Indigenous families searching for their missing loved one, or seeking justice for their murdered loved one, often face systemic failures that contribute to gaps in data and reporting. Some families wait years and many never find justice or resolution.
There are 1,072 missing person cases in Arizona entered into NamUs, almost 9% (93) of which are identified on the database as Native Americans, an Arizona Luminaria review of the website on Oct. 30 showed. Yet, Native Americans make up just more than 5% of the state’s total population, according to 2023 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
NamUs could not immediately provide Arizona Luminaria with an example of an Indigenous person's case it helped to solve in Arizona.
“We still encounter a little bit of skepticism on the science and we're trying to help bridge the mistrust with collecting DNA samples from family,” Heurich said, adding that in some Indigenous communities taking someone’s DNA can be considered taking part of their spiritual being.
“We want to convey to the communities that taking (a DNA sample) may be the only way that we can identify or find their person.”
In comparison to state and local law enforcement agencies, Heurich said there is a general lack of reporting of missing person cases to NamUs by tribal police, which he attributed to a lack of resources, trust and training. That’s why outreach and education — not only about the possible benefits of forensic sciences, but also the existence of NamUs as a resource — is a goal for the program, he said.
“We're always looking at ways to do better outreach. To let, not only families and everyone in the general public know about NamUs as a tool, but also police agencies,” he said.
“I think one of the biggest things that we could say out in the community of victims, survivors and law enforcement is: Use NamUs because the database is only as good as the number of cases in it.”
Memory Long Chase speaks to guests attending her sister Lori Long Chase's memorial service at the St. John the Baptist Parish on the Gila River Indian Community on Oct. 5, 2024.
Part 2 for Memory
Memory passed out remembrance cards with a photo of Lori wearing a hospital gown and mask while holding her baby boy in her arms. The cards also showed the photo of Lori taken outside their family’s new home at the time on the Gila River Indian Community. The same photo police used on Lori’s missing person’s flyer.
“There are not enough words to express our grief at the loss of Lori, but forever grateful she is no longer lost,” the card reads near the bottom. “Rest in Power after 41 years.”
Lori Long Chase (Phoenix Police Department)
Beyond a short explanation about Lori’s body being found in 1983, Phoenix police did not share any details with the public or Arizona Luminaria about its investigation into her death. At one point in 2018, the department tried to determine if she was Peggy Elgo, a 20-year-old San Carlos Apache woman who also went missing in 1983. The following year another unidentified person found in Pinal County was confirmed to be Peggy.
The Phoenix Police Department did not respond to multiple requests dating back to July for an interview about Lori’s case, and on Sept. 10 ultimately denied an interview saying a detective new to the case was still reviewing it.
The department instead offered to share questions with the detective. Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Brian Bower provided an emailed response to those questions to Arizona Luminaria on Sept. 17. Bower has not responded to follow-up questions emailed multiple times.
A public records request with the agency is also still pending.
Lori’s death was determined to be a homicide. Her body was found on Aug. 15, 1983, along a canal in the 4300 block of East Williams Field Road, according to an Arizona Republic news brief Phoenix police shared in their 2022 plea for help solving the case. It was described as a rural farming area south of Ahwatukee and within a mile of the Gila River Indian Community, where Lori’s family had just moved and Memory was raised.
Phoenix police at the time said she appeared to have been killed somewhere else before being moved to the area where she was found and possibly laid alone for days, according to the news brief.
“I was kind of wanting to focus on her life more than her death but … I think highlighting her death is equally important because she died horribly,” Memory says. “I think her official cause of death is strangulation, she was found nude, beaten and bloody in a canal where she laid for a couple of days in August.”
During the memorial service, Memory says Lori’s boyfriend is an alleged suspect in her homicide case. Responding to Arizona Luminaria’s inquiry about suspects, a Phoenix police department spokesperson said they would look into the case.
Memory also told the group that Phoenix police learned Lori had been hospitalized between the time her family last saw her and when her body was found. “Her boyfriend beat her severely enough to put her in the hospital for several days,” Memory says. “That was the last time anybody saw her alive.”
Memory Long Chase wipes away her tears during her sister Lori Long Chase's memorial service at the St. John the Baptist Parish on the Gila River Indian Community on Oct. 5, 2024.
‘She was meant to be here for a reason’
After sharing Lori’s story with the group, Memory thanked everyone for attending her sister’s memorial. “It’s an orphan’s lot to go through things by yourself,” she says. “Thank you for being here and helping me celebrate the fact that she lived because she mattered.”
Then, Memory fell silent. In the quiet, the low rumble of cars passing by on the nearby main road sounded like a roar. She cupped her face with her hands, propped her head over the table and began to cry.
“She didn’t deserve that,” Memory muffles into her hands.
Her cries hung in the air for a moment while everyone else sat in silence. Many of the guests were women working to end domestic violence. They were there to support Memory, but also to pay respects to a girl who may have fallen victim to domestic violence — the very people they aim to help.
“I had that last bit of hope that she’s off living her life somewhere,” Memory later says. “But once I saw that drawing it was over for me, I think I kind of knew without knowing.”
“I don't think it was any coincidence that I do the work that I do and it reaffirms that this is where I’m supposed to be,” she continued. “It’s heartbreaking but I love it … I believe in what we do and I believe in who we do it for.”
Memory’s journey into advocacy began in 2014 when she worked at the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence. Now, she serves as the Domestic Violence Response Director at SWIWC, formerly known as the Southwest Indigenous Women’s Coalition.
The organization helps Tribal Nations in Arizona address and respond to domestic and sexual violence in their communities through education, training, policy advocacy and more, according to its website. They also helped organize the first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls event at the Arizona State Capitol in May 2019.
For her work, Memory was awarded a “Courage in Action” Distinguished Service Award from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes in 2023. The award recognizes a crime victim or survivor who creates “positive systemic change on behalf of other victims,” according to a brief from the attorney general’s website.
“Working with Indigenous communities and drawing on personal experience of being a victim herself, has given her a unique perspective on how to address and respond to all forms of violence, as well as how to educate community members on the dynamics within Native communities,” the brief states about Memory alongside a photo of her and Mayes.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It’s also Lori’s birthday month.
She would have turned 59 on Oct. 11. Rather than celebrating together, Memory is instead planning where to lay her sister and nephew to rest. She launched a GoFundMe campaign days after Lori was identified to help cover cremation costs. It had raised $3,150 of its $3,500 goal as of Oct. 30.
Memory says she might return Lori with her son to the San Carlos Apache Reservation, where she originally was from.
“She was meant to be here for a reason and maybe this was it, maybe her case helps advance science for the next family and maybe the detectives who worked her case can be a model on how investigations can go,” Memory says.
“I refuse to let it be without purpose and I’ll continue to share her story until I die.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect date for when Phoenix police responded to emailed questions. A spokesperson responded to Arizona Luminaria on Sept. 17.
This article first appeared on AZ Luminaria and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The story of a Sixties Scoop survivor's search to find herself and her community
CBC Books ·
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Otipemisiwak is a Plains Cree word describing the Metis, meaning "the people who own themselves."
Andrea
Currie was born into a Metis family with a strong lineage of warriors,
land protectors, writers, artists, and musicians - all of which was lost
to her when she was adopted as an infant into a white family with no
connection to her people. It was 1960, and the Sixties Scoop was in full
swing. Together with her younger adopted brother, also Metis, she
struggled through her childhood, never feeling like she belonged in that
world. When their adoptions fell apart during their teen years, the two
siblings found themselves on different paths, yet they stayed
connected. Currie takes us through her journey, from the harrowing time
of bone-deep disconnection, to the years of searching and
self-discovery, into the joys and sorrows of reuniting with her birth
family.
Finding Otipemisiwak weaves lyrical prose,
poetry, and essays into an incisive commentary on the vulnerability of
Indigenous children in a white supremacist child welfare system, the
devastation of cultural loss, and the rocky road some people must walk
to get to the truth of who they are. Her triumph over the state's
attempts to erase her as an Indigenous person is tempered by the often
painful complexities of re-entering her cultural community while bearing
the mark of the white world in which she was raised. In Finding Otipemisiwak,
one woman's stories about surviving, then thriving as a fully present
member of her Nation and the human family are a portal. Readers who walk
through will better understand the impact of the Sixties Scoop in the
country now called Canada. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)
Brandon
Friendship Centre’s Eagle Healing Lodge program co-ordinator Denise
Sinclair says the camp is helping people reclaim their Indigenous
languages through land-based activities. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
Nestled in
a ceremony site east of Southwestern Manitoba's biggest city, a group
of language keepers is working to strengthen and grow fluent Dakota,
Cree, Anishinaabemowin and Michif speakers.
They're part
of the Brandon Friendship Centre's Eagle Healing Lodge's first
land-based language camp. Four teepees have been set up between the
forest and prairies, each home to an Indigenous language in Westman.
"Language
has always been connected to the land," says Denise Sinclair, program
co-ordinator for the healing lodge. "Everything that we're doing here is
specifically land-based ... in the language so that you can hear it
[and] you can pass that on."
The three-day camp, held
Tuesday through Thursday, was an opportunity for participants to learn
and speak Dakota, Cree, Anishinaabemowin and Michif, she said. They
would speak their languages for different activities like setting up
tents, smoking meat or medicine picking.
Julia Brandon, left, and Martina Richard crush chokecherries as a way to learn Anishinaabemowin. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
It's
powerful seeing connections forged as people learn and speak their
languages, Sinclair said. It's important work that has to carry on to
help with language revitalization.
"Whatever you're
learning you're going to remember … you're building that core memory
with the language, that you needed growing up," Sinclair said.
Language as strength
The
healing lodge has been cultivating a community centred on strengthening
Indigenous languages since 2021, Sinclair said. It began as a program
for Sixties Scoop survivors and grew to include residential school
survivors and others.
Language serves to reconnect people with their culture and identity in a safe place centred on healing, Sinclair said.
"We
have to remember that there's still that sense of …. something being
taken," Sinclair said. "Now they feel safe to talk to us as learners
because they feel that importance of passing on that language."
Martina
Richard, from Waywayseecappo First Nation, camped out at the site for
two days to immerse herself and her family in language and culture.
Participants could choose to camp, or to go home for the night.
Eagle
Healing Lodge Cultural support worker Lacey Hotain says she wants to
strengthen her Dakota to pass it on to future generations. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
Richard's
focus was on learning Anishinaabemowin. As she gets older, Richard
says, she feels the need to be a fluent learner to help strengthen the
language for future generations.
"Just like how it was
spoken around me, I'm starting to use the language more around my
children and they're starting to understand and use the words too,"
Richard said.
"It feels like home ... It's good to be around what feels like family."
Julia
Brandon, also from Waywayseecappo, was one of the language helpers at
the camp. She teaches Anishinaabomowin through cultural activities like
smoking moose meat, beading and crushing chokecherries.
It's
exciting getting out of the classroom and onto the land, Brandon said.
It's a more hands-on experience for everyone involved no matter their
language skill level.
She still considers herself a learner, because other women are expanding the words she knows in Anishinaabemowin.
"I'm getting strength from being around the other speakers to keep going," Brandon said.
Building Community
Lacey Hotain from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation is a Dakota speaker who works as a cultural support worker at the healing lodge.
Hotain
visited each of the teepees to participate in different cultural
activities and learn about different Indigenous languages.
"I
definitely feel a sense of importance here because everybody who comes
here has a role," Hotain said. She says she's always felt "a calling, of
an obligation" to go back to language as a priority.
Hotain
wants to help teach Dakota to young people in the future. She says her
knowledge is being strengthened by working on the land at the camp.
Brandonite Shirley McKay beads a wolf willow necklace. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
The
Eagle Healing Lodge is planning on hosting a second language camp in
the spring. It's important to keep activities like this accessible –
through being welcoming and available – for those struggling with their
identity and their connection to language and culture, Sinclair said.
Brandon
hopes the next camp will be fully immersive for participants, with
Indigenous language spoken the whole time, to help keep languages
thriving in the community.
She
wants her grandchildren and the next generations can help carry the
language forward, Brandon said. But, it's challenging because she wants
them to be engaged and curious about Anishinaabemowin, but doesn't want
to force them to learn the way she was forced to learn English.
This
means they need more language options outside the camp so First Nation
children can stay connected to their culture and traditions.
"The
First Nations, we don't have our language because it's not promoted,"
Brandon said. "How do you promote your own language if you're if you're
not talking it yourself?"
Brandon camp connects language, culture and land
VIDEO: Duration 1:55
The
Brandon Friendship Centre's Eagle Healing Lodge hosted its first
three-day language camp this week. The camp's goal is to help people
reconnect to their Indigenous language through land-based and cultural
teachings.
SANTA FE, NM. — On her
great-grandmother’s 91st birthday celebration at Jemez Pueblo in April,
Veronica Krupnick gave her the news she would be on the ballot for the New
Mexico State Senate.
With tear-filled eyes, she looked at
Krupnick, hugged her, and then sat her down to eat.
“She went from seeing Native
Americans in New Mexico not be able to vote until 1948 to now seeing her great
granddaughter on a ballot,” Krupnick said.
Krupnick is 28; her
great-grandmother was 24 when Native Americans got the right to vote in the
state.
“If you’re bold enough to dream big
and fight for the changes you want to see, you can see that kind of radical
turnaround in one person’s lifetime,” Krupnick said. “But you have to feel the
fear and do it anyway.”
Though Krupnick lost the Democratic
primary election for District 24 in Santa Fe to Linda Trujillo in June, her
work in the New Mexico House of Representatives and as a fierce advocate for
child welfare has anything but slowed.
“(Running) taught me a lot,”
Krupnick said. “This is something that I want to do, maybe not in the near
future but down the road. It definitely takes a lot out of you.”
Krupnick said although an estimated
45% of New Mexicans are under the age of 35, they don’t really have
representation.
She also thought her expertise in
child welfare would fill a much-needed gap in the state, especially with the
upcoming retirement of two long-time legislative officials.
“One of the biggest (changes) that
could really shift things for child welfare is proactively getting people with
experience involved, whether that’s at a local or a state (level),” Krupnick
said. “Lived-experience people are going to tell you what works and what
doesn’t…I think in child welfare we get really lost in the numbers and the
statistics and we forget that there’s people behind them.”
Krupnick uses her own experience in
the foster and adoption systems to try and spark change, and she strives to
bring others that have been in the system to use their own voices.
Early life
Krupnick was born in Tuba City,
Arizona, to teenage parents. Her biological father is Hopi and she grew up in
Moenkopi on the Hopi reservation. Krupnick also has Jemez and Navajo heritage.
“I kind of bounced around to different
family members for those first couple of years,” Krupnick said. “My biological
parents really struggled with addiction and were involved in the incarceration
system and juvenile justice pretty early.”
When she was 4-years-old, Krupnick
moved with her mother to Albuquerque to be closer to her mother’s family on the
Jemez reservation.
“She was really hoping I think to
turn things around … but you know, life doesn’t go according to plan,” Krupnick
said.
Krupnick said her mother fell into
the drug scene in Albuquerque, and got into legal trouble. By the time Krupnick
was 6, her mother was facing charges of child abuse and neglect, and Krupnick
was put into the foster care system, going between her mother and a group home
at first, until it was determined she would be adopted.
At 7, Krupnick’s younger sister was
born to an African American father. Though their mother had family on the Jemez
reservation, she was not registered to the tribe. That meant Krupnick had legal
kinship placement through her biological father’s Hopi side, but her
half-sister had none.
“That kind of made it complicated,”
Krupnick said.
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
of 1978 mandates that American Indian children should be adopted into American
Indian families.
“Our legal case then became a
question of, do we come from ICWA because it does apply to me and separate us,
or do you keep us together? That’s why (adoption) took about a year, because we
had to get my tribe involved.”
Until she was adopted at 10,
Krupnick was placed in seven different foster care families, many non-tribal.
Stakeholders helped the girls’ team
navigate through the hoops of the adoption process, and it was ultimately
decided that Krupnick and her half-sister — who were very close — should be
adopted together. However, a Native home that would take them as a package
could not be found, so they were adopted into a white family.
“We were adopted and it opened up a
whole new wave of different struggles,” Krupnick said. “Those first 10 years
were just a struggle to survive, and then after adoption I feel like it was the
first time I had processed any of the stuff that had happened before.”
Krupnick said although her adopted
parents had the best intentions, she struggled with the disconnect from her
culture and the struggle that many transracial adoptees — and regular adoptees
—face.
“A lot of times in adoption cases
like mine, once an adoption is closed, everything before that day in the
child’s life is cut off,” Krupnick said. “Family, friends, schools, pets, home
— all of that — it no longer looks the same.”
Krupnick got involved with the
juvenile detention system at 14 for petty crimes like theft.
“I was a really angry teenager who
kind of had an ‘I don’t know who’s driving’ period of life, (which) is not
something uncommon to see in post adoptees,” Krupnick said. “(I was) living off
of impulses and harmful decisions.”
At 16, Krupnick ended up at a
residential treatment facility in Utah.
“I felt like for the most part, I was
kind of given some space to kind of actually heal myself without the pressure
(to also) fit into a new family,” Krupnick said. “I think that was what I
really needed and I think I really thrived there.”
Krupnick graduated the program in 10
months and moved to a transitional/independent living program nearby before
heading to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.
“I showed up to college with two
suitcases and that’s about it,” Krupnick said.
She paid for the majority of her
schooling on her own, working as a student ambassador during the day between
her classes, and a pharmacy technician at night. She majored in public health
with a minor in psychology.
A taste of advocacy
Early on in her college career,
Krupnick became a wellness peer advising counselor through a program called
eMPAS.
“We focused on suicide and sexual
assault prevention, both areas that I have struggled with,” Krupnick said.
“(It) gave me a little taste of lived-experience advocacy, which I really
enjoyed.”
Krupnick attributes the program to
the start of her advocacy career, which started in 2018 with the Court
Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Program and Tewa Women United. She worked for
the Casey Family Programs and won a national Casey Excellence for Children Alumni
Award this year for her dedication to youth mentorship.
She still volunteers at CASA, now as
the vice president on the board of directors, and volunteers on several other
boards and programs while maintaining her full-time job as a Leadership Analyst
for the New Mexico House of Representatives Majority Leader Representative Gail
Chasey.
“I do a little bit of everything,”
Krupnick said. “Everything from answering constituent concerns to serving as a
child welfare specialist, vetting legislation, setting up meetings with
stakeholders, helping with classifiers and going to community meetings.”
Krupnick said during legislative
sessions, where she sits as senate liaison, she averages 16 hour days, but she
loves the work and staying busy.
Cultural connection
Veronica Krupnick testified for U.S.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s Supreme Court case, defending the
Indian Child Welfare Act, in 2023. (Photo/Veronica Krupnick)
In spring 2023, Krupnick testified
nationally during the Haaland vs. Brackeen Supreme Court case, which could have
dismantled ICWA, but kept it intact after a 7-2 vote.
“I was using my voice as much as
possible; I was speaking at summits, at rallies. I was writing op-ed pieces,
all of that good stuff,” Krupnick said. “ICWA definitely became a really big
part of my professional life and really I was trying to call the importance of
keeping the adopted in Native communities, and in the worst case, if they are
adopted outside of them, really working (to make sure) those children have a lifeline
back to their culture and their community and those doors are open.”
In 2022, Krupnick played a role in
establishing the Indian Family Protection Act (IFPA), New Mexico’s counterpart
to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
“It has things which the federal law
doesn’t and is inclusive of what they call a cultural contract,” Krupnick said.
‘So that’s what is in the adoption decree … essentially saying if you are going
to adopt this child from this tribe, this is the plan to keep this child
connected to their culture and their connections.”
Krupnick is now helping to set up
IFPA courts around the state, and said the first IFPA court has higher rates of
success for adoption and foster youth than ICWA.
“I think (IFPA) gives clarity to the
adopted parents and I think it gives the adoptee something to stand on,”
Krupnick said. “If you are going to adopt this child you are going to take this
cultural identity with them.”
Looking back, Krupnick expressed
gratitude for the week-long visits to the Hopi reservation that her adoptive
parents arranged. During these visits, she volunteered with the Red Feather
program to help build houses. These experiences allowed her to form positive
connections with other Hopi families and stay connected to her cultural
heritage.
“My roots and my culture have been
so foundational and so key to my healing that it always kinds of make me wonder
— had those not been so distinctive, would it have been something that could
have helped me?” she said.
She is now connected to her Hopi and
Jemez family excluding her parents. She now has two other younger siblings on
her mother’s side and four on her father’s. The half-sister she was adopted
with is now 21, and the two are still as close as can be, roommates and dog
moms in Santa Fe.
With the small amount of time
Krupnick’s not working or volunteering, she relaxes by binging Netflix ‘junk
food’ shows like Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor and Bridgerton.
But she can’t help watching Law and
Order and Criminal Minds, too.
“My brain apparently doesn’t like to
turn off,” she laughed.
