#60sScoop Letters to First Nations leaders and Canadian Ministers

Letter to AFN request to meet 60s Scoop adoptees by Indigenous Adoptees

 

February 19 2017

 

National Chief Perry Bellegarde

Assembly of First Nations

55 Metcalfe Street

Suite 1600

Ottawa, ON K1P 6L5

 

Dear National Chief,

 

Thank you for your recent statement “Children of the Sixties Scoop deserve justice, healing and reconciliation” on February 14, 2017.  The National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (NISCWN) formerly known as BiGiwen Indigenous Adoptee Gathering, began our work in earnest in 2014 in Ottawa, ON.  Led by a few local Sixties Scoop adoptees, our goal was to bring adoptees together to share our stories, validate each other’s experiences, and work towards healing grounded in our Indigenous traditions.  Our first gathering was a resounding success as 65 adoptees came together in Ottawa from all over Turtle Island to build capacity, share stories, and begin the long process of healing inter-generational wounds and trauma.  In August 2015 we held our 2nd gathering for Sixties Scoop adoptees, foster care survivors, and their families.  With the help of trusted Elders and community facilitators, we utilized land-based ceremonies to lead the healing work.  At that time we reached out to AFN for support but your office could not accommodate us but thank you for offering.  Our 3rd gathering is planned for fall 2017.

The National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (“the Network”) is writing this letter to request a meeting with you in light of the recent judicial decision on the Ontario class-action lawsuit on behalf of Sixties Scoop adoptees. Also, given Minister Bennett’s statement on her willingness to engage in negotiations with adoptees, a meeting would be especially timely. During the meeting we would like to discuss and brief you on our work, how the Sixties Scoop has impacted our lives, the work that needs to be done across Turtle Island for healing and reconciliation, and ways that NGO's Chiefs, and advisors can provided necessary support and expertise.

The Network is unique, as it's the only community-based adoptee-led organization working with Sixties Scoop adoptees & foster care survivors. We're intimately connected to hundreds of adoptees across Canada, the US, and overseas. Urban and rural First Nations, Metis and Inuit adoptees & foster care survivors who have reached out to us over the years for support, advocacy, resources and friendship. One common heartbreak and concern we hear from adoptees who've been taken away from their communities is that our Chiefs and First Nation communities have not supported our repatriations nor welcomed us back into the circle. 

Our central concern in working towards a national resolution to ongoing litigation is that all impacted adoptees and foster care survivors are not just included, but centred and prioritized, in any discussions about their cultural losses and in strategizing ways forward. It's vital that our voices are heard since it's the survivors who know the impacts of the Sixties Scoop the best because we speak to it from our lived experiences. 

Although the Ontario class-action lawsuit judgement is one small victory, thousands of adoptees and foster care survivors are once again emotionally triggered by these announcements with reverberations being felt across the nation and beyond.  Survivors do not want to be excluded from conversations about us, and together with the Assembly of First Nations the Network wants to ensure that all our voices are represented at the negotiation table, while we continue the critical work of raising awareness about the Sixties Scoop nationally and internationally.

We look forward to hearing from you,

 Colleen Hele- Cardinal, Duane Morrisseau-Beck, Elaine Kicknosway

Directors

Use the search bar on this blog for many more stories about the 60s Scoop survivors.

Zebras and Giraffes: Finding where we fit in

By Trace L Hentz

I am now collecting stories by adoptees for a new book STOLEN GENERATIONS. It will be the third in a series of anthologies written by First Nations and Native American adoptees. Some were placed in non-Indian homes because of The Indian Adoption Projects (New York state had its own Indian Program) and the other larger project called ARENA.

These projects include adopting out Native children from Canada and the USA. 
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First Nations Adoptees 60s Scoop

By the numbers

20,000

Estimated number of aboriginal children taken from their families during the Sixties Scoop in Canada

Source: Canadian government/National Household Survey

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Canadian adoptees in the 60s Scoop have had more press coverage than here in the US and class action lawsuits have done much to promote the cultural genocide that adoption caused in Canada.

Peter d'Errico wrote a review of our first book TWO WORLDS: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects for Indian Country Today newspaper... He gets it. He knows what happened in the US.  His book review is very good, so I am sharing the review again. LINK

As I read adoptee stories, I get it. I am an adoptee, too. I think of how hard it is to fit in a family that is not your own so I wrote this down today:

I want you to image a little baby zebra is adopted by a family of giraffes. The giraffe family care for him as he grows up. The zebra felt loved by his new family, but as he grew bigger, he noticed he wasn't in the right place. These were not his people. And he wondered what happened to his own zebra family.

No matter how much love we were given, or not given as young adoptees, we figure out eventually we are not "home" and we wish to know where home is, and where our family is? and what happened?... No matter what our adoptive parents tell us or not tell us, we deserve to know the truth and we need to meet relatives and our first families to help us feel better and heal.

And adoptees need answers.  No one knows how many Native adoptees there are in the US. The governments of Canada and the US sought to destroy our connection to our tribes and families with these projects by adopting out babies and young children to non-Indians. The governments sought to erase us from tribal rolls. Our birth certificate was amended and lists our parents as the ones who adopted us.

How do we find a way to feel "home" again? We Search! We go into Reunion! Reunification means finding out who we truly are...

Sharing Stories helps adoptees to go full circle.  Sharing Stories help adoptees know they are not alone.

If you are interested in writing a story about your adoptee journey and reunion, please email me: larahentz@yahoo.com.  If you need help searching, email me too!

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In case you missed this news article about the 60s Scoop, read HERE.  


This is one of the amazing 60s Scoop Adoptees!

Cole Burston/Toronto Star

Colleen Cardinal

Colleen Cardinal still remembers her first emotion at her last foster home: Fear. Now 42, Cardinal is Plains Cree from Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Alberta, but grew up in a non-indigenous home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., along with her two sisters. All three girls endured physical and sexual abuse and were treated like “second-class citizens” in their own home, Cardinal says.
The family’s biological children were given butter and white bread, while Cardinal and her sisters were given margarine and brown bread. The family used a bathroom indoors while the three aboriginal girls used an outhouse. “I remember waking my sisters up in the middle of the nighttime because I had to go pee, and I was scared to go outside by myself — in my flimsy little nightie, putting on my winter jacket and freezing,” Cardinal recalls.

#60sScoop case moves forward as class action lawsuit

CBC News 

Related Stories

• '60s Scoop' class action not a matter for courts, say lawyers

External Links

• Sixties Scoop class action lawsuit

(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)

The Ontario Superior Court has dismissed an appeal by the Canadian government to strike a landmark case on the deprivation of cultural identity — also known as the “Sixties Scoop" of First Nations children.
The case can now proceed as a class action lawsuit.

Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief Goyce Kakegamic. (Cathy Alex/CBC)

“For the first time in Western law, a court has recognized our First Nations’ connection to our culture as a whole, and not as specific Aboriginal land, fishing or hunting interests, and that our peoples’ connection to our culture is an interest that cannot be disputed,” said Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Deputy Grand Chief Goyce Kakegamic.
Between 1965 and 1985 an estimated 16,000 Aboriginal children in Ontario, including members of NAN First Nations, were removed from their homes and placed in other — mostly non-native — communities, NAN said in a press release issued Wednesday.
“An entire generation lost its Aboriginal identity and culture through what is known as the “Sixties Scoop,” the release stated.
“This is the first time a court in the Western world has given this importance to cultural identity and granted permission for a legal case to proceed where a people were robbed of their cultural identity.”

Beaverhouse First Nation Chief Marcia Brown Martel. (Melanie Ferrier/CBC)

Marcia Brown Martel — now Chief of Beaverhouse First Nation — and Robert Commanda launched a lawsuit in February 2009 against the Attorney General of Canada under the Class Proceedings Act.
Prior to Tuesday’s decision, two judges had ruled in favour of the class action proceeding, allowing Chief Brown to be a representative plaintiff for Sixties Scoop survivors in Ontario.

“It has been a difficult path to litigation for these courageous plaintiffs and we will continue to support their efforts to hold the federal government accountable for transgressions that  have permanently scarred countless First Nations,” Kakegamic said.
“It has taken a long time, but it is a beginning.”

So far there has been no comment from the federal government on the ruling.
Decision here.


[And we can hope that American Indian Adoptees are NEXT! ...Trace]

Lawsuit Proceeds for Canada's Lost Generation 60s Scoop Adoptees

David P. Ball

10/28/13

A class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government on behalf of tens of thousands of indigenous children who were seized and moved to white families in an adoption wave known as the “Sixties Scoop” can now proceed after being approved by an Ontario judge.
The decision was handed down after several previous lawsuits in Canada failed, and as attention in the U.S. focused on the Baby Veronica custody case.

RELATED: Baby Veronica & Our Stolen Children: 'Someday, They'll Come Back'

“[The] harm done was profound and included lasting psychological and emotional damage,” said Justice Edward Belobaba in rejecting the government's arguments and summarizing his rationale for certifying the case, which affects at least 16,000 children in Ontario alone.
The Sixties Scoop followed a similar pattern across Canada, as the federal government signed funding agreements with the provinces that extended provincial child and family welfare services onto First Nations reserves. For example, in Ontario, the Crown signed the Ontario-Canada-Ontario Welfare Services Agreement on December 1, 1965. That lasted until the end of 1984, when a new federal law, the Child and Family Services Act, made “aboriginality an important factor in child protection and placement practices,” Belobaba said in his September 27 decision.
The class action is being represented by Beaverhouse First Nation Chief Marcia Brown Martel, who was seized from her Ojibwe family and adopted into a community where she was the only Native.
“It is in the power of the Government of Canada to right this wrong, to change how our Canadian systems work with aboriginal communities, to take the apology they offered and stand by it, and have it be a cornerstone to a new relationship—a dynamic, fulfilling relationship—to extend the apology to more than just fine words,” she told Indian Country Today Media Network. “It needs action.”
Currently, she added, there are “more than just the survivors to contend with. Every community that lost children to the Sixties Scoop has parents and extended family also affected by the loss of their loved ones.
“I was swept from my family, my community, my siblings, my extended family, my ability to function as an aboriginal person at all,” she said, “I had nothing as a young person, to say, 'Yes, I am First Nations,' other than the color of my skin and my hair. That's all I had left.”
As the only aboriginal person in a non-Native community, she felt completely alone in her struggles even into adulthood.
“Personally, it was a very, very lonely time in my life,” she said. “You start searching as a young adult to find your community. I'm very fortunate: I remembered my name as Sally Susan Mathias. Some may be so young that they would never remember their birth name. You don't know where to begin. It is an extremely difficult process.”

On Amazon

According to Sixties Scoop survivor Ernie Crey, who co-authored the 1998 book Stolen from Our Embrace (Douglas & McIntyre) with Suzanne Fournier and founded an aboriginal-run child welfare agency in British Columbia, Canadian aboriginal child welfare policies differ significantly from those in the U.S.
“It's a patchwork quilt here in Canada, versus what's true in the U.S. in the way of child protection,” Crey explained. “There isn't a National Indian Child Welfare Act in Canada, or anything even remotely like it, either. That goes back to the Sixties, when the Department of Indian Affairs refused to legislate child protection under the Indian Act. They abandoned the field to each province. That's what precipitated the Sixties Scoop.”
As some residential schools began to close around the same time, the change in child protection “created a perfect storm,” Crey said. “That's when the social workers from each province literally ... descended on the communities and apprehended children en masse.”
Advocates have described the Sixties Scoop as “identity genocide of children.” But many point out that even today there are more aboriginal children in Canada's child welfare system than ever attended residential schools.
“We're basically warehousing thousands and thousands of children in long-term care,” Crey said. “We're confining them to foster care.”
In another prominent case, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society director Cindy Blackstock and the Assembly of First Nations have taken the issue of unequal funding for aboriginal child services to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
Blackstock cited recent statistics that 48 percent of children in foster care are aboriginal – even though they make up less than eight per cent of Canada's children.
“We're looking at thousands and thousands of kids who are being raised away from their families,” she said in an earlier interview. “One of the big lessons that all of us should have learned, and certainly the government should have learned, from residential school, is that children need to grow up in their families. Then they learn the culture of themselves and their people.”

Go to website link below for the trailer for a documentary being made about this era, which took an entire generation of children away from their families even as residential schools closed down.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/28/canadas-baby-veronicas-sue-adoptees-seized-sixties-scoop-approved-class-action-lawsuit

The Stolen Generations

Full story: http://apihtawikosisan.com/2012/04/21/the-stolen-generations/

Excerpt:

Adoption as Cultural Annihilation

It is important to remember that many of the services Canadians take for granted, such as education, health care, and social welfare programs are in the main, designed and administered by the provinces and territories.

However, the federal government has been asserting its authority over “Indians and Lands of the Indians” since 1763. While is still remains unclear whether this includes all Inuit and Métis, it remains true that First Nations must turn to the federal government, not the provinces, for many services.
Canada did not spring from the skull of Zeus fully formed. The development of social programs and services has been incremental. Before the mid 1960s, there was no organised federal child welfare system. The provinces each had their own system, but nothing was in place for First Nations people.
In the mid 60s, agreements started to be formed between the federal and provincial governments to provide some child welfare coverage in First Nations communities. To be brief, the approach was “take first, ask questions later (if ever)”.
The similarity to tactics used during the height of the Residential School system is eerie. Aboriginal children were taken en masse from their families and adopted out into non-native families:

Child welfare workers removed Aboriginal children from their families and communities because they felt the best homes for the children were not Aboriginal homes. The ideal home would instill the values and lifestyles with which the child welfare workers themselves were familiar: white, middle-class homes in white, middle-class neighbourhoods. Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal parents and families were deemed to be “unfit.”

Research has shown that in British Columbia alone, the percentage of native children in the care of the Child Welfare system went from almost none, to one-third in only 10 years as a result of this expansion. This was a pattern that repeated itself all across Canada.

I was very pleased to find this blog post - please subscribe to âpihtawikosisân - I did! Trace

Aboriginal Sixties Scoop Class Action Lawsuit

This class action lawsuit has been filed against the Government of Canada. The lawsuit alleges that between 1962 and 1996, Canada negligently delegated Indian child welfare services to the Province of British Columbia. Ignoring its obligations to Aboriginal children, Canada took no steps to prevent them from losing their Aboriginal identity and the opportunity to exercise their Aboriginal and treaty rights when they were placed in foster homes and adopted by non-Aboriginals.
The plaintiff, a status Indian, was taken from her parents and placed in foster care when she was a young girl. She is bringing this lawsuit on her own behalf and on behalf of status Indians who were living in British Columbia and placed in foster care or adopted between 1962 and 1996.
If you are a status Indian who was placed in foster care or adopted between 1962 and 1996, please complete the Do You Qualify? form or Contact Us for more information.
Click here for their website and contact info

Lawsuit filed for 60s Scoop First Nation adoptees in British Columbia (NEWS)

new link: http://ipolitics.ca/2011/06/01/b-c-natives-sue-federal-government-for-millions-over-sixties-scoop/

Postmedia News June 1, 2011

A class-action lawsuit that could cost Ottawa millions of dollars has been filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on behalf of aboriginal children affected by the "Sixties' Scoop."
The "Scoop" refers to the thousands of Native children who were allegedly taken between 1962 and 1996 after the federal government signed over its responsibility for Indian child welfare to the provincial government.
The B.C. government received money for each status Indian child taken into care. This is the first Sixties' Scoop class-action suit filed in B.C. and only the second in Canada. An Ontario case was given court approval in 2010.
A Vancouver lawyer representing victims said the Sixties' Scoop victims could win "millions of dollars in federal compensation," such as that given to residential school survivors.
"But the purpose of this lawsuit is for the survivors to seek justice for the wrongs that were done to them," said Jason Murray. "Just as the residential schools closed, aboriginal children were again taken away, into foster care.
(c) The Victoria Times Colonist
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/life/Lawsuit+filed+Sixties+Scoop+kids/4872693/story.html#ixzz1O6B5YF8a

[This is only the beginning... the abuses here in America will come to light, too  ...Trace]