APRIL 29, 2024
Hundreds of Sixties Scoop survivors who attended a Winnipeg conference on Sunday to share their stories, reconnect with their communities and access support. The event, hosted by the Southern Chiefs' Organization and the Anish Corporation — which promotes health, wellness and emotional support for Indigenous peoples — is welcoming survivors from across Canada and from the U.S.
Survivors of the Sixties Scoop gathered in Winnipeg on Saturday for the Manitoba Sixties Scoop Conference and share their stories and experiences of being taken from their families.
“Since the apology of 2015, there really hasn’t been a bigger gathering of Sixties Scoop Survivors to talk about some of the issues that we’re still working our way through,” said 60s Scoop Legacy of Canada Director and spokesperson Katherine Strongwind. “We’ve had about 23 smaller healing gatherings, mostly in Winnipeg and some across western Canada and we thought it was really important to pull everybody together today to say, ‘You know, we are still here, we’re still healing ourselves.’ The province really needs to step up their game in terms of really how they’re going to be helping us.”
The “Sixties Scoop” refers to the large-scale forced removal or “scooping” of Indigenous children from their homes, communities and families of birth through the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, and the subsequent adoption into predominantly Caucasian, Christian, middle-class families across Canada, the United States and overseas.
Many adoptees and Survivors were left with a lack of or poor sense of cultural identity. The forced physical and emotional separation from their birth families by the government’s assimilationist policies continues to affect adult adoptees and Indigenous communities to this day. Many Survivors had parents, grandparents, and extended families who were forced to attend Indian Residential Schools.
“The purpose this afternoon is to pull people together and get some feedback from them on some of the very specific issues that adoptees and folks who have been through child welfare have such as name changes, child welfare records, adoption records, all of those sorts of pieces,” said Strongwind.
Organizers plan to draft a report for the provincial government but also for Indigenous leaders.
“I’m not sure (Indigenous leaders) really know what to do with us,” said Strongwind. “We’re coming home and we’re trying to reconnect our families and our communities but they don’t always have the best understanding of how to support us.”
Some 120 Scoop Survivors attended the one-day gathering. Half of the cost of the gathering was covered by the provincial government with the remainder covered by fundraising. City of Winnipeg donated the space at Sergeant Tommy Prince Place in the North End for the gathering through the Indigenous Liaison Unit.
“We invited a couple of speakers to share part of their story this morning and there’s definitely some similarities among all of us but also we wanted to talk about inspiring stories and ‘What’s worked best for you on your healing journey and how can we support each other?’ because so far we don’t have any kind of healing program specifically for Sixties Scoop Survivors,” said Strongwind. “So we’re supporting each other.”
In 2015, then-Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger apologized on behalf of the province. Six years later, the 60s Scoop Legacy of Canada and Manitoba Senator Murray Sinclair called for a federal inquiry.
“We still don’t know how many kids were taken, where they were taken to, where they are now, how many died in care and those kind of pieces,” said Strongwind on what an inquiry would uncover. “We also know that people want to share their stories and their testimonies before they pass away. Over the next year or so, we’ll focus on that but also gatherings like this are really important to get people together and learn from each other on how we can support each other on some of these pieces when we’re not be recognized, we’re not being acknowledged.
“We’re really out here on our own it seems like.”
The provincial government needs to provide funding for these sorts of gatherings but also provide a unit or some sort of fund available for Survivors to be able to access some of the services that they offer such as the post-adoption registry and child welfare records, Strongwind said. Even something as seemingly simple as making it easier for Survivors to legally change back to their traditional names.
“The province did the dirty work of the Sixties Scoop,” said Strongwind, who legally changed her name in November. “They were given jurisdiction in 1951 from the federal government and they really took that and ran and decided they were going to scoop up entire families off reserves and they thought they were going to make us into upstanding Christian citizens. In some respects, they were successful but we know that many of us ending up leaving that lifestyle and our families and ended up coming home to our biological families and communities. Culture plays a huge role in our healing.
“There’s all of these sorts of pieces that the province could be helping with but really aren’t.”
City could participate by providing spaces for gatherings and a memorial of some sort.
“All levels of government I feel have a part to play in this,” Strongwind said.
With some 10,000 Indigenous children in care in Manitoba, Strongwind believes Sixties Scoop Survivors can have role in preventing a recurrence of what happened to them.
“We want to use our experience as best practices to prevent that from happening in the future,”Strongwind said. “That’s part of the purpose that the 60s Legacy of Canada works towards every day.”
[gdawkins@postmedia.com]
— a mote of dust, suspended on a sunbeam (@CarlaHolley) December 2, 2022
Sadly, as @r_bergen reports in this piece in June, Jeremy Skibicki was already on the police radar for domestic violence charges. https://t.co/pgS7NdAEht
— Anna Withrow (@flozer) December 2, 2022
Authorities in Winnipeg, Manitoba, believe the murders of four Indigenous women came at the hands of an alleged serial killer now in custody in Canada.
Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki, 35, of Winnipeg, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of the women, a news release from the Winnipeg Police Service states. It is not clear if he has an attorney.
The investigation dates to May 16, when Winnipeg police shared information on the murder of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, of the Crane River First Nation, after her partial remains were discovered.
Skibicki was arrested May 18 by the agency’s Homicide Unit and charged with first-degree murder, the release says.
During the investigation, detectives established three more victims murdered between March and May – before Contois’ death.
Morgan Beatrice Harris, 39, is believed to have been killed on or around May 1, and Marcedes Myran, 26, is believed to have been killed on or around May 4. Both women were members of the Long Plain First Nation, according to the release.
A fourth victim also is confirmed but not yet identified. She is believed to be an Indigenous female killed on or around March 15, police said.
And the investigation is not over, Winnipeg Police Inspector Shawn Pike said Thursday during a news conference.
Bodies of those three new victims haven’t been recovered, said Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth, noting police have enough evidence to charge Skibicki in their killings.
“Our officers will continue to search for information with the goal of identifying this fourth unknown victim,” Pike said, adding DNA has helped in their probe without saying how.
Meantime, Winnipeg must better address the safety concerns of the community, Mayor Scott Gillingham said at Thursday’s news conference.
“As a city, we must all grieve their loss and recognize that we have much more work to do to protect the lives of Indigenous women and girls,” Gillingham said.
Skibicki is being held at the Milner Ridge Correctional Centre in Manitoba.
In his Facebook bio, Skibicki described himself as an "official member of 'Holy Europe,'" which is a small faction of a broader far-right movement, an anti-facism expert told CBC last June.
Support is available for anyone affected by details of this case. If you require support, you can contact Ka Ni Kanichihk's Medicine Bear Counselling, Support and Elder Services at 204-594-6500, ext. 102 or 104, (within Winnipeg) or 1-888-953-5264 (outside Winnipeg).
Support is also available via Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Liaison unit at 1-800-442-0488 or 204-677-1648.
‘Growing up I kind of thought, why am I this lone person…”
Leah Ballantyne was just 11 days old when she was adopted out to a Scottish family in Winnipeg – by the time she was 13, she was already searching for her birth parents.
Riding the bus to school through Winnipeg’s downtown core, she would see Indigenous people and wondered if they were relatives.
“Growing up, I kind of thought, why am I this lone person and adopted into a family? Why didn’t my family want me and what were the circumstances? And as I learned that the ‘60s Scoop was actually a part of a process that started with reservations, and the Indian Act, and residential schools, and day schools,” she says on the latest episode of Face to Face.
“Then I realized that I was part of something that was a separation that was going on through government policy.”
The push to finally find out where she came from came after an event in Vancouver.
She says she was inspired by speeches by former Assembly of First Nations national chief Ovide Mercredi and Mohawk Council of Kahnawake grand chief Joe Tokwiro Norton
After, she went digging into her past.
Ballantyne’s birth mother had registered her for a status number at birth so she knew she was from Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. She wrote the chief at the time, the late Pascal Bighetty, asking for help.
Not long after, Ballantyne received a call from Bighetty, who, as it would turn out, was her uncle, telling her he knew who she was and to come home.
Ballantyne says the rally and reunification with her community, a “light went on” and she decided she would push for positive changes in law and policy by becoming a lawyer.
To this day, Ballantyne remains the only member of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation to become a lawyer. She is currently working with her nation on child welfare laws and bringing children home, whether they were part of the 60s Scoop, aged out of the care, or still in care.
Ballantyne is vocal about representation and believes those who falsely claim Indigenous identity, should face criminal charges.
“There is a couple of sections in the Criminal Code of Canada for identity and identity fraud and so Indigenous identity fraud is very much a charge that could be laid by any institution that has addressed this kind of issue and people that are claiming false Indigenous identity,” she says.
“And there is no statute of limitation on this type of identity fraud within the Criminal Code.”
Thousands of people in orange shirts flocked to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights SEPT 30 in Winnipeg to honour residential school survivors and the children lost to them.
Leading that march was 7-year-old Tatum Mentuck.
“My grandpa was in residential and I’m walking for him and for all the kids who didn’t make it home,” said Tatum.
The trail of orange shirts made their way down Portage Ave. and ended at St. John’s Park, with powwows going all day.
Lori Abraham is the Indigenous program director at 1justcity – a drop-in centre for disenfranchised people.
Abraham helped organized transportation for those people yesterday and said she was moved to tears by all the people.
“Being a witness for what is happening here today has moved me to understand that our community and our nation is moving forward in compassion and understanding,” said Abraham.
Throughout the day, many survivors told their stories.
“This is just part of a bigger picture of what we’ve lost,” said Marcel French, a ‘60s Scoop survivor. (video)
French says he hopes the sea of orange shirts and momentum from National Day for Truth and Reconciliation continues.
“My hope is that it doesn’t end after today,” he said. “And when they leave here, they can remember in the following days and weeks.
