Wahkohtowin: Cree Natural Law

#60sScoop survivors: birth records 'mysteriously' lost or destroyed

This is amazing series of stories! Stay tuned!

'I was told I don't exist,': survivors search for paper trail to their past

Donna Carreiro · CBC News 

Sixties scoop survivor Lori O'Cheek was told her adoption records were destroyed in a fire. (Donna Carreiro (CBC))

When Lori Ann O'Cheek went to search for her birth records, she was told her files burned in a fire. When Carla Williams asked a different agency for her birth records, she too was told they burned in a fire. Likewise Trevor Bass. Likewise Jessica Sear.

Wayne Snellgrove, on the other hand, was not told his birth records were destroyed. He was told there were none to begin with.

"I got a very nice letter from Vital Statistics telling me I don't exist," Snellgrove said. "I am nowhere to be found."

Different survivors dealing with different agencies from across Canada facing similar barriers to access their past.

Carla Williams (left) leans on her daughter for support as she recalls the abuse in her adoptive home. (Donna Carreiro (CBC))

It is a yet another twist in the evolving legacy of the Sixties Scoop. Survivors, pulled from their Indigenous homes and adopted by white families around the world, now search for their birth and treaty records only to be told they cannot be found.

"There was no record of my adoption, no record of the adoption agency," Lori Ann O'Cheek said. "I just kept getting answers that the agency burned down and that's it."

Carla Williams was told the same thing. She didn't believe it.

"A fire that I don't believe ever happened, that [the child welfare agency] couldn't confirm at all," she said.

Survivors and critics say it is another example of forced assimilation and the federal government's effort to erase their Indigenous identities.

"If we grow up not knowing we're Indigenous and we're entitled to the land and treaties and status, then they don't have to honour those treaties," said Colleen Cardinal, a Sixties Scoop survivor, author and advocate. "They don't have to resource or revenue share."

That's why so many survivors can't find their way home, she said.

"There are so many Indigenous adoptees out there that have no idea what their rights are," Cardinal said. "That they are connected to the land and to status and to treaties."

Lori Ann O'Cheek was a toddler in Camperville, Man, when her mother began to warn her about strangers in the town.

The Sixties Scoop explained 1:12

"She used to warn us if a strange car came onto the reserve, to run as fast as we could," O'Cheek said. "Because kids went missing all the time."

Sure enough, child welfare officials drove up and knocked on their door. Some of her siblings escaped. She did not.

"I tried to run away but I was too young to flee," she said.

She was adopted to a family who moved to Vermont, and she spent the next several years trying to come home.

"I was always running away, just to find somebody I belonged to," she said, adding she was eventually placed in foster care.

Once she found her birth family, she returned to Canada.

To this day, her birth certificate lists her adoptive parents as her parents. Her original birth certificate remains "mysteriously" non-existent.

 

Former MLA calls for national inquiry

Eric Robinson is a former NDP MLA and was Manitoba's former Aboriginal and northern affairs minister. He said he's "disappointed but not surprised" to hear some survivors can't access their birth records.
"I've heard stories like this for years," he told the CBC. "It's a further violation of these people."
Robinson noted that in 2014, the province attempted to improve access to archived adoption records from before 1999.
But that doesn't help survivors born in other provinces.

"That's why I have long been calling for a national inquiry into the Sixties Scoop," he said. "We need a proper investigation and we need answers."

• Manitoban taken during Sixties Scoop returns after 2 decades behind bars in U.S.
  • Indigenous children for sale: The money behind the Sixties Scoop
  • Manitoba Sixties Scoop apology moves Indigenous families to tears 

What needs to be happening?

Residential school cemetery gets heritage status

Jennifer Graham

Janine Windolph, president of the Regina Indian Industrial School commemorative association, at a fence that marks the RIIS cemetery in Regina. Michael Bell / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Along a dusty gravel road on the edge of Regina is a small plot of land surrounded by a rail fence with peeling white paint, weathered teddy bears, flowers and a couple of dream catchers.
There’s just one headstone in the 680-square-metre cemetery for the two children of Rev. A.J. McLeod, the first principal of the Regina Indian Industrial School, belying that dozens of indigenous children from the school are buried there too.
“It’s easy to overlook the cemetery itself. Even when I first came out here, we drove right by,” said Janine Windolph, president of the Regina Indian Industrial School Commemorative Association.
“The site needs to take another step further in basically acknowledging the students that are here and how we can start making it more apparent that this is a scared site for gathering. That’ll all come in time.”
A big step came Sept. 26, when Regina city council voted unanimously to grant the site municipal heritage status. Civic administrators suggested the move after a 2014 land survey found there were potentially 22 to 40 unmarked graves of children in the cemetery.
Windolph said an archeologist for the association identified 36 anomalies, but she said there could be many more children because it was practice at the time to bury several together.
Sakimay First Nations Chief Lynn Acoose, whose grandmother attended the Regina Indian Industrial School, said the heritage designation process has been emotional.

“It’s not only about preserving the memory. It’s not only about preserving the site and the graves. We need to also, from this tragedy, create something powerful and good out of the loss of these children,” said Acoose.

The Regina Indian Industrial School operated between 1891 and 1910. An unknown number of students died there.

Justice Murray Sinclair, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has estimated at least 6,000 children died at residential schools but it’s impossible to say with certainty.
The federal government stopped recording the deaths around 1920 after the chief medical officer at Indian Affairs suggested children were dying at an alarming rate.
Residential schools were often crowded, poorly ventilated and unsanitary. Children died from smallpox, measles, influenza and tuberculosis. Some were buried in unmarked graves in school cemeteries, while others were listed as “missing” or “discharged.” In some cases, parents never found out what happened.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s offices are now closed and the work has been transferred to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg.
Centre director Ry Moran said the designation in Regina “is just exactly what needs to be happening.”
“It means that one city in particular has really stepped up and honoured the children that are buried in that cemetery,” said Moran.
“And sadly, across this country, there are many, many, many other locations exactly like the one in Regina. So the fact that we’re seeing the city designate this site as a commemorative site, really I think can help encourage other cities and other jurisdictions to take a real hard look at this work that needs to happen across the country.”
Moran said preliminary estimates suggest there could be around 400 burial sites across the country directly associated with a residential school or where residential school children are likely were buried.
He said the centre recently looked at the cemetery associated with the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ont.
“That’s a really good example of a site where we know there’s kids buried there, but it’s heavily overgrown,” said Moran.
“We know that there’s graves likely outside of the cemetery as well, and that’s just one of many examples of a cemetery that’s really been forgotten and a critical part of our history being ignored and disrespected, truthfully.”
The work is not done for Windolph. She would also like to see the Regina cemetery get provincial heritage designation.
She said it marks a pivotal point in history — the time where cultural and identity loss began.
“And so, in order to start our healing journey, we have to go back to that point where this happened. We have to make good out of our past and simply acknowledge it is the beginning of that journey.”

[Mass graves, dead children, no one even knows their name. This is the bloody history of North America... Trace]

Forced sterilization of 272,000 indigenous women 'not a crime against humanity': Public Prosecutor

Forced sterilization of 272,000 indigenous women 'not a crime against humanity': Public Prosecutor

SOLD! Adoptive U.S. parents paid thousands for Indigenous Manitoba children #60sScoop

Indigenous children for sale: The money behind the Sixties Scoop

Donna Carreiro · CBC News 

Carla Williams was adopted by a Dutch family during the Sixties Scoop. (CBC)

Marlene Orgeron recalls the day her adoptive Louisiana parents told her they bought her for $30,000. Her brothers, they told Marlene, were "freebies."

It left her feeling worthless.

"They told me I should feel grateful they paid anything for me at all," Orgeron said. "I felt so guilty."
It's the latest revelation in a story survivors say has haunted them for decades: the money behind the Sixties Scoop.

The scoop, as it is called, refers to the era from the 1960s to the 1980s, when child welfare authorities scooped up Indigenous children and adopted them out to non-Indigenous families.

• Manitoban taken during Sixties Scoop returns after 2 decades behind bars in U.S.

Those placed in homes outside the country weren't just adopted out of their Indigenous homes and into mostly white American families. They were bought and paid for.

"It hurts so much, but I have waited so many years for someone to finally talk about this," said Dianne Fast, whose brother Willy was seized from their Eriksdale, Man., home and adopted by a couple in Indiana.

Marlene Orgeron was taken from her home in Shoal Lake, Man., in the 1970s and adopted by a family in the U.S. (CBC)

His value? Fast said her brother went for $10,000.

"His mother used to say she owned him."

Carla Williams, also from Manitoba, was adopted by a family in Holland for $6,400.
Manitoba twins Diane and Debra ended up in Pennsylvania. They said they were valued at $10,000 as a pair.

Wayne Snellgrove calls it human trafficking.

"[My adoptive parents] paid a lot of money for me," said Snellgrove, who started out in foster care.
"They farmed us out to an [American] adoption agency and then they sold me."

'It sickened me'

Williams said the thought of the transactions is revolting.

"It sickened me," she said.

Barbara Tremitiere was surprised to hear this. Now retired, during the 1970s, she was an adoption worker with the Pennsylvania-based Tressler Lutheran Home for Children.

• Manitoba Sixties Scoop apology moves indigenous families to tears

They worked hard to find homes for children with "special needs," she said. Canadian Indigenous children were deemed special needs.

"Because you didn't want them," Tremitiere said. "I was once told by a native person from [Manitoba], on one of the reservations ... 'we passed on to you what we didn't want.' And they were probably right."

The agency fees to adopt Indigenous kids from Manitoba weren't high — under $2,000, Tremitiere said.

The Children's Bureau of New Orleans charged close to $4,000. The executive director at the time called it a "great deal" for Manitoba taxpayers, who would no longer have to foot the bill for Indigenous kids in provincial care.

At the time, the U.S. also was promoting Indigenous adoptions, pulling children from their reservations and placing them in white families to assimilate them.

Old newspaper clippings promote adoption of First Nations children. (Karen Pauls/Twitter)

One 1966 press release celebrated the successful adoptions of these "Indian waifs."

 

'Hands off our children'

Ernie Daniels, then chief of Long Plain First Nation, called it genocide. He was stunned to see newspaper ads from U.S. adoption agencies recruiting "Indian" kids from Manitoba.

Marlene Orgeron's brother, Eric Orgeron, was born in Birch River, Man., in 1972 and later adopted by a family in the U.S. He moved back to Manitoba in August to get back in touch with his roots. (Marlene Orgeron)

"I told them to keep their hands off our children," Daniels told CBC News.

His pleas fell on deaf ears south of the border, but they gained traction in Manitoba.

By1982, the province ordered a moratorium on out-of-province adoption of Indigenous children. Soon after, an inquiry was launched into the child welfare system and its effect on Indigenous families.

It's estimated more than 25 per cent of all Indigenous children placed for adoption were placed in homes outside the province. Hundreds ended up in the United States; many are still trying to find their way home.

"It doesn't even feel like this body belongs to me," said Williams. "I'm lost. I'm really lost."

SEE WEBSITE FOR MORE

$1.3 billion in damages: #60sScoop get their day in court

August 23, 2016

 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu

Thousands of First Nations, Métis and Inuit across Canada who were ripped from their homes as children are getting their day in court after a years-long struggle in what has become known as the “Sixties Scoop,” a painful, but little-understood chapter of Canadian history.

The so-called scoop happened between the 1960s and the 1980s and saw thousands of aboriginal children taken from their homes by child-welfare service workers and placed with mostly non-aboriginal families. In some cases, children were sent to live with families in other provinces, the United States and the U.K., often without the consent of their parents.

A  legacy of  ‘cultural genocide’

The fallout from the practice has negatively impacted generations of aboriginal Canadians.

The final Truth and Reconciliation Commission report stated “the effects of the residential school experience and the Sixties Scoop have adversely affected parenting skills and the success of many Aboriginal families.”

“By the end of the 1970s, the transfer of children from residential schools was nearly complete in Southern Canada, and the impact of the Sixties Scoop was in evidence across the country,” the TRC said.

“In 1977, Aboriginal children accounted for 44 per cent of the children in care in Alberta, 51 per cent 

of the children in care in Saskatchewan, and 60 per cent of the children in care in Manitoba.”

READ MORE: Indigenous community shares stories of survival decades after the ’60s Scoop

The “Sixties Scoop” has not received the same attention as another dark chapter in Canada’s history: the issue of residential schools. And unlike survivors of the residential school system, adults who went through the Sixties Scoop have never received an apology from the federal government. Last June, the Manitoba government formally apologized to those affected.

Marcia Brown Martel, a member of the Temagami First Nation near Kirkland Lake, Ont., was taken by child welfare officials and adopted by a non-native family as a child.

Martel has described what happened to her and thousands of others as “cultural genocide.”

“I lost everything, including my name. I lost my family. I lost my language. I lost everything about my culture,” Martel told The Canadian Press. “This should never have happened. It was wrong.”

Dozens of supporters rallied outside a Toronto courtroom Tuesday where an Ontario Superior Court judge will hear opening arguments for a summary judgment in a class action lawsuit against the federal government by survivors of the Sixties Scoop.

At the heart of the Ontario lawsuit, is a federal-provincial arrangement in which Ontario child welfare services placed as many as 16,000 aboriginal children with non-native families from December 1965 to December 1984.

WATCH: Indigenous community shares stories of survival decades after the 60’s Scoop

The claim, which has not been proven in court, alleges the children suffered a devastating loss of cultural identity that the federal government should have protected. The suit alleges plaintiffs suffered emotional, psychological and spiritual harm from the lost connection to their aboriginal heritage.  

They are seeking $1.3 billion in damages, or $85,000 for each affected person.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs will argue they have enough evidence to forego a trial and prove that Canada had an obligation in law to ensure that indigenous children removed from their homes retain their cultural identity and heritage.

READ MORE: ’60s Scoop plaintiffs finally to get day in court

Tuesday’s hearing comes after seven years of delays due to appeals by the federal government, which has fought the claim since it was launched in 2009.

“Today I stand with the survivors of the Ontario Sixties Scoop as they fight for justice and acknowledgement after decades of heartache,” said AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde, in a statement. “Survivors of the Sixties Scoop deserve just resolution and restitution without further delay.  The federal government said recently that they would prefer to resolve this issue outside the courtroom.  If they are serious then they should work with survivors of the Sixties Scoop to get a respectful, acceptable process in place.”

Sixties Scoop survivor Dokis Thibault is emotional as she gathers with supporters at a rally in Toronto on Tuesday, August 23, 2016. Scores of aboriginals from across Ontario rallied in Toronto today ahead of a landmark court hearing on the so-called ’60s Scoop.

Calls on Ottawa to recognize an ‘immense wrong’

A number of indigenous leaders called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an open letter to resolve the issue without further delay and to “recognize and right an immense wrong — with both words and deeds.”

“This case is about Canadian values – past, present and future,” the letter says. “This moment is an opportunity for Canada to put an ugly legacy behind us, for the government to take steps to reform its conduct so that the injustice does not continue and build a better future for all. It’s a chance to open the door for future generations to grow up healthy and proud of who they are.”

Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett has said she wants to see the lawsuit over the Sixties Scoop taken out of court.

“We, as you know — as a government — would like to get things out of court and to a table where we can make those kinds of agreements together, as a way forward,” Bennett told reporters in Winnipeg in August.

“We want to work together with all of the litigants that are presently in court and try and get to the table.”

*With files from the Canadian Press

California Supreme Court Denies Review in In re Alexandria P. (Choctaw ICWA Case)

NICWA Supports Safe Transition in California ICWA Case

Being a foster parent is a hard, selfless, honorable role. We have great compassion and appreciation for the amazing people who open their homes and lives to vulnerable children at the time when they need love, stability, and support the most. And while we feel deep sympathy for what the Page family is going through during this difficult time, it was regrettable and disturbing to observe the media spectacle witnessed yesterday, which stands in stark contrast to best practice that ensures a child's safe transition in such circumstances.

 

Transitioning a child from a foster care placement to family should be done in a manner that creates the least amount of unnecessary trauma for a child. This is why such matters are kept private--because child development experts and families understand it is in the child's best interest to do so.

 

Court transcripts indicate the Pages were aware since 2011 that their foster daughter had loving relatives wanting to welcome her into their home and reunite her with her siblings, one of whom she will now live with. As with most foster placements, where reunification with siblings and family is the stated objective, the Page family understood her placement was to be temporary.

 

Despite this and numerous court rulings dating back to 2013, they chose to reject the consensus of the court, the county child welfare agency, the child's parent, her court-appointed attorney, and her tribe, who all agreed it was in her best interest to be with her sister and family.

 

Now she is with family. Court documents elaborate on the longstanding and close relationship her relatives have with her; they explain that she has long known them as "family from Utah." These are not strangers. These are family members who she knows well.

 

We understand the difficulty of accepting the temporary nature of foster parenting, but it is imperative we focus on supporting a safe transition. Today, this child is with her sister and other family members who have been waiting five long years to welcome this child into their home.  

 

Read more HERE

Docket here.
Documents and previous coverage here.

SOURCE: Turtle Talk

Vancouver Island couple lose appeals to adopt Metis toddler

A British Columbia foster family has lost its fight in the province’s highest court to adopt a Metis toddler in an emotional saga that has pitted the importance of indigenous heritage against that of blood relatives.
The B.C. Court of Appeal has dismissed two appeals launched by the Vancouver Island couple, who hoped to stop the Ministry of Children and Family Development from moving the little girl to Ontario to live with her biological siblings, who she has never met.
The foster mom is Metis while the adoptive parents in Ontario are not, and the B.C. couple had argued the girl’s aboriginal background should take precedence. The girl, who is nearly three, has been in the couple’s care since two days after birth.
But a five-judge panel ruled unanimously in a written decision released Tuesday that both the couple’s appeals of earlier B.C. Supreme Court decisions must be dismissed.
“(The foster parents) face an insurmountable hurdle to achieving the relief sought,” the ruling says. “The adoption scheme in British Columbia does not provide for adoption of a child by foster parents at the behest of a court….”

KEEP READING

Native Americans Descended From A Single Ancestral Group, DNA Study Confirms

Native Americans Descended From A Single Ancestral Group, DNA Study Confirms: For two decades, researchers have been using a growing volume of genetic data to debate whether ancestors of Native Americans emigrated to the New World in one wave or successive waves, or from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations. Now, after painstakingly comparing DNA samples from people in dozens of modern-day Native American and Eurasian groups, an international team of scientists thinks it can put the matter to rest: virtually without exception, the new evidence supports the single ancestral population theory.