HAWAIʻI TASKFORCE FOR MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN | CANADA #MMIWG UPDATE

Honolulu, Hawaiʻi — The Hawaiʻi State Commission on the Status of Women honored the national day of awareness for Missing Murdered and Indigenous Women and Girls’ Day on May 5, 2021, and announced that Hawaiʻi State Legislature passed HCR11, which created a taskforce for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG).
The state-wide, multi-year taskforce will be co-chaired by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Hawaiʻi State Commission on the Status of Women (Commission). The Apology Resolution, a joint resolution of U.S. Congress passed in 1993, confirmed that Native Hawaiians are an “indigenous people,” which established a “political” relationship between Native Hawaiians and the United States
government. However, Native Hawaiians have not been included in national research on MMWIG to date.
The Hawaiʻi State Legislature Women’s Legislative Caucus included HCR11 in their priority bill package for 2021.  

Hawaiʻi State Representative Stacelynn K.M. Eli championed HCR11: “For too long we Native Hawaiian women, like our land, have been commodified. Our bodies and our stories are used and forgotten. This is vital work for us as a State, to provide us with meaningful data to ensure the protection of our most vulnerable population: Native Hawaiian women and girls.”

Unlike other states such as Washington state, Hawaii’s MMIWG taskforce will not be led by law enforcement, but rather by agencies that advocate for Native Hawaiians, women and gender diverse people. 

The legislation also formally recognizes that “harmful colonial stereotypes have resulted in the sexual fetishization of Native Hawaiians” and that “land dispossession and incarceration have increased vulnerability of Native Hawaiians” to violence. 

"People ask why is an MMIWG taskforce needed in Hawaiʻi?  Preliminary data shows that Native Hawaiians are disproportionately trafficked into the sex trade, which fuels the MMIWG crisis. From 2017 to 2019, one out of every three child sex trafficking victims reported to the State of Hawaiʻi, Child Welfare Services hotline were Native Hawaiian. In addition, 64% of 97 sex trafficking victims identified in 2019 by Child & Family Services were Native Hawaiian,” said Khara Jabola-Carolus, Executive Director, of the Commission.

“We lose Indigenous girls in Hawaiʻi through many means--through the foster care system, through predators who quietly lure children into human trafficking, and of course through domestic violence.  This issue exists because we do not care about Indigenous women.  We allow unforgivable numbers of women to be murdered in our country and yes, even in our state.  So, we have decided that we need to do something to raise awareness in Hawai`i, and honor the families here whose daughters are missing and murdered.  Today, to raise awareness and support our Indigenous Sisters, we will wear red, with red handprints over our faces to represent their voices being silenced, as we say NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS,” emphasized Stacey Moniz, Maui Commissioner of the State Commission.

Edie Ignacio-Neumiller, Kauaʻi Commissioner of the State Commission stated, “All islands including Kauaʻi will be at the table to interrogate this cycle of violence. There is a crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and widespread rampant of violence among women and girls.  There needs to be more specific data to find local solutions and locations of MMIWG.”
 

“This day also provides an opportunity for our government to reaffirm their commitment to stop exploitation of other humans for profit, particularly Native Hawaiian women and girls.  We will address the systemic shortcomings of national and local governments to adequately focus on issues of Human Trafficking that most often leads to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,” said Cyd
Hoffeld, Hawaiʻi Island Commissioner of the State Commission. “We will continue to bring public awareness and ongoing island-wide discussions about human trafficking in Hawai’i, through the support and partnerships of the Hawai’i State Commission, and our County Committees on the Status of Women.”

 

CANADA: ‘This is genocide’: Final MMIWG report says all Canadians have role in ending violence  

Arctic MMIWG issue: here

More than 2,000 anomalies found at former Indian residential school

 

January 18, 2023 By Antonia Gonzales

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Officials at a First Nation in Saskatchewan say they’ve located more than 2,000 anomalies after using radar at the site of a former Indian residential school.

As Dan Karpenchuk reports, they have not yet been confirmed as human remains.

The ground search of the former Qu’appelle Indian Residential School began about a year and a half ago with the help of ground penetrating radar.

So far, searchers have found a jaw bone fragment believed to be from a child of five or six years of age.

The bones were dated about 1898.

Ground search project leader Sheldon Poitras says this is physical proof of an unmarked grave.

“This discovery here at the site just validates what we have always known. It validates to the world that those stories have some merit.”

In addition to the more than 2,000 anomalies, searchers found underground rooms or tunnels.

He says the data and the stories from survivors of the former residential school is motivation to continue searching.

Poitras says there’s been talk about some drilling to bring up samples and test for DNA.

The chief of the Starblanket Cree Nation, Michael Starr, says the discoveries so far are significant.

“It’s changed the things that we’re going to do. It’s changed our mindset. It’s changed our way of life.”

Some surrounding private landowners have agreed to allow searches on their property, that’s near the former school site.  Poitras says the site of the former school is located in the village of Lebret, about 50 miles northeast of Regina.

The school was opened in 1884.

In 1951, it became one of the first residential schools to offer a high school program.

The report from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said the school had a high death rate.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau said he was saddened and disturbed by the finding of a child’s remains along with potential unmarked graves.

January is Stalking Awareness Month

(EAGAN, Minn., January 2023) – January is Stalking Awareness Month as launched in 2004 by the National Center for Victims of Crime to promote recognition of stalking as a crime.  Since then, stalking has been recognized as a crime and precursor to other crimes such as human trafficking, rape and ultimately, murder.

 “Stalking is motivated by perpetrators to gain or maintain control over their victims,” said Lori Jump, chief executive officer for StrongHearts Native Helpline. “Historically, the interest was to control people, land and resources.  Today, at least one in four stalking incidents involve a current or previous personal relationship.”

 Violence Against Native American Women and Men

According to a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice, more than four in five Native women (84.3 percent) have experienced violence in their lifetime while intimate partner violence manifests alarming rates of other types of violence, including:

 

●     Stalking (48.8 percent)

●     Physical violence (55.5 percent)

●     Sexual violence (56.1 percent)

●     Emotional Abuse (66.4 percent)

 

The rate of violence perpetrated by non-Natives is astonishing with 97 percent of female victims and 90 percent of male victims reporting violence at the hands of interracial (non-Native) intimate partners, while fewer Native victims: 35 percent of female victims and 33 percent of male victims experienced intraracial (Native) intimate partner violence (IPV).

Stalking, sexual assault, physical violence, and psychological aggression are the top four categories of violence perpetrated against Native people wherein almost 3 million Native women and men have been victims of violence and just over 1.2 million Native women and men have been stalked.

 

What is Stalking?

Stalking is a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or the safety of others. It includes unwanted attention, harassment and/or threats and multiple forms of abuse. Ultimately, stalking is an attempt to manipulate, convince or coerce victims into compliance.

Red flags include:

●     Repeated calls, text messages, e-mails, or posts via social media

●     The perpetrator shows up at the victim’s known whereabouts  (e.g., near home, work, school, etc)

●     Threatening to hurt the victim and/or people they care about.

 

Cyberstalking is a form of digital abuse where abusers hurt, threaten or intimidate their victim using phones, computers or social media. Methods include:

●     using technology to track, find and/or disseminate personal information about the victim.

●     sending threatening or insulting messages.

●     using the victims devices to create clone profiles and/or send malicious content.

 

Victim And Perpetrator Demographics

According to the Stalking, Prevention, Awareness Resource Center, (SPARC):

●     People aged 18-24 experience the highest rate of stalking victimization.

●     More than twice as many victims are stalked with technology than without.

●     2 in 3 of stalkers pursue their victims at least once per week using more than one method of contact.

●     Weapons are used to harm or threaten victims in 1 out of 5 cases

●     Intimate partner stalkers are the most likely stalkers to approach, threaten, and harm their victims.

●     More than 80% of survivors reported the person stalking them was known to them in some way.

●     Strangers are reported as the perpetrator of stalking in less than 25% of stalking cases.

Legal note: It should be noted that although stalking is against the law in every state, the crime of stalking is defined differently in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and on tribal and federal lands.

 

StrongHearts Can Help

If you or someone you know is being hurt by a stalker, learn more about safety planning and read: Creating A Separation Plan and Preparedness Kit.  For more information, StrongHearts Native Helpline can be reached via call or text 1-844-7NATIVE (762-8483) or chat online at strongheartshelpline.org. Advocates are available 24/7. 

 

SOURCE

 

1. André B. Rosay, "Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men," (June 1, 2016) https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/violence-against-american-indian-and-alaska-native-women-and-men. Accessed December 21, 2022
2. Stalkingawareness.org “Stalking Fact Sheet.” https://www.stalkingawareness.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SPARC_StalkngFactSheet_2018_FINAL.pdf. Accessed December 22, 2022
3. Safe Horizon, “Stalking Statistics and Facts.”  https://www.safehorizon.org/get-informed/stalking-statistics-facts/#definition/. Accessed December 23, 2022
4. StrongHearts Native Helpline, “Creating A Separation Plan and Preparedness Kit.” Accessed December 27, 2022

 

A Truly Savage System

Nevada Public Radio | By Richard Boland| January 12, 2023 SOURCE

ICWA does more than protect our children from cultural genocide. It safeguards our tribal sovereignty

While most Americans were focused on the 2022-midterm election results, American Indians were searching for clues on how the U.S. Supreme Court might rule in a case that threatens tribes’ very existence. The case, known as Haaland v. Brackeen, was brought by a non-Indian couple (the Brackeens), who adopted two American Indian children. To the casual observer, this case probably looks like state-sanctioned racism in adoption proceedings. You see, the Brackeens claim the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is discriminatory in granting a preference to American Indians in custody, foster, and adoption cases involving American Indian children. I totally get why anyone unfamiliar with American Indian history and the convoluted legal system that governs tribes’ relationship with the U.S. would scream discrimination.

However, getting to the heart of this case requires some of us to reevaluate what we think we know about the U.S. and its relationship with American Indians. It’s unfortunate that most people know very little about American Indians. It is more troubling that what many do know is based on caricatures promoted by popular culture. Nevertheless, when looking at the Supreme Court’s ICWA case, it’s important to understand that today’s 574 tribal governments existed long before the United States was even conceived. In their dealings with early European settlers, tribes governed themselves and their interactions with others as sovereign nations. In recognition of this fact, the U.S. continues to honor tribal sovereignty through the execution of numerous treaties, the U.S. Constitution, and centuries of federal Indian law. This is the political status that Indian Nations refer to when discussing their relationship with the U.S. government. This political status is also where tribal members derive their rights as citizens of their tribe, the U.S., and the state in which they live. As Justice Kagan noted during oral arguments, “the first thing you need for self-government is, you know, a functioning polity. And Congress is very clear in this statute that it thinks that this statute is critical to the continuing existence of the tribe as a political entity. And that’s, in fact, one of the reasons it passes this statute, is the political entity is itself being threatened because of the way decisions on the placement of children are being made.”

Entering into the world of the child welfare system is, more often than not, a heartbreaking experience.  The system is certainly worthy of greater scrutiny and care, but not in the way suggested by the Brackeens’ challenge of ICWA.  The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed after Congress spent four years studying the forcible removal of Indian children from their families.  During the height of the tragedy, up to 16 times more Indian children were in foster care than non-Indian children.  Many of the problems were holdovers of the U.S. government’s abhorrent Indian boarding school policy.  To this day, Black and Indigenous people see a higher rate of their children placed in foster care than non-Black and -Indigenous people.  In most cases, children are removed because someone has determined they are being neglected.  This makes perfect sense.  But as University of Pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts pointed out on CBS' Sunday Morning, “Neglect is usually confused with poverty.  Neglect is defined by most states as parents failing to provide the resources that children need, like clothing or food or secure housing.  And those are usually caused because parents simply can’t afford them.”

It is a truly savage system that punishes people whose socioeconomic status is largely the result of decades of discrimination and neglect. Fortunately, Congress recognized the cruelty of the foster care system, as it was applied to American Indians, along with the human rights violations involved in forcibly transferring children of one group to another group. This is why Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

So, what is this case really about? It’s about commerce. It’s another salvo in the prolonged campaign to weaken and ultimately to end tribal sovereignty. It’s about the perpetual longing of the wealthy and powerful for tribes’ ancestral homelands and especially the resources they contain. For as long as tribes have the ability (albeit limited) to protect their ancestral lands from destructive development and the independence afforded by successful economic ventures, tribal sovereignty will always be seen as an obstacle to this incessant taking.  The problem exists because of the United States’ unwillingness to consistently honor its values and promises.  The problem is rooted in 1871, when Congress stopped making treaties with tribes and effectively reduced them to domestic dependent nations.

Yet this new status also created a duty on the part of the federal government to protect tribes. It is this duty, as exercised by Congress through its plenary power, that the Brackeen case seeks to exploit.  As Justice Gorsuch mentioned during oral arguments, “This new rule would, I think, take a huge bite out of Title 25 of the U.S. Code, which regulates the federal government’s relationship with tribal members.” Gorsuch went on to say, “We’d be busy for the next many years striking things down.” This duty of protection has a spotty record, so many tribes are concerned.

I am concerned, but I am also hopeful. As a U.S. citizen, I’m hopeful that our purported values will prevail.  As a tribal citizen, who was orphaned at the age of 12, I know that our tribes are resilient and that our communal values will see that we continue to raise our children in supportive communities, surrounded by the culture and heritage they know best.

Richard Boland is a citizen of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Nation and hosted the KNPR podcast Native Nevada.

Scooped not shattered: I am a Sixties Scoop survivor

 

Opinion

I want you to consider building a better future for the next seven generations, writes Mike "O'dah ziibing (Heart of the river) Ashkewe

By Mike "O'dah ziibing / Heart of the river) Ashkewe

Guelph Mercury |  January 3, 2023

O'dah ziibing indizhinikaaz. I am Heart of the river. I am also a Sixties Scoop survivor, and I am a product of Canada’s violence and colonization against its Indigenous population.

I was raised as someone who only knew being Indigenous as a hustle, and it was something not to be proud of, but rather hidden and shameful. I was stripped of my culture, my language and the very core of my Ojibwe identity. I would not begin to explore who I was until I started to attend college in 2006. Even then I would face racism and I was relatively alone there. I started to talk with people who looked like me, had the same experiences as me from rural Ontario, but also I would be exposed to new things. I was exposed to compassion, understanding, and empathy. I was welcomed as an Indigenous student and I could be proud of where I came from.

It would take the lawsuit against Canada regarding the Sixties Scoop for me to really begin to explore my roots, discover who I was, and what my blood was calling to. My biological mother, Kim gave me up when she was a teenager and as a result, we didn’t have a traditional relationship and she never told me about where I really came from. She told me about the lawsuit and what it meant. She told me that I was illegally adopted by the people I thought were my parents, and she told me that a lot of my childhood was a lie that was wrapped in an alleged compassion.

I would meet a group known as the 60s Scoop Legacy of Canada and that would prove to be an amazingly transformative experience. I would learn about the true horror of the scoop but most importantly, I would learn that I was not alone, and that my story was not unique. I had brothers and sisters who were united in a painful experience that was considered completely legal and only spoken about in hushed tones, hidden in plain sight.

This is where I would begin my journey in earnest and I would talk to elders, advocates, politicians and others in asking hard questions but chiefly among them,

“Why?”

A lawsuit would be filed against Canada and it would be settled and it was determined that our stolen childhoods, cultures and languages were worth a paltry $25,000.  Our very identity was determined to be worth less than the poverty level for a single family of two.  This hardly seems fair but then again, when has Canada ever been fair to the country’s original inhabitants?

I decided that my trauma could be something I could harness and use to fight back for a better tomorrow for my people. We have a belief in our culture that speaks of seven generations and that our actions will echo forward seven generations. There is an opportunity to rebuild, grow and change the future of our shattered cultures and fractured relationships. I look back at all the wrongs that have been done, and I have promised that I would not willingly allow that to happen to another person again regardless of what colour their skin was.

My Indigenous spirit name translates to “Heart of the river” in Ojibwe.  My name means that I build community and like the river, I can connect all things and be the flow of life itself. Water connects all living things and is the essence of life, it is necessary to all things and it is necessary to build successful communities.

We can’t change the past but we can change what happens in the future and we can promise that we won’t willingly visit those wounds upon future generations.

O'dah ziibing indizhinikaaz. I am Heart of the river. I am a Sixties Scoop survivor and I want you to consider building a better future for the next seven generations.

Mike "O'dah ziibing / Heart of the river) Ashkewe is from Neyaashiinigmiing, Ontario. Mike is a disability and Indigenous activist in the city of Guelph. Mike has had a career in the media since 2007 in a variety of different roles such as commentator, reporter and podcaster.

 

He also wrote:

WHAT IS THE 60s SCOOP: https://www.parrysound.com/news-story/10806584-what-is-the-sixties-scoop-the-story-of-indigenous-children-taken-from-their-families-across-canada/

What's ahead in 2023

Betting, adoption lawsuits pose greatest threat to tribes in decades, experts say

A lawsuit in Washington state and another case before the U.S. Supreme Court are part of a coordinated campaign that experts say is pushing once-fringe legal theories to the nation’s highest court and represents the most serious challenge to tribal sovereignty in over 50 years.

“It could have really big impacts on basically every law Congress has passed that has to do with tribes and tribal citizens,” said Rebecca Nagle, a journalist, citizen of the Cherokee Nation and host of the “This Land” podcast, which explored the Brackeen case in detail. “It’s really the legal foundation for the rights of Indigenous nations in this country.”

The highest courts in Canada and the United States are expected to decide child welfare cases this year that could have far-reaching implications for Indigenous rights on both sides of the border. In Brackeen v. Haaland, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act. And in Attorney General of Québec, et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, et al., the Supreme Court of Canada will rule on the constitutionality of the federal government's Indigenous child welfare legislation, Bill C-92. Although the constitutions and arguments before the top courts in both countries are different, legal experts say the two parallel cases could affect who has the legal right to decide what's best for Indigenous children throughout the continent. Read more here.

 

KEY CASES SHARE ATTORNEY

Maverick Gaming and Chad and Jennifer Brackeen are also backed by the same legal team.

The Brackeens are challenging ICWA, a 1978 law that requires caseworkers to give preference to Indigenous families in foster and adoption placements of children who are members of a federally recognized tribe.

The law was aimed at correcting centuries of injustice.

Between 1819 and 1969, the federal government took many thousands of Indigenous kids from their homes and forced them to attend brutal schools that employed “systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies,” according to a report released by the U.S. Department of the Interior in May.

After the federal government ended mandatory attendance at American Indian boarding schools, officials continued to remove overwhelming numbers of Indigenous kids from their families and place them in foster or adoptive care outside their communities.

When Congress passed ICWA in 1978, studies showed that state child welfare agencies and private adoption companies were taking between 25% and 35% of Native kids from their families. And 85% of those children were placed with non-Indigenous families.

Native families are still four times as likely as white families to have kids removed from their homes, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association.

READ MORE 

👉MORE👇

Native American News: 2022 in Review  

 

Martha Aupaluktuq-Hickes, left with green hat, and her mother Nancy Aupaluktuq, right, listen to Pope Francis during his visit to Iqaluit on July 29. Seven of Nancy’s eight children, including Martha, are survivors of Canada’s residential school system (Photo by Corey Larocque)

Newsmaker of 2022: The residential school survivors

 

 

 

60s Scoop survivor reconnects with birth mom, discovers her culture, decades after separation

It took many years for the pair to develop a mother-daughter relationship

Rachel Watts · CBC News · January 6, 2023

Tauni Sheldon, pictured when she was about three years old. Sheldon has worked to reconnect and rebuild the relationship with her birth mom after she was taken away as part of the Sixties Scoop three hours after birth. (Submitted by Pam Sheldon)

WARNING: This story contains distressing details

Tauni Sheldon remembers the first time she saw her biological mom.

Sheldon was 23 years old. 

It was 1993 and she was in the Winnipeg airport, having just flown in with her adoptive parents, Jim and Pam Sheldon. 

Her birth mom was waiting at the bottom of the escalator. 

"She had flowers and she looked up at me … and she just said, 'Wow, you're very tall,'" said Sheldon with a chuckle, adding that her mother is legally blind, but can see shapes and features.

Sheldon says she towered over her mother's petite frame as the two cried and tried to process what was happening. 

"I was afraid and I was happy and excited, but I was also scared and angry, and I think it was a whole mix of 'Holy cow, like, this is real now,' and I think it was the same for her," said Sheldon.

CBC is not identifying Sheldon's birth mother after being unable to speak with her directly.

In 1970, Sheldon's birth mom was flown from Inukjuak, Que., to Thunder Bay, Ont., to give birth. 

Sheldon was taken from her just hours after birth, and for more than two decades, her mom had no idea where she was.

Sheldon was adopted by a white family in southern Ontario. She was part of the Sixties Scoop — a period when Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their birth families, those families often having no idea where their children had gone. 

As one of the estimated 20,000 survivors across Canada, Sheldon has since worked to build a relationship with her biological mother and move past the anger and trauma that tainted their relationship for decades.

Advertised for adoption in Toronto newspaper 

In 1970, Sheldon's photo was posted in a column in a Toronto newspaper, the Toronto Telegram.

The advertisement included a description — and used an offensive and outdated term to describe Inuit, highlighting the racist attitudes surrounding the Sixties Scoop.

Sheldon compares it to a car ad. 

Tauni Sheldon is pictured here as a baby and to the right is the newspaper clipping from the Toronto Telegram that advertised her for interested parents as an 'Eskimo Baby.' (Submitted by Tauni Sheldon)

"Little Miss Eskimo can't crawl yet but she moves around anyway, pulling with her arms and pushing with her sturdy legs. She's big for her age and has lovely almond-shaped eyes and round cheeks," read the column.

Ten months later, Sheldon was adopted.

Although she describes her adoptive family as "very loving," Sheldon says she grew up feeling as though she didn't truly belong in the southern Ontario town of Milton where they lived.

'I didn't want to be who I was'

Tauni Sheldon pictured with her baby brother, Duff Sheldon. Tauni says he tried to defend her against some of the bullies as a child. (Submitted by Pam Sheldon)

Sheldon was nine when she first saw the column offering her up for adoption. She remembers thinking she "didn't want to be Eskimo."

"I experienced a lot of racism.… I didn't want to be who I was," said Sheldon. She would get beaten up by bullies, her little brother trying to protect her.

"I know my [adoptive] parents love me and they always have and we're very close but just not having any visual identification with other family or Inuit community, I just didn't know what to do with any of that and I was angry."

That was no secret to Pam Sheldon, Tauni's adoptive mother.

"I knew she was extremely unhappy," she said. 

"She was kind of introspective. She wasn't a bubbly [or] overly talkative person. I used to say, 'Still waters run deep.' And so a lot of the things that happened to her … she didn't share with me."

As Tauni got older, she did share some of the racism she experienced. One story from high school stuck out for her adoptive mother. 

"One time in the schoolyard, a bunch of the boys held her down and painted her legs with Wite-Out … yelling at her that she had to be white. Holy mackerel, I was just mortified," said Pam. 

Pam Sheldon and Tauni Sheldon. Pam says it was only years afterward that she started hearing about some of the challenges Tauni faced in her childhood and adulthood. (Submitted by Pam Sheldon)

Adoption challenges 

The struggles Sixties Scoop survivors face as adoptees into white families are unique, says Raven Sinclair, a research consultant and retired professor of social work at the University of Regina who is Cree, Assiniboine, Saulteaux and Métis. 

"[Historically] the mythology of adoption was done for the purpose of inheritance," said Sinclair, who was adopted by a white family when she was four.

"When children are adopted it's as if [they are] born to that family and so that works just fine if the children are the same ethnicity as the parents.… It doesn't work so well when it's children of colour." 

Sinclair recalls being bullied for being a "brown kid in a white world," and struggling to connect with her biological family — hoping for a "loving and nurturing sort of fantasy" that didn't develop right away. 

'I didn't know where to start with her'

After Sheldon's reunion with her mom, she says the mother-daughter bond was harder to build than she could have imagined. 

"I was just terrified to even ask questions. I didn't know where to start with her," said Sheldon.

"We wanted instant mother-daughter [relationship], but it didn't happen."

Although the pair stayed in touch, there was a symbolic wall between them, says Sheldon. A big part of that had to do with how her mother began to relive having Sheldon taken away. 

"At that time, there was a lot of anger and a lot of rage.… We left it alone for a lot of years," said Sheldon. 

She initially felt that she didn't deserve to learn traditional culture or language because she didn't grow up in Nunavik. 

"I feel like I [still] don't deserve these things unfortunately," she said. "So as an adult, I'm trying to put that aside and remind myself I am who I am."

Tauni Sheldon and her son, Aalpi Inuluk. She says he claimed his Inuit name after his biological grandfather, Inuluk Tukkiapik. (Submitted by Tauni Sheldon)

Opening 'our eyes to each other'

Things changed for the better between the pair in 2003, at Sheldon's wedding. 

She recalls her mom making a moving toast. 

"She stood up and told the story of how I was taken away from her.… That just opened our eyes to each other a little more," said Sheldon. "Finally, there was a time where it changed. We could start talking about it."

In the following years, they became closer as Sheldon welcomed her son, Aalpi, her birth mother's only grandchild. 

Things also started to change following her birth mom's cancer diagnosis in April 2021. 

Sheldon became her medical escort, travelling with her from her home in Ospringe, Ont., to Montreal for treatment. 

During those trips, there was time for her mother to reflect on her life and her family.

Tauni Sheldon, pictured with her son, Aalpi Inuluk. In 2007 she had her birth mom travel to Ontario to meet him, her only grandchild. (Submitted by Pam Sheldon)

"She talked about my father a little bit more to me … and I know my parents did love one another because that's always been a mystery to me," said Sheldon, adding that her father was also legally blind and met her mom at a Canadian National Institute for the Blind home in Toronto. Sheldon reconnected with her birth father as an adult, before he died in 2007. 

One of Sheldon's most precious memories is her 50th birthday in 2019. It was the first she spent with her birth mother.

Her mom sang "Happy Birthday" in Inuktitut as they both sobbed.

"And she said, 'I'm so happy that we're celebrating your birthday together,'" recalled Sheldon. "'This is the first time since you were taken from me.'"

• Finding Cleo
  CBC podcast solves decades-old mystery of Saskatchewan girl lost in Sixties Scoop

• From Seine River First Nation to The Annex: A Sixties Scoop survivor's journey to Toronto

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience as part of the Sixties Scoop or residential schools.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

• Sixties Scoop settlement dredges up old memories, survivors say

• 'She died coming to try to find me:' Sixties Scoop adoptee pieces together tragic story of separation