Tansi Nîtôtemtik,
This is Part 2 of a 2-part series. To see Part 1, please click here.
Sixties Scoop survivors Dave Herman, Kathy Hamelin, Lena Wildman, Adam North-Piegan and Sharon Gladue-Paskimin, left to right, gather before meeting with provincial officials at the Alberta Legislative Building in Edmonton on June 14. (Retrieved from CBC News, online: <http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/sixties-scoop-reaction-mixed-1.4343760>).
As mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the government-imposed Sixties Scoop was a catastrophic event for both Indigenous children and also their communities.
Throughout the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, survivors told their stories of abuse from residential schools, but also abuse from child welfare agencies involved in the Sixties Scoop. [1] Just as psychological and sexual abuse was rampant in the residential school system, so it was in the child welfare system that Indigenous children were placed into. During the Commission, many stories were told of foster parents who sexually abused the children, while teaching them that Indigenous people were dirty, drunks, and all-around “really horrible people.”[2] These children were caught in a void: they were not white, but they could not have been and should not have been Indigenous, either.
One survivor shared her story of foster home abuse with the Commission. While in the home, her Aboriginal identity was constantly disparaged and she was “singled out” because she was “not as white as the others”:
“[They were] adamant about Aboriginal culture being less than human, living as dirty bush people, eating rats. It made me not want to be one of those people. And for years, I didn’t know how to be proud of who I was because I didn’t know who I was.””[3]
After leaving the government-imposed foster care, the negative effects on the survivors did not end there. They felt displaced and alienated.[4] These effects compounded with feelings of lost identity, psychological effects, and reactions to the constant disparagement of both themselves and their culture. They suffered from a lack of connection with their cultural community [5].
The negative effects continued -- the Sixties Scoop did not only affect the children who were taken but has had intergenerational effects, causing more and more children to be caught in the void. As the survivors grew up and had their own children, they were unable to pass on the culture and language that they had been restricted from, continuing the cycle of lost Indigenous identity.
The recent settlement agreement has been met with mixed reaction from victims of the sixties scoop. Can a monetary settlement heal their wounds? Some survivors have expressed, not entirely because healing will be a lifelong process that will take various forms. [6] Others are looking at the agreement positively, as an acknowledgment of the wrongs that were done throughout the Sixties Scoop program.[7] For more on the settlement, look forward to a dedicated ‘In the Media’ post on Friday.
Until next time,
Team ReconciliAction YEG
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[1] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “Volume 5: The Legacy” in The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Winnipeg: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015) at 16 [“TRC: The Legacy”].
[2] Ibid at 17.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid at 15.
[6] Elisha Dacey, “Sixties Scoop survivors say $800M proposed settlement won’t heal their wounds”, CBC News (6 October 2017), online: <http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/sixties-scoop-reaction-mixed-1.4343760.>
[7] Ibid.
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