Mixed feelings' over Canada's '60s
Scoop' settlement
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
When she was three, she was
adopted into a Jewish family in Montreal, nearly 2,500km away.
"Being
pushed into a completely different culture, I got all kinds of cultural shame
every day. I was not allowed to tell anyone I was Native - it was a bad
thing," Nakuset told Al Jazeera.
For
decades, she was cut off from her biological family, including her older
sister, Sonya, who had woken up one morning in their foster home to find that
Nakuset had disappeared without a trace.
It
took years for the sisters to be reunited.
"Sonya
looked for me, every single day, for years," said Nakuset, who now heads the
Native Women's Shelter in Montreal.
The
'disastrous' Sixties Scoop
Nakuset
was one of thousands of indigenous children who were taken from their families
and Native communities across Canada, and placed into non-indigenous adoptive
homes or foster care.
The
removals, which largely took place between the 1960s and 1980s, are known
collectively as the Sixties Scoop.
On
October 6, the federal government announced it had reached a $640m (USD)
agreement, in principle, with Sixties Scoop survivors across Canada who lost
their indigenous identity as a result of the long-standing practice.
Most
of the indigenous children who were adopted or placed into foster care were
never told about their indigenous roots. They lost contact with their families
and communities and lost their language, culture and identity.
While
not all of the adoptive families were abusive, many children endured emotional,
physical and sexual abuse and have suffered lasting trauma.
Some
went into homes across Canada, while others were removed to the US, UK,
Australia and other countries.
Raven
Sinclair, a professor of social work at the University of Regina and member of
George Gordon First Nation in southern Saskatchewan, said child welfare
officials literally scooped children up from First Nations reserves in some
cases.
"The
system really took one look and said, 'Indigenous people can't parent, so the
best thing for us to do is take these children away, raise them as white
people, and then everything will be great,'" Sinclair told Al Jazeera.
"And really that just proved disastrous."
A
Sixties Scoop survivor herself, Sinclair was taken from her mother when she was
four after a neighbour called social services.
She
said she experienced physical and sexual abuse in her foster home.
She
explained that while she didn't suffer such abuse in her adoptive home, she was
confronted with racism and bullying every day growing up.
A
"cloak of silence" has shrouded the Sixties Scoop for a long time,
Sinclair said, and the federal settlement is "symbolic of an
acknowledgement that wrong was done".
Compensation
and healing
Under
the settlement, First Nations and Inuit children who were taken from their
homes between 1951 and 1991 will be eligible for personal compensation.
The
amount will range from about $20,000 to $40,000 for each person. Depending on
how many claims are filed, it could add up to a total of $600m.
Ottawa
estimates that about 16,000 survivors will be entitled to a personal payout,
but the government has not yet explained how survivors will apply for
compensation or prove their claim.
Another
$40m will go towards establishing a foundation to help survivors heal, and $60m
will be allocated to help pay for legal fees.
Carolyn
Bennett, the minister responsible for affairs between the state and indigenous
peoples, said the settlement will "begin to right the wrongs"
committed during the Sixties Scoop.
The deal comes after a federal court judge ruled in
favour of Sixties Scoop survivors in their class-action lawsuit in Ontario,
Canada's most populous province, last February.
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The government failed to take steps to make sure
indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families did not lose
their Native culture, language and identity, the court found.
The
federal agreement also puts an end to at least 18 class-action lawsuits that
had been filed on behalf of Sixties Scoop survivors and were in various stages across
Canada.
"They
have lived their lives not being able to be proud indigenous people,"
Bennett said about the effect the Sixties Scoop had on survivors.
"They
have lived their lives not having secure, personal cultural identity. That was
robbed. Someone thought that a non-indigenous family somewhere else in the
world was going to do a better job."
'Thousands
excluded'
Yet,
not all Sixties Scoop survivors are included in the recent deal.
The
Metis fall outside the scope of the agreement, as do some non-status indigenous
peoples (individuals whose indigenous status is not recognised by the
government), provided that they are not eligible for status.
The
Metis have mixed indigenous-European ancestry and they are officially
recognised as aboriginal peoples under the Canadian constitution, alongside
First Nations and Inuit peoples.
"It's
like we're nobody," Gary Tinker, a Metis survivor of the Sixties Scoop,
recently told CBC in Canada.
"I'm
glad for the First Nations, don't get me wrong," he said. "But they
never even mentioned our Metis citizens who were in foster care."
Duane Morrisseau-Beck,
cofounder of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare
Network and a Metis Sixties Scoop survivor, said he felt like Canada
"is playing divide and conquer" with the agreement.
"This
falls far from a national settlement and is playing out extremely negatively in
the survivor community," Morrisseau-Beck said in a statement.
Colleen
Cardinal, cofounder of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare
Network, said she had "very mixed feelings" about the settlement, in
part since so many survivors are excluded.
"For
thousands of people who are excluded it must be very re-traumatising, once
again to be left out of something so huge … They have to work so much harder to
get healing and acknowledgement, which they shouldn't have to," the
45-year-old told Al Jazeera.
'We'll
be here waiting'
From
Saddle Lake First Nation, just south of Edmonton, Alberta, Cardinal was a child
when she was taken from her family and placed into an abusive, adoptive home in
Ontario with her two sisters.
Estranged
from her adoptive family, and in only limited contact with her birth family,
Cardinal said meeting other Sixties Scoop survivors and sharing stories has
been invaluable to her own healing.
That's
why any sort of healing programmes coming out of the federal settlement - which
should include a focus on indigenous languages and culture - must be
survivor-led, she said.
"We're
at a start and I'm hoping that as survivors we can help lead the state into
being accountable [and] being transparent for what they did," she said.
Cardinal said a formal apology
from the government would also help survivors heal, but it needs to be
accompanied by concrete action.
Sixties Scoop survivors, meanwhile,
should know that they aren't alone. "I
want them to know … that they can come home," Cardinal said. "We'll
be here waiting for them."
SOURCE: AL
JAZEERA NEWS
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