On learning about the 60s Scoop herself

I was 28 when I first started learning about the 60s Scoop. I went to Sault College in Sault Ste. Marie and I took the native community and addictions counsellor program. That was also the first time I ever heard of treaty rights and it was the very first time I had heard of residential schools. I was blown away. How come nobody told me this? At that time, I had already met my birth parents. My mom had died in 1999, and she never talked about it. Survivors didn’t talk about it because it was such a hurtful time.

Up until that time, I thought my sisters and I were pretty special. I thought we were the only ones who were raised in a white home. I was kind of proud of it. I had internalized a lot of racism. So when I found out about the 60s Scoop, I said, “I think I’m part of that.” And then I found out that there were about 20,000 other adoptees like me.

The number was staggering, and we still don’t even know if it’s accurate. Up until that point, I also hadn’t known how far away we were sent. Hundreds — even thousands — of Indigenous children were taken overseas by their Canadian adoptive parents, or directly adopted to families in the United States. We’re the original people of the land. What were we doing being shipped all over the place?

We were advertised through newspapers and television, like how you would for a pet. For example, “Unwanted children, need good home. Save their lives and make them happy.” No effort went into keeping our families together and providing addictions services or anything like that. The Canadian government just took kids right out of homes and sent them off to live with white people so they could be assimilated. The feds and the provinces put a lot of money and effort into trying to assimilate us. They wouldn’t say it like that, but the intention was there.

So there are hundreds and thousands of children — now adults — out there, looking to come home. And they don’t even know where they’re from.

On mapping the movement of 60s Scoop adoptees and the goal of the map

When I moved to Ottawa, I started meeting more and more adoptees, and as I shared my story online, more and more adoptees started contacting with me through Facebook, telling me they were taken to England or New Zealand or Australia. And I thought, what does this look like?

I decided to show our displacement at an international level on a map in collaboration with the Pekiwewin Project, a five-year project to understand how Canada’s Indigenous policy has resulted in a national Indigenous child removal system. I’m creating the map with the help of the Firelight Group and GeoLive, a University of British Columbia mapping project. It’s going to be shameful for Canada to see it, but it’s going to be a tool for us to educate, collect data and share our stories. Survivors can also use the map to look for information about themselves and their biological families. There are still people looking for their siblings and their parents out there. And the map will be a tool to see where these kids were taken from. We know that the children were predominantly taken from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and that most of them were placed in Ontario homes and in the United States.

On finding community

The thing about being a 60s Scoop survivor and being raised in a non-Indigenous environment, along with the loss of culture and cultural identity issues, is feeling like you don’t fit in anywhere and that you have no one to talk to. Nobody can really relate to that apart from other 60s Scoop survivors. You don’t feel like you fit in with your white family, even though some families were great to the adoptees and provided love and support. And you may not have support from your biological family either. Adoptees also have to navigate those weird relationships with their families, one or both of which could be very dysfunctional.

The map will build a community for 60s Scoop adoptees across Canada and internationally. It says, “Look, here we are. We’re over here.” That’s so more people like us will know we’re not alone, and so the government can’t just roll over us by arguing that there are more kids in care now than there were back then. The government still needs to deal with us. We’re still here.

60s Scoop adoptees can take part in this mapping project by submitting their information through the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network.