Colleen Cardinal often wondered why her parents turned bright red in the sun, but she grew dark along with her sisters. The puzzle was solved when she was a young teen, and the woman she had thought of as her mother disclosed that she had been picked out of a catalog of native children available for adoption.
Cardinal was one of thousands of indigenous children taken from their birth families from the 1960s to mid-1980s and sent to live with white families, who officials at the time insisted could give them better care. Many lost touch with their original culture and language.
It echoes the history of residential schools in Canada.
Photo: AP
About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their families over much of the past century and put in government schools, where they were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.
The Canadian government has since apologized and offered compensation for the victims of residential schools, and now it is paying compensation for what is known as the “Sixties Scoop,” in which children were essentially scooped up from reservations and their native families.
However, many say the settlement is too little, too late.
Cardinal said it will not undo what was for her a traumatic experience.
She was taken from her Plains Cree family in Alberta and sent to a home about 2,600km away alongside a lake in rural Ontario, where she said her two older sisters were sexually abused.
“We had to flee that home to escape from physical and sexual violence. My two older sisters were sexually molested,” Cardinal said.
A few years earlier Cardinal had been shocked to find out she was native.
“As a child you want to hear that you are loved and people wanted you,” Cardinal said. “What I heard instead was: ‘Well, we picked you out of a catalog of native children up for adoption.’”
The only catalog Cardinal knew was the Sears catalog — not the lists from government or religious organizations that included pictures of children available for adoption.
“I was thinking: ‘There was a catalog of native kids like me?’ That stayed in my mind forever — that I was picked out of a catalog of native children,” she said.
The victims of the Sixties Scoop began suing the Canadian government in 2010, claiming damages for the loss of their language, culture and identity.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba in February last year ruled that Canada had breached its “duty of care” to the children and found the government liable.
A tearful Canadian Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett announced the settlement early this month.
“This policy was based on race,” Bennett said in an interview later. “It was unconscionable that government thought that would be better for the child.”
“We know now that it really isn’t. In terms of health, education or economic outcomes, it is a disaster to take kids away from their language, their culture, their community, their extended family,” she said.
The Sixties Scoop settlement for an estimated 20,000 people is aimed at resolving numerous related lawsuits. The victims are to share C$750 million (US$586 million), with individual amounts to be determined later.
Many said they expect that to be about C$50,000 each.
Cardinal said she might invest the money.
“Fifty thousand is not very much money,” she said. “That’s like one year income for a middle-class worker.”
Cardinal, 44, is happy the government has set aside an additional C$50 million for a healing and reconciliation foundation.
She is the cofounder and coordinator of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network, which brings together survivors to talk and heal.
She now lives in Ottawa and is teaching her four children about their native culture.
Many remain close to their adoptive families, but some, like Cardinal, say they were scarred by the experience.
She believes she was taken from her birth parents to be assimilated, but acknowledged that like many, she came from a family where there was neglect and alcoholism.
Most of her biological family has passed away and she was not able to connect with them in the way she had wanted.
However, her organization has helped others reconnect.
Brent Mitchell was taken from his Metis mother in Manitoba when he was one and shipped off to New Zealand when he was five.
Records indicate there was alcohol abuse in his birth home.
However, he said he endured beatings and verbal taunts in the foster homes in New Zealand and sexual abuse outside it by a predator.
He struggled to recover, attempting suicide at three different points in his life.
“That was always on the cards,” Mitchell said. “They couldn’t give me a pill to take away all the pain and hurt.”
Mitchell is 59 now and speaks with a New Zealand accent. He returned to Canada this year.
“I met one of my brothers and one of my sisters for the first time,” he said. “It nearly floored me.”
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