Child welfare system replaced Indian residential schools

The statistics are staggering: 68 per cent of children in government care in Alberta today are Aboriginal.

“When the residential schools were winding down in the 1960s, the child welfare system simply became a place where they replaced the residential school system and damaged a lot of our culture,” said Bernadette Iahtail, executive director of Creating Hope Society.

Iahtail and her sister were among those taken in what has become known as the ‘60s scoop. Aboriginal children were apprehended from their parents, or in Iahtail’s case, her grandmother, at an alarming rate between the late 1950s to the early 1980s. It is estimated that 22,000 babies and children were taken in this time period and fostered or adopted to non-Aboriginal families. Many of those children were taken to the United States.

Iahtail showed CHS’s documentary Broken Hearts to a packed room on the final day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s seventh national event in Edmonton on March 30. The documentary helps outline the rights mothers and parents have when it comes to fighting for custody of their children.

Many people broke down as they told what it was like to be one of those statistics.

Martha, a survivor of residential schools, spoke about losing court-appointed care of her grandson to his birth mother and then learning from Facebook that the boy was threatening suicide.

“He told his cousin he was going to jump off the High Level bridge and I’m going to do it because nobody cares about me,” said Martha. She phoned the Edmonton Police Service, who responded and took the boy for 24-hour care to the hospital. Martha’s grandson attempted suicide twice.

Vicki, who is turning 20, told how she and her sisters were apprehended when she was three years old and her sisters were two and five. Vicki’s older sister committed suicide a year ago, leaving behind her one year old son. Vicki said she had a good foster family and reconnected three years ago with her biological father and is working on that relationship.

But she has no connection with her birth mother. “That anger, that hurt, that everything is real, why didn’t you come and see me, why didn’t you come and see me when I was little? Why am I here?” Vicki says. “That anger towards her, why do you do what you do? Maybe now I kind of understand. She wasn’t able, she didn’t have mothering skills.”

Iahtail refers to those raised in government care as “adult children of child welfare. Because a lot of it is when you grow up in the system and you don’t know who your family is, I mean you have a sense of belonging, ‘I am an adult child of children’s services,’” said Iahtail. “Because I grew up in the system, it’s been some of the language we’ve been able to establish and understand about the child welfare cycle.”

“Creating Hope Society believes that in order to heal, we need to share our stories and erase the shame that binds us and the continuing impact of the child welfare system on our lives,” states the documentary.

Iahtail holds true to that sentiment as well.