Advocacy group helps search for birth parents

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Situated in Ottawa in the home of an adoptee, a group meets every two weeks to discuss a number of issues that Aboriginal people face when searching for their birth parents. The group known as Connecting With All My Relations got its unofficial start in October 2000. Beverly McKiver and another group member Mark Rutledge were asked to make a presentation about Aboriginal adoptees and their unique situation to Parent Finders. The core group of five people consider themselves an advocacy group for people in the adoption triad. Their vision is to regain the mental, physical, emotional, and well-being of Aboriginal people who have been removed from their families, communities and their cultures by sharing information, knowledge resources and support.

"The adoption triad means the birth parents, the children and the adoptive or foster parents, so extended family, I guess, on all sides. As adults who were removed from their communities through no choice of their own we want to come together to aid others. I think that when most people approach us, they are looking for some kind of connection and the recognition that they are not the only ones that have experienced these feelings and emotions," said McKiver.

"I would say that we have maybe 10 to 12 people that are loosely involved, and of course we all have full time jobs. Managing and organizing something like this could be a full time job for a manager but we are all doing it on a volunteer basis, so whatever work gets done we have to do it on our own time. So far the funding is coming out of our own pockets doing fundraising takes up a lot of time so does writing research proposals and things like that so it is going a lot slower than what we'd like," she said.

The group uses several tools to get their message out to the communities and also during the meeting process, a holistic view, a Web site, a newsletter, and a database.

"We are trying to take a holistic view, because there are so many parties involved; the adoptive or foster family, the birth family and the social workers. I think that everybody needs knowledge. Holistic is such a broad term but we use it in the search for our identity, our spiritually, in a physically sense and emotionally. Looking for your family is not just about reunification, it is about creating an identity and finding out about your culture, if that is what you want. We want to work towards our vision in a culturally appropriate and holistic way as embodied in the medicine wheel teachings," said McKiver. "We want to address a lot of different areas and we want to look at all points of view because sometimes there is a lot of anger involved. I think that it helps to have something like the medicine wheel. When we use it, we are trying to find some kind of framework for Aboriginal people. It helps us to focus our thoughts on what we want to do, and it is kind of a good way to check back and see if we are thinking about this in a good way. By developing the Web site we'd like to share knowledge, resources, support and information and by making contacts with other organizations, such as media for example we want to make people aware that of what is going on," she said.

According to McKiver the group continues to get positive feedback from various organizations.

"We've had letters from band councils that say there is this child looking for their birth parents. It is really a big search process. We'd like to have kind of a central place to start looking, to be an advocate for the protection of the most valuable resource of Aboriginal communities, which are our children. What we would like to do is to empower people to do things for themselves to get them started in the right direction. I think that it is really up to the individual. There really is a lot of information available if you know where to look. By providing information we can help them. For the most part that is what we've all done. We had to find out things for ourselves ut you know once you get going on the right track things work out," she said.

McKiver, who got a late start in searching for her birth parents, went through the channels and registered with the adoption agency in Ontario.

"When I started to look for my birth parents there was really not that much available out there. I did not start to look until much later in life, and of course adoption laws being what they were, it was hard to get information, so a lot of it was by chance. I went through the channels and registered with the adoption registry, in Ontario. It is called the Children's Aid Society, but it was really through the Ojibway Family Services that I found my birth family. They sent different messages around to different reserves and I got a response that way. I got a call from someone who knew my birth family and they gave me a number to reach my sister. I got in touch with her and then confirmed with the registry that she was also registered, so that we were in fact sisters. For me it was a combination of going through the channels and a little bit of luck, but it took a lot of time. The waiting lists are really quite long," she said.

"It is open to people all across Canada. If they want to get a hold of me they can e-mail me at bmkiver@aol.com. I would say that before you look for your birth parents you have to go through a lot of preparation, both emotionally and mentally. It could be quite difficult or quite easy. I do not know if finding your birth parents is a necessary goal of everybody. I think that there is good and bad and that it has to be considered carefully, beforehand. I want to say the people that are searching-they are not alone - that there are other people that have gone through this," she said.