Strategy will ease pain of family reunification

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The joint management committee of the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy has released a report of a six-month study into the issues of Ontario-born Aboriginal children put in the custody of non-Native care providers outside their communities of origin.

The report, titled Our Way Home, was prepared by Native Child and Family Services in conjunction with the consultants Stevenato and Associates and Janet Budgell. It focuses on the problems of families that had children removed by provincial child welfare authorities during the late 1960s to early 1980s - the phenomenon known to Aboriginal people as the infamous "Sixties Scoop".

The study details the effects of adoption and foster care on children disconnected from their tribe and culture. It also identifies a variety of obstacles that Aboriginal people face in trying to re-establish family ties, and it sets out a four-phase strategy aimed at easing repatriation for those who desire it.

The study was undertaken by the Repatriation Research Working Group of the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy in Toronto. Participants included the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians; Grand Council Treaty No. 3; Nishnawbe Aski Nation; Union of Ontario Indians; independent First Nations' representatives; Federation of Indian Friendship Centres; Ontario Native Women's Association; Ontario Métis Aboriginal Association; Ontario Ministry of Health; Ontario Native Affairs Secretariat, Ontario Women's Directorate and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The Ministry of the Attorney General was supposed to be on the committee, but was not an active participant, a spokesperson said.

"Through this report we are consulting with our communities and organizations as to how we can effectively assist these people and communities in this emotional healing process," said Garnet Angeconeb, Aboriginal co-chair of the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy's joint management committee.

The Ontario's Children's Aid Society was empowered by the 1965 federal-provincial Indian Welfare Agreement to reach into reserve communities and administer provisions of the Child Welfare Act. Large numbers of Indian children were removed from their homes, often as a result of distorted suppositions of Children's Aid Society workers about what constitutes adequate parental care and supervision in a culture unlike their own. Loss of the children's identities was the result.

"[The children] were not given any exposure to their culture; they have to know it's OK to be who they are," said Donna Simon, health policy analyst at the Ontario Native Women's Association, which was a partner in the study. "Denial of who a child is is a real travesty," she added.

It is not known how many Aboriginal children were claimed by the Sixties Scoop in Ontario or how many of them desire to repatriate. Those seeking repatriation typically want to meet or re-establish relationships with birth families. Some seek repatriation to regain Indian status, to live in their community of origin, or to uncover their families' medical histories, the report says.

The project came about because many Aboriginal people are seeking information from agencies that mostly don't have the will or the resources to offer repatriation services, according to Simon.

Mainly, the investigators wanted to find jurisdictions having a repatriation model that might be transportable to Ontario. Extensive consultation with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal repatriation organizations and child welfare authorities, Elders, "experts" in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand, and with adoptees, adult foster children or Crown wards, birth families and adoptive parents took place.

They found three Aboriginal organizations focusing on repatriation based in British Columbia, and one in Manitoba. These are the United Native Nations, the Gitxsan Reconnection Program, the Wet'su wet'en Repatriation Program, and the Manitoba First Nations Repatriation Pogram. According to the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy report, there are no others working full-time on repatriation issues in Canada. It also discloses there is a seven-year wait for a search by the Ontario government's Adoption Disclosure Register.

The report recommends establishing a central Aboriginal repatriation office under the umbrella of an existing Aboriginal organization. The office would employ at least two staff: one to address policy, education and awareness issues, the other to fulfill the role of counsellor. The report further proposes access to Canadian adoption databases to conduct searches, access to internet databases, better co-ordination with other agencies and referrals to culturally sensitive professionals when required.

Repatriation services would include training and educating family support workers, and undertaking education and awareness campaigns. Counselling would be available to adult adoptees, foster children, birth families and adoptive families, the report says.

Simon's cousin, 42-year-old Katherine Pelletier, who works at the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa, applauds the aims of the proposed strategy. Pelletier was adopted in infancy by a French family and only found her birth family six years ago. Despite having "a very happy childhood," and "wonderful" adoptive parents, she says her identity crisis began at five years of age when she started kindergarten and physical differences between her and her adoptive family began to emerge into consciousness.

"It was very traumatic for me at that age . . . I was made fun of [by peers at school] . . . I grew up thinking I was ugly.

"If I had been within my own community, that never would have happened, because I would have looked like them - I would have fit in," Pelletier explained.

Discovering her roots became "very consuming - not painful," she said.

She located her birth mother in 1990 after the Secrecy Act was lifted, she says, and her mother provided her the name ofher deceased birth father, who had come from Wickwemikong. Through a series of inquiries, Pelletier then found Donna Simon's mother, who is her closest natural relative on her father's side.

"When I found my father's side, lo and behold,I found I was like them. I act like them, I feel like them, I look like them. . . . I realize my spirituality, my heart, it comes from there," Pelletier said.

The search for her identity was confounded to some extent by the Children's Aid Society, who "either were not astute enough, or did not care enough" to provide her with correct information about her lineage.

"They gave me false information," Pelletier asserts. Not only that, but inaccuracies were recorded in her birth records. Pelletier says as Aboriginal people assume more responsibility for their own affairs, problems such as she had will diminish.