The Sixties Scoop By Christine McFarlane

By: Christine McFarlane

The courage of many of the people who spoke at the open microphone at the Public Rally in support of people taken during “the 60’s scoop and former CAS survivors” made me feel more empowered to make my own voice heard in the sea of thousands who went through the Scoop too.

It is because of my studies and the re learning of my culture, traditions and language in recent years that I learned that what happened to me was a part of the Canadian government’s practice of removing large numbers of Native children from their families and their communities. This happened throughout the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s and under Child Welfare laws this led to interracial adoptions of which the government did not consider the consequences.

The government-sanctioned abduction of First Nations children from their families had many repercussions. When adopted into a different culture, where you are not allowed to practice your traditions or speak your language, you grow up with a sense of loss within and insecurity that something about your background is wrong.

As a part of that “Scoop”, this is what happened to me. At six months of age, I was taken from my biological parents, along with my other siblings and put into a foster care group home. At the time, the Child Services in Winnipeg felt that my biological parents were unfit to raise their children. My biological father, I have never known and will never know because he was subsequently murdered in 1990, and I met my biological mother twice but I really don’t have much of a relationship with her. A lot of the reasons of why I don’t have a relationship with her are emotionally conflicting for me. On one hand, I want a mother, and yearn for a mother but on the other hand, I know that because I grew up without her , she is still very much a stranger to me. And I fear that opening my heart and letting my guard down will just lead to more hurt.

I was adopted out of the province of Manitoba and into the province of Ontario to a non-native family. There was emotional and physical abuse, and it didn’t end until I was essentially given up by my adoptive parents at the age of ten and put back into the care of the CAS. During my time with my adoptive family, I was locked in my room on a daily basis, with a deadbolt on my door and an alarm that would go off as soon as I would touch the doorknob. Food was withheld from me, and I was repeatedly told I would never amount to anything.

I went through a lot of emotional anguish when my adoptive parents gave me up. I went through a group home and three foster homes and engaged in a lot of self-destructive behaviors’ because I believed that if my parents did not want me “I must not be worth anything.”

Fast forward to today and here I am in my third year of studies at the University of Toronto specializing in Aboriginal Studies, doing what I love the most- writing and I have embarked on a path of healing. On this path of healing I have realized that “I can no longer try to destroy myself, because it is within me to correct the wrongs that were done to me and change the legacy of my family, one step at a time by making my voice heard.”