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Adopt Indian Métis Program

Funded by the Canadian government and the province of Saskatchewan, Adopt Indian Métis (AIM) project started promoting the adoption of First Nations children by middle-class, white families in 1967. It was started by Otto Driedger, who later become Director of Child Welfare for Saskatchewan, and Frank Dornstauder. AIM was the only targeted Indigenous transracial adoption program in Canada.

The CBC News produced a television segment about AIM after the project’s first year, in May 1968. It shows several Indian and Métis children playing as the reporter, Craig Oliver, tells viewers that they respresent only a few of the hundreds of First Nations children ages six weeks to six years who are in need of homes. He states that there has been an increase in the number of children from these communities who are up for adoption due to the rise in illegitimate births and marriage breakdowns among Indian and Métis people. The government had been taking in nearly 200 children each year as wards of the state and was having difficulty finding permanent homes for them. The news report portrays the AIM program as a solution to this problem and focuses on its quantifiable results: placing 100 children, including several family groups of children, in its first year. At the time CBS News ran the segment, all of the children remained with their adoptive families. The program advertised the availability of the Indian and Métis children for adoption through a marketing campaign with radio, TV and newspaper advertising. The large photographs of these children that ran in provincial newspapers with the AIM advertisements were said to be the most effective aspect of its outreach to prospect families. The program also promised fast adoptions, with completion of the process within 10 weeks.

The AIM program ran through 1969 and it did result in an increased interest in transracial adoptions. The focus of the program was broadened in 1970 to include all children, but it continued to overrepresent First Nations children given the high number that were taken into custody by social workers in Saskatchewan. For example, in 1969, Indian and Métis people made up 7.5 percent of the population of Saskatchewan but 41.9 percent of all children in foster homes were Indian or Métis.

In 1971, the Métis Society in Saskatoon formed a Métis Foster Home committee, led by Howard Adams, Phyllis Trochie, Nora Thibodeau and Vicki Raceme. Its purpose was to challenge the AIM program and research the creation of a Métis-controlled foster home program. Those leading the committee saw the program as detrimental to children, parents and the Métis community. They said that AIM’s advertising campaign was racist, specifically because it implied Métis parents were unable to look after their children, portrayed First Nations children as inferior and unwanted, and suggested that any white family could be accepted for adoptions.

A CBC News segment in 1971 by reporter John Warren stated that 500 children had found permanent homes through the AIM program. An unidentified man representing AIM that Warren interviews said that the increased adoptions of Indian and Métis children was not due to prior prejudice but increased awareness of the need, adding that 170 children up to age 10 currently were in need of placement. Further, the AIM representative stated that four years earlier "children of native origin" represented only one in ten of the children adopted in Saskatchewan and for the past two years they represented one in four of the children adopted in the province. The AIM representative said that though it was not the primary goal of the program, he hoped that it would help people of different races understand each other. In his report, Warren also mentioned that First Nations leaders were criticizing AIM as an attempt at integration and were drafting complaints about the program o bring to federal and provincial leaders.

A CBC Radio podcast series titled "Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo" takes an in-depth look at the experience of Cleopatra Nicotine Semaganis, a Cree girl who in 1974 was removed from her family in Saskatchewan as part of the AIM program. The series website includes images of AIM newspaper advertisements featuring photographs and personal and health information about the First Nations children available for adoption. It also includes an internal memo, dated Sept. 25, 1973, from AIM director G.E. Jacob that recommends as an "Award of Merit" naming a supervisor in North Battleford, Sask., Mrs. D. Wilson, "Salesperson of the Year." This award was to recognize the number of children she made wards of the province and eligible for adoption.

Longterm Effects on Children, Parenting and Communities

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a component of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement reached in 2006, was mandated to document the experiences of Indigenous children who, from 1879 to 1996, were removed from their families and placed in residential schools by the Canadian government. The TRC Commissioners, which were tasked with sharing this knowledge with all Canadians, focused on child welfare in the first five of 94 calls to action in their final report. Published in 2015, the TRC report addressed the impact of the Sixties Scoop as well the residential schools: "Today, the effects of the residential school experience and the Sixties Scoop have adversely affected parenting skills and the success of many Aboriginal families. These factors, combined with prejudicial attitudes toward Aboriginal parenting skills and a tendency to see Aboriginal poverty as a symptom of neglect, rather than as a consequence of failed government policies, have resulted in grossly disproportionate rates of child apprehension among Aboriginal people.3"A 2011 Statistics Canada study found 14,225 or 3.6 per cent of all First Nations children aged 14 and under are in foster care, compared with 15,345 or 0.3 per cent of non-Indigenous children.

Canada’s 1.4 million First Nations, Inuit and Métis people4 dispoportionately experience poor living conditions and substandard schooling, among other issues.5 A 2016 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that 51 percent of First Nations children live in poverty. This number rises to 60 percent for First Nations children who live on reserves, with poverty rates as high as 76 percent in Manitoba and 69 percent in Saskatchewan for First Nations children living on reserves.6 The study found poverty rates were 30 percent for non-status First Nations children, 25 percent for Inuit children, and 23 percent for Métis children. (Canada has an overall child poverty rate of 18 percent, ranking it 27 among 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.7)

Cindy Blackstock, Ph.D., executive director of the First Nations Family and Child Caring Society and a professor in the School of Social Work at McGill University, has claimed that funding for child and family services on reserves is insufficient. She believes that the Canadian government's funding amounts to discrimination against First Nations children. Canadian government documents show Indigenous agencies receive about 22 to 34 percent less in funding than provincial agencies.8

Blackstock’s organization and the Assembly of First Nations, a political organization representing all First Nations in Canada, took the matter to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2007. Their complaint, which alleged that the Government of Canada had a longstanding pattern of providing less government funding for child welfare services to First Nations children on reserves than is provided to non-Indigenous children, was referred to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

The Tribunal ruled in January 2016 that the Canadian government’s failure to provide equitable and culturally based child welfare services to 165,000 First Nations children amounted to discrimination.9 The government, which has spent at least $5 million Canadian fighting the complaint, has not acted on this and three subsequent noncompliance orders.

On August 25, 2017, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recommended that Canada to end its underfunding of First Nations, Inuit and Métis child and family services; ensure that all children, on and off reserve, have access to all services available to other children in Canada, without discrimination; fully implement Jordan’s Principle to ensure access to services is not delayed or denied because of funding disputes between the federal, provincial and territorial governments; and address the root causes of displacement, such as poverty and poor housing, that disproportionately drive Indigenous children into foster care.10

Expand Existing Sections

Effects (Add as first paragraph)

Based on 1977 data from Indian and Northern Affairs, Health and Welfare Canada, Statistics Canada and provincial departments of social services, an estimated 15,500 Indigenous children were in the care of child welfare authorities that year.11 They represented 20 percent of all Canadian children living in care, even though Indigenous children made up less then 5 percent of the total child population.12

(Add before paragraph starting Raven Sinclair)

A 1980 study by the Canadian Council on Social Development found 78 percent of status First Nations children who were adopted were placed with non-Indigenous families.13

Aftereffects (Add at end)

First Nations communities responded to the loss of their children and the resulting “cultural genocide” both by repatriating children whose adoptions failed and working to regain control over child welfare practices related to their children, starting in 1973 with the Blackfoot (Siksika) child welfare agreement in Alberta.14 While there are about 125 First Nations Child and Family Service Agencies across Canada, they operate through a patchwork of agreements that give them authority from the provincial government to provide services and funding from the federal government.15

Ontario class action lawsuit (Cut last sentence starting with Negotiations then add the following)

A $800 million Canadian settlement was announced October 6, 2017. It will provide status First Nations and Inuit with $25,000 to $50,000 Canadian in compensation, depending on the number of claimants who come forward. It will also establish a $50 million Canadian endowment for an Indigenous Healing Foundation.16 Non-status First Nations and Métis will not receive compensation under the settlement.17

Jeffery Wilson, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, made this comment about the settlement: “Never before in history has a nation recognized, in this way, children’s right to their cultural identities, and a government’s responsibility to do everything in its power to protect the cultural identity of children in its care.”18

History (Add before 5th para starting with Johnson)

“By the end of the 1970s, the transfer of children from residential schools was nearly complete in Southern Canada, and the impact of the Sixties Scoop was in evidence across the country,” according to the final report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a component of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement reached in 2006.19  The Commission was mandated to document the experiences of Indigenous children who, from 1879 to 1996, were removed from their families and placed in residential schools by the Canadian government, and to share the truth of survivors, families, communities and others affected with all Canadians.

(Add after The Kimelman report)

Non-Indigenous agencies often required single, Indigenous mothers to live on their own, as opposed to traditional, multi-generational households, in order to regain custody of their children, wrote Associate Chief Judge Edwin C. Kimelman in his 1985 report. “This demand goes against the native patterns of child care. In the native tradition, the need of a young mother to be mothered herself is recognized. The grandparents and aunts and uncles expect the demands and rewards of raising the new member of the family. To insist that the mother remove herself from the support of her family when she needs them most is unrealistic and cruel.”20

Membership changes in the new Indian Act also prevented single Indigenous mothers from living with their children on reserves and complicated placements with family members. Mothers who chose to remain on reserves with their children had to first prove that the father of their children had First Nations status. Additionally, children of unmarried First Nations mothers often could not be placed with families on reserves due to these same membership stipulations.21

Similar developments in other countries (Add at end)*

According to the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), 25 to 35 percent of Native children nationwide were being removed from their families. But in 1978, overarching federal legislation setting standards for child custody proceedings was adopted, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). ICWA mandates that when a Native American child’s parent dies, exhaustive efforts must be made to reunite the child with the surviving parent or other relatives. Children are placed with non-Native families only when an Indigenous foster home, preferably one within the child’s tribe, cannot be found.

Notable Scoops (Add at end)*

Nakuset, who is Cree from Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan, was adopted by a Jewish family in Montreal when she was three. She is currently the Executive Director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montréal and draws on her adoptee experience in her work to improve the lives of urban Aboriginals. She sits on the Steering Committee of the Montréal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network. She produced and hosted the television series “Indigenous Power,” and was voted “Woman of the Year 2014” by the Montreal Council of Women.

* Still need to add references

References

1.Allyson Stevenson, “Intimate Integration: A Study of Aboriginal Transracial Adoption in Saskatchewan, 1944-1984,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Saskatchewan, (2015), 7, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.911.7400&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

2. Craig Oliver, “Adoption Agency Seeks Homes for Indian and Métis children in 1968,” CBC News, (May 1968), http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/adoption-agency-seeks-homes-for-indian-and-metis-children-in-1968.

3. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, (Winnipeg, Canada: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015), 138, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Honouring_the_Truth_Reconciling_for_the_Future_July_23_2015.pdf.

4. Karen Kelly-Scott and Kristina Smith, “Aboriginal Peoples: Fact Sheet for Canada,” (Ottawa, Canada: Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division of Statistics Canada, November 2015).

5. David Macdonald and Daniel Wilson, “Shameful Neglect: Indigenous Child Poverty in Canada,” (Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, May 2016), 5-21. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2016/05/Indigenous_Child%20_Poverty.pdf.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Gloria Galloway, “Ottawa Discriminated Against Aboriginal Children by Underfunding Services, Tribunal to Rule,” The Globe and Mail, (January 2016), https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-discriminated-against-aboriginal-children-by-underfunding-services-tribunal-to-rule/article28389918/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&.

9.  Ibid.

10. “Concluding Observations on the Twenty-First to Twenty-Third Periodic Reports of Canada,” United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, (September 2017), http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=1110&Lang=en.

11. Ibid.

12. Patrick Johnston, “Revisiting the Sixties Scoop of Indigenous Children,” Policy Options, (July 2016), http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2016/revisiting-the-sixties-scoop-of-indigenous-children/.

13. H. Philip Hepworth, Foster Care and Adoption in Canada, (Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Council on Social Development, 1980).

14. Anna Kozlowski, Vandna Sinha and Randy McHugh, “CWRP Information Sheet #99E: First Nations Child Welfare in Alberta (2011),” (Montreal, Canada: McGill University, Centre for Research on Children and Families, 2012), http://cwrp.ca/infosheets/first-nations-child-welfare-alberta.

15. Geoffrey York, The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada, (Toronto, Canada: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989), 218.

16. “Sixties Scoop Survivors’ Decade-Long Journey for Justice Culminates in Historic Pan-Canadian Agreement,” Ontario Sixties Scoop Steering Committee, (October 2017), http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sixties-scoop-survivors-decade-long-journey-for-justice-culminates-in-historic-pan-canadian-agreement-649748633.html.

17. Lenard Monkman, “Sixties Scoop Compensation Excludes Métis, Non-Status Indigenous Peoples,” CBC News, (October 2017), http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/sixties-scoop-settlement-excluded-1.4344355.

18. “Sixties Scoop Survivors’ Decade-Long Journey for Justice Culminates in Historic Pan-Canadian Agreement,” Ontario Sixties Scoop Steering Committee, (October 2017), http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sixties-scoop-survivors-decade-long-journey-for-justice-culminates-in-historic-pan-canadian-agreement-649748633.html.

19. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, (Winnipeg, Canada: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015), 69, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Honouring_the_Truth_Reconciling_for_the_Future_July_23_2015.pdf.

20. Associate Chief Judge Edwin C. Kimelman, “No Quiet Place: Review Committee on Indian and Métis Adoptions and Placements, Final Report,” (Manitoba, Canada: Department of Community Services, 1985), quoted in Pauline Comeau and Aldo Santin, The First Canadians: A Profile of Canada’s Native People Today, (Toronto, Canada: James Lorimer & Company Ltd., 1995), 149.

21. Allyson Stevenson, “Intimate Integration: A Study of Aboriginal Transracial Adoption in Saskatchewan, 1944-1984,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Saskatchewan, (2015), 183-4, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.911.7400&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Choosing possible topics for class project:

Initial ideas:

Sixties Scoop, Spiderwoman Theater, Missing and murdered Indigenous women, Inuit throat singing, Tanya Tagaq

Others with no current page: Nancy Marie Mithlo, Native Women's Shelter of Montreal

I explored three potential topics in further depth:

Sixties Scoop. My concern with this topic was whether it was relevant to the content of the class? It's an issue that profoundly affected First Nation mothers and thus women. There are women artists who were affected by the Sixties Scoop and who explore this experience in their art. But I will have to do more research to identify and find out more about these women. The Wikipedia entry is surprisingly limited for the Sixties Scoop in general and it hasn't been updated since settlement was announced in early October 2017. As I wrote a paper about my family's experience with the Sixties Scoop for Columbia University, I have robust sources I could reference to expand the page and perhaps build out a page on Nakuset, a Cree from La Ronge, SK, who was adopted my a Montreal Jewish family. She now runs the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal, which has been involved in raising awareness around missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada.

Another idea I had was to expand the page for Spiderwomen Theater, which was founded by sisters Muriel Miguel, Gloria Miguel, and Lisa Mayo. It has a Wikipedia page that is not strong, according to the categories; also low importance but related to class materials. However, I'm not sure my citations would be able to get beyond mostly newspaper/magazine and other articles, which I'm not sure is robust enough sourcing. However, the group's work, according to its website, is tightly tied to our course content:

"Spiderwoman Theater was founded in 1976, when Muriel Miguel gathered together a diverse company of women which included both of her sisters. They were of varying ages, races, sexual orientation, and worldview. The collective sprang out of the feminist movement of the 1970s and the disillusionment with the treatment of women in radical political movements of the time. They questioned gender roles, cultural stereotypes, and sexual and economic oppression. They took on issues of sexism, racism, classism, and the violence in women’s lives. Their weaving of humor with popular culture and personal histories along with their sometimes shocking style excited the hearts and spirits of the women (and sometimes the men) in their audiences, in the United States, Canada and all over the world.

Spiderwoman Theater broke new ground in using storytelling and storyweaving as the basis for the creation of their theatrical pieces."

Or perhaps I should focus on an indigenous curator, Nancy Marie Mithlo? She does not have a Wikapedia page. She gave a TEDx talk in Albuquerque regarding images of Native women in popular culture in 2013. I have read some of her work before and believe I could meet the sourcing requirements. I think maybe this one fits closest with class theme?

Final topic:

In consultation with our class instructor, I chose to focus on the Sixties Scoop. I learned the Wiki entry was written by a student in this class a few years ago. Also, the Sixties Scoop fits within the class framework as social justice is at the core of a well-considered feminist agenda.

Strategy:

I plan to update and expand several sections and potentially create at least one new section. Specifically, I will update the class action settlement section and expand those on aftereffects and similar social developments in other countries. Also, I will explore adding a new section on the situation of the mothers who lost their children and perhaps another on the efforts of the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada to provide equal funding to Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in Canada. Also, I feel the notable scoops section, as currently named, diminishes the experiences of other individuals who were scooped. Is there a more neutral, community-inclusive way to refer to these scoops?

Sources:

Patrick Johnston, “Revisiting the Sixties Scoop of Indigenous Children,” Policy Options, (July 2016), http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2016/revisiting-the-sixties-scoop-of-indigenous-children/.

Geoffrey York, The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada, (Toronto, Canada: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989).

David Macdonald and Daniel Wilson, “Shameful Neglect: Indigenous Child Poverty in Canada,” (Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, May 2016).

Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child, Documentary film, directed by Alanis Obomsawin (Montreal, Canada: The National Film Board of Canada, 1986).

Craig Oliver, “Adoption Agency Seeks Homes for Indian and Métis children in 1968,” CBC News, (May 1968), http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/adoption-agency-seeks-homes-for-indian-and-metis-children-in-1968.

Vandna Sinha and Anna Kozlowski, “Structure of Aboriginal Child Welfare in Canada,” International Indigenous Policy Journal 4, no. 2 (2013), http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol4/iss2/2.

Pauline Comeau and Aldo Santin, The First Canadians: A Profile of Canada’s Native People Today, (Toronto, Canada: James Lorimer & Company Ltd., 1995).

Marie Adams, Our Son A Stranger; Adoption Breakdown and Its Effects on Parents, (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002).

“Concluding Observations on the Twenty-First to Twenty-Third Periodic Reports of Canada,” United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, (September 2017), http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=1110&Lang=en.

“Sixties Scoop Survivors’ Decade-Long Journey for Justice Culminates in Historic Pan-Canadian Agreement,” Ontario Sixties Scoop Steering Committee, (October 2017), http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sixties-scoop-survivors-decade-long-journey-for-justice-culminates-in-historic-pan-canadian-agreement-649748633.html.

Tu Thanh Ha and Gloria Galloway, “Ontario Judge Sides with Sixties Scoop Survivors,” The Globe and Mail, (February 2017), https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-judge-sides-with-60s-scoop-survivors-damages-to-be-decided/article34015380/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&.