They Took Us Away

They Took Us Away
click image to see more and read more

it's free

click

How to Use this Blog

BOOZHOO! We've amassed tons of information and important history on this blog since 2010. If you have a keyword, use the search box below. Also check out the reference section above. If you have a question or need help searching, use the contact form at the bottom of the blog.



We want you to use BOOKSHOP! (the editor will earn a small amount of money or commission. (we thank you) (that is our disclaimer statement)

This is a blog. It is not a peer-reviewed journal, not a sponsored publication... WE DO NOT HAVE ADS or earn MONEY from this website. The ideas, news and thoughts posted are sourced… or written by the editor or contributors.

EMAIL ME: tracelara@pm.me (outlook email is gone) WOW!!! THREE MILLION VISITORS!

SEARCH

Monday, August 1, 2011

Journey Home: Wayne Snellgrove (archive)

One Man's Journey Home

Torn Apart 32 Years Ago By Canadian Policy Toward Aboriginals, A Mother And Son Met For The First Time.

September 21, 2003|

BY MARGO HARAKAS STAFF WRITER (Florida Sun-Sentinel)

He called himself Lost Cub, and for years he tried futilely to find his way home.
Then last year, feeling that at last he was closing in, Wayne Snellgrove hired a private investigator to follow up on the final four names on his list. He needed a shield, a buffer from the searing pain of renewed rejection. When the Canadian investigator finally telephoned her news, Snellgrove took the phone to the bedroom, closed the door, and, lying down on the bed, braced himself.
"I found your mother," she said. Then it all tumbled out.
Nora Smoke, a Saulteaux Indian living on a reserve in Saskatchewan, told the investigator, she loved Wayne, always had, that it was the happiest day in her life that he had found her. She had never forgotten the child she'd never seen.
"Please tell my son," Smoke pleaded with the investigator, "I've always thought of him."
And the 6-foot-3-inch, 225-pound athlete sobbed, sobbed like a baby, sobbed with 32 years of repressed emotion, sobbed like a kidnapped child returned to his bereft mother.
The search had ended; however, the story of a newborn's disappearance three decades ago was yet to be told.
Snellgrove, like many Canadians, calls it kidnapping. Others call it cultural annihilation or cultural genocide. Officially, it's been dubbed the Sixties Scoop.
Throughout the 1960s, 70s and into the mid-80s, thousands of Native children were separated from their mothers and adopted out to middle-class, non-Native families in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
"Some communities lost an entire generation," says Darrell Racine, professor of native studies at Brandon University, in Manitoba, Canada.
At best, say the critics, the action of the Children's Aid Societies, authorized at the time to administer Canada's child welfare services, was misguided. At worst, it was racism.
"It goes back to the usual manifest destiny complex white people have over red people and the idea they are more civilized than aboriginal people. They thought they were doing the aboriginals a favor," says Emma LaRocque, professor of native studies at the University of Manitoba.
The problem was those removing the children were usually white and, because of bias or ignorance of Aboriginal culture, they were, say critics, unqualified to determine what was in the best interest of the native child.


READ: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2003-09-21/news/0309210300_1_native-studies-aboriginal-children-native-children

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please: Share your reaction, your thoughts, and your opinions. Be passionate, be unapologetic. Offensive remarks will not be published. We are getting more and more spam. Comments will be monitored.
Use the comment form at the bottom of this website which is private and sent direct to Trace.


Happy Visitors!

Blog Archive

Featured Post

Theft of Tribal Lands

This ascendancy and its accompanying tragedy were exposed in a report written in 1924 by Lakota activist Zitkala-Sa, a.k.a. Gertrude Simmon...


Wilfred Buck Tells The Story Of Mista Muskwa

WRITTEN BY HUMANS!

WRITTEN BY HUMANS!

Most READ Posts

Bookshop

You are not alone

You are not alone

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Diane Tells His Name


click photo

60s Scoop Survivors Legal Support

GO HERE: https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.


click THE COUNT 2024 for the ADOPTEE SURVEY

NEW MEMOIR

Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA

Google Followers


back up blog (click)