Good to Be Back

 Sixties Scoop survivor raised in U.S. reunites with siblings in Winnipeg

Melody Roberts, 66, only learned she was taken from family after outreach worker tracked her down

Arturo Chang · CBC News · May 19, 2026 

Donna Morin, left, and Joseph Lambert, right, welcomed Melody Roberts, middle, at Winnipeg's Richardson Airport Sunday evening. The biological siblings were separated in the Sixties Scoop, with Lambert and Roberts only learning recently they were taken from their family. (Coleen Rajotte)

Siblings separated in the Sixties Scoop have reunited after one of them — raised in the U.S. knowing nothing about her family — returned to Manitoba.

Melody Roberts embraced biological siblings Joe Lambert and Donna Morin during their first in-person meeting at Winnipeg's Richardson Airport Sunday evening.

"It's good to be back," the 66-year-old from Eugene, Ore., said as a welcoming party greeted her with signs, singing and drumming at the airport's arrivals area.

Morin, 61, wept as she hugged her older sister.  She recalled a story her grandfather told her decades earlier, about taking Morin's mother to hospital and that "she'd come out without children."

"I just thought she left them there, and then I heard about the Sixties Scoop," Morin said.

"I got a list of the children that she had lost. And so I found most of them. I only had [Joe] and Melody to find — and I finally found them."

The Sixties Scoop refers to a period from the 1950s to about the mid-to-late '80s when government policies enabled First Nations, Métis and Inuit children to be removed from their homes and placed instead with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive parents.

Joseph Lambert, far left, and Donna Morin, far right, with Morin's daughter Samantha Sinclair, and granddaughters Madison and Lily, ahead of the arrival of Melody Roberts at Winnipeg's Richardson Airport Sunday evening. Lambert holds an image of Roberts on his phone. (Justin Fraser/CBC)

Roberts didn't know she was a Scoop survivor until recently.

"When I was old enough, I was told I was adopted. But that's all I knew," she said Monday.

"It was shocking. I was kind of taken aback by it. I had mixed emotions about it."

More than 20,000 children are estimated to have been taken from their families, though advocates say the numbers could be much higher.

• 'I'm not alone': Sixties Scoop survivors gather in Winnipeg to reconnect, heal

• 10 years after apology, '60s Scoop survivors call for support beyond 'grossly inadequate' payout

In Manitoba, a provincial inquiry from 2015 said more than 3,400 Indigenous children were "shipped away" to adoptive parents between 1971 and 1981 alone — some sent to other countries.

Survivors "grew up thinking they were not wanted," said Susanna Tasse, social services and outreach co-ordinator with Winnipeg charity Hope Centre Ministries.  

"There's abandonment issues all their lives because they felt they were not wanted."

It was Tasse who helped reunite Morin, Roberts and Lambert. She said it all started about a year and a half ago when she realized Lambert — one of her clients — was also a survivor.

• Far-flung '60s Scoop siblings — one in Texas, one in New Zealand — meet Manitoba uncle

• Survivors say cases of 'pretendians' make reconnecting with community even harder

"I said to him, 'You know, Joe, you're a Sixties Scooper,' and he just was very confused, [asking] well, what's that?" Tasse said.

Tasse tracked down Roberts first, and arranged for her and Lambert to exchange emails and meet over Zoom.  Then she found Morin, who lived only "a few blocks away" from Lambert in Winnipeg, and looped her in.

"It's really heartbreaking, now that they're in their senior years, that they ended up finding each other … wishing that they would have tried sooner in life," Tasse said, but "this is also a beautiful story, too."

Having family has 'totally changed my life'

Lambert did not get a chance to meet his mother or some siblings who died before he learned about his past.

"I didn't know I had a family, so I didn't have anything to miss," he said.

But the 68-year-old said the discovery has made his life better. He said he's now a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation after a long time struggling with his identity.

He's also hoping to visit another brother, who lives in B.C., in the coming months.

Before discovering he had family members, Lambert "was just being self-destructive to myself, [because] I had nothing left to live forward to," he said. "It's totally changed my life."

Coleen Rajotte, vice-president of the 60's Scoop Manitoba Council Inc., said many other survivors would also like to reunite with their families, but "have no idea where to start."

Supports are needed to help them with the search, and to allow them to "get back home," she said.

"Melody, who's coming all the way from Oregon, she had to save up to make this trip. And that is, in our minds, completely wrong," Rajotte said.

"She was taken away from her family and shipped to the United States by the Manitoba government. Why should she have to pay to come back to meet her family?"

Roberts will be spending three days in Winnipeg with her siblings, Morin said.

"We just got done looking at a bunch of pictures of my family and my other brothers and sisters and my mom and dad," Roberts said during a phone interview, as the siblings drove to The Forks Monday afternoon.

"It's been really awesome. I'm really enjoying myself here."

WATCH | Siblings reunite decades after Sixties Scoop:

Siblings reunite decades after Sixties Scoop May 19| 

Three siblings have reunited in Manitoba decades after being separated during the Sixties Scoop, which saw thousands of Indigenous children removed from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous families. Melody Roberts, who grew up in the U.S. and until recently knew nothing of her family, returned to Manitoba over the weekend for the first time to meet her brother and sister.