I Am My Name

                    I have come from somewhere else, where
I am Cree and I have a big sister
and another name.

 LISTEN: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-167-the-bridge/clip/16180636-one-emotional-episodes-yet-the-bridge

The Bridge podcast with Nantali Indongo

One of our most emotional episodes yet on The Bridge

54 mins \ Nov. 8, 2025

Montreal advocate for Indigenous women and children, Na’kuset, and children’s book author Judith Henderson, have co-written I Am My Name — the powerful true story of Na’kuset’s life as a Sixties Scoop survivor.

The autobiographical picture book is illustrated by Vancouver-based artist, Shenoa Gao aka Onedove. It traces Na’kuset’s journey — taken from her Cree family as a young girl, along with thousands of other Indigenous children during the 1960s, growing up far from her roots, and finding her way back to her name, her culture, and her strength. Love, however, is at the center of the story and it spills over into this one hour, tearful conversation.

BUY/PUBLISHER: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/721401/i-am-my-name-by-nakuset-and-judith-henderson-illustrated-by-onedove/ 

Nakuset shared her story in the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS. 

 

REDUCE STEAL REMOVE ERASE DISENROLL

by Blog Editor Trace L Hentz  

I have followed the disturbing tribal dis-enrollment issue many years, first as a journalist and then as a concerned adoptee who is still without tribal membership.  

First of all, since CONQUEST, the governments of Canada and the US had goals.

The inter-country ARENA program and the Indian Adoption Projects were clearly planned genocide, essentially kidnapping and trafficking in children, as an act of war on Indian families.   

Other goals?  Reduce the populations.  Write bad treaties then break them.  Steal more land.  Move who is left on to concentration camps but call it a "reservation" or reserve.  Remove children on those reserves to faraway places like the Carlisle Industrial Boarding School.  Erase children permanently from tribal rolls.  It's how the governments of Canada and the US planned this.  They kill us by military force then colonize remaining savages, then they upped the game to use paper genocide with bad or fake history, to where we are now:  blood quantum sorcery.   

They'll keep us divided, a Third World stuck in poverty and fighting for scraps forever.   

That was the plan. 

Let me start over...

Adoptees want to go home, meet family and if possible, have a relationship with tribal relatives.  We were dis-enrolled essentially and the fake papers we were given are not real birth certificates, not tribal membership, and not land rights and treaty promises. (Yes, some adoptees found out they were enrolled before they were taken away.)

For an adoptee today, Tribal membership would be icing on the cake, and all of us absolutely deserve it!

Too many Tribal leaders are not traditional, as I see it.  I see Tribal leaders adapted to the white man rules too well.  Clearly it's about money now, not us, and not our recovery.

Why?  Do they not see we had no CHOICE as children adopted out... It wasn't our fault.  Is this also about money?

Are you kidding me? 

Since 2004-5, I took the stance there was no awareness of the cultural genocide on Indigenous People since conquest.  I also could see how too many adoptees were struggling to get their tribal membership.  Too many cannot and do not approach their tribe without papers, or some kind of legal proof.  Who do we call?  Phone messages and requests for help go unanswered.  One Native adoptee told me a judge refused her request for her adoption file in Utah, which is against federal law and what the Indian Child Welfare said is our right. 

Sadly, Reserve Indians do not prioritize bringing STOLEN GENERATIONS back, and many do not know how many adoptees are out here, spread across North American and beyond.  

Now tribes are disenrolling their own people? Casinos changed the landscape. Tribes are protecting their profits.  Greed, as you know, is a disease.

As the governments planned this, it was to control tribal populations. And it worked.

Go READ:

"You're No Indian" Examines the Disenrollment Issue (documentary) (top photo)

LINK: https://nativenewsonline.net/arts-entertainment/your-e-no-indian-examines-the-disenrollment-issue 

 

FILM: https://www.yourenoindian.com/ 

Indigenous film draws attention to #60Scoop survivors

Birth of a Family the fifth and final movie screened during the Wide Awake series

A film sharing the story of three sisters and a brother trying to rebuild their family after it was torn apart during the Sixties Scoop was shown at the University of Windsor Thursday night.
Birth of a Family was the fifth and final movie screened during the Wide Awake series put on by the university's Aboriginal Education Centre in partnership with the Arts Council Windsor and Region.

• Creator of Sixties Scoop adoption program says it wasn't meant to place kids with white families
  

It follows the journey of Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben, who were adopted as infants into different families across North America and are just meeting again for the first time.

"I think that the policies in place were very systematic in how they were targeting First Nations people," said Kathryn Pasquach, the Aboriginal Outreach and Retention Coordinator for the university. "It was very unfortunate that the cultural importance and the belief system that Indigenous people hold were not valued."

Anthony Saracino is a university student who felt it was his duty to see the film

"I think just being a citizen of Canada — a citizen of the world — it's important to know the ground you walk on and I'm just doing my due diligence with that," he said.

• 'Naive but a good intention' — adoptive parents grapple with fallout of Sixties Scoop
  

Ostoro Petathegoose is an Indigenous woman who attended all of the screenings.
"I grew up with a lot of anti-Indigenous racism in my life and I have found when talking to a lot of people they are not educated on the history of Indigenous peoples in this country," she explained. "So I feel that movies like this are really relevant and people should be seeing movies like this."
The education centre hopes to run a similar series of films next year.

Related Stories

• An Indigenous family's fight to find the truth about Cleo, their sister taken in Sixties Scoop
• Toronto Sixties Scoop rally pushes back against government settlement
• Sixties Scoop adoptees head across Canada to try to scuttle $800M settlement