When Lori Ann O'Cheek went to search for her birth
records, she was told her files burned in a fire. When Carla Williams
asked a different agency for her birth records, she too was told they
burned in a fire. Likewise Trevor Bass. Likewise Jessica Sear.
Wayne Snellgrove, on the other hand, was not told his birth records were destroyed. He was told there were none to begin with.
"I got a very nice letter from Vital Statistics telling me I don't exist," Snellgrove said. "I am nowhere to be found."
Different survivors dealing with different agencies from across Canada facing similar barriers to access their past.
It is a yet another twist in the evolving legacy of the Sixties
Scoop. Survivors, pulled from their Indigenous homes and adopted by
white families around the world, now search for their birth and treaty
records only to be told they cannot be found.
"There was no record of my adoption, no record of the adoption
agency," Lori Ann O'Cheek said. "I just kept getting answers that the
agency burned down and that's it."
Carla Williams was told the same thing. She didn't believe it.
"A fire that I don't believe ever happened, that [the child welfare agency] couldn't confirm at all," she said.
Survivors and critics say it is another example of forced
assimilation and the federal government's effort to erase
their Indigenous identities.
"If we grow up not knowing we're Indigenous and we're entitled to the
land and treaties and status, then they don't have to honour those
treaties," said Colleen Cardinal, a Sixties Scoop survivor, author and
advocate. "They don't have to resource or revenue share."
That's why so many survivors can't find their way home, she said.
"There are so many Indigenous adoptees out there that have no idea
what their rights are," Cardinal said. "That they are connected to the
land and to status and to treaties."
Lori Ann O'Cheek was a toddler in Camperville, Man, when her mother began to warn her about strangers in the town.
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