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EMAIL ME: tracelara@pm.me (outlook email is gone)
THANK YOU CHI MEGWETCH!
I am not murdered, and I am not missing, but parts of me have been disappeared.
— Leanne Simpson
They too know all
too well that some cracks were built just for us to fall through. We
live in a world that tries to steal spirits each day; they steal ours by
taking us away.
From Industrial Schools to forced assimilation, genocide means removal
of those who birth nations — our living threatens. Colonization has
been choking
us for generations. I tell my girls they are vessels of spirit, air to
lungs expanding; this world cannot breathe without us. There are days I
wish
I didn’t have to teach these lessons, but as an Indigenous womxn
silence is deadening. There is danger in being seen, our bodies are
targets
marked for violence. We carry the Earth’s me too inside us, a howling wind, our mothers & their mothers swallowed these bullets long ago.
The voices ricochet I wish I were invisible I wish I were invisible I wish echoes in my eardrums — we know what it’s like to live in fear. Colonialism’s bullet sits cocked,
waiting behind a finger on trigger. We breathe and speak and sing for survival. We carve out in lines; we write — I know joy I know pain I know love
I know love I know — lessons we’ve carried throughout time.
Should I go missing: don’t stop searching; drag every river until it
turns red and the waters of our names
stretch a flood so wide it catches everything. And we find each other
whole and sacred, alive and breathing and breathing and breathing.
Poet, writer, and educator Tanaya Winder is an enrolled member of the
Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and has ancestors from the Southern Ute,
Pyramid Lake Paiute, Navajo, and Black tribes.
In an interview with Zingara Poetry Review, Winder notes, “I
am a person who hopes my own writing and poetry reflects the times and
the needs of society; without interacting with the community the poetry
cannot attempt to reflect communities and so I believe poetry must
intersect with community. Poetry has the potential to create community
for people who are searching for it by providing a space to interact and
share experiences on the page.”
Winder cofounded As/Us, an online journal devoted to writers of color; cofounded the traveling exhibit Sing Our Rivers Red to
raise awareness of missing and murdered indigenous women; and founded
Dream Warriors Management, a company that manages indigenous artists.
The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development named her
one of “40 Under 40” emerging American Indian leaders, and she was a
2017 First Peoples Fund Artists in Business Leadership fellow.
Author, community organizer and
social justice advocate Colleen Hele-Cardinal, a Nehiyaw Iskwew from
Onihcikiskowapowin Saddle Lake Cree First Nation Alberta, reflected upon her experiences growing up in a non-Indigenous household
as a ‘60s scoop adoptee on Feb. 11 with Humanities Dean Annalee Lepp on a virtual stage for Humanities Reads: Colleen Hele-Cardinal, the keynote event of UVic’s fourth annual Humanities Week.
Hele-Cardinal is a co-founder of the National Indigenous Survivors of
Child Welfare Network and a public figure who speaks candidly about the
connections between murdered and missing Indigenous women, colonial
violence, racism and the Indigenous child welfare system.
Her latest project, In Our Own Words: Mapping the ‘60s Scoop Diaspora,
provides a mapping tool for visualizing the displacement of ‘60s scoop
survivors across the globe, a platform to share personal stories and
experiences and a database for survivors and their families looking to
reconnect with one another.
Coleen read from her book, Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else): A ‘60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home and discussed the themes raised within it with Lepp before engaging in a live Q&A with the audience.
“Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh powerfully confronts the legacy of
colonialism in Canada by telling hard truths about the ‘60s scoop based
on the author’s personal experiences,” says Lepp. “We are honoured to
welcome Colleen Hele-Cardinal to UVic and to have this opportunity to
listen and have a conversation with her about her work.”
A new Saskatchewan film is drawing a direct link between government
policies of the residential school era, to the 60s Scoop, to the current
rash of violence against Indigenous women.
Everything is Connected
was funded by a number of organizations including the First Nations
University Canada, the Amiskusees Semeganis Worme Family Foundation and
the federal government.
The stories are all different, but they all have one thing in common.
One of the primary goals of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
is to limit the influence or bias of state workers in decisions placing
American Indian children out of their home and community.1
While this focus usually concerns state social workers, the officials
who most often seek removal of a child, or the courts, the body that
issues the orders and opinions, guardians ad litem (GALs) receive less attention.2 Despite this lack of attention, GALs exert a similar level of influence as state social workers. In Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl,3 the role of the GAL was unusual but critical – the GAL, while officially appointed by the court, was handpicked by the adoptive parents.4 The
role of the GAL remains understudied in the ICWA literature, though
GALs continue to exert enormous influence in the courts. Unfortunately,
many GALs throughout the nation subvert the national policy embodied by
the ICWA by advocating against the implementation of the statute in case after case.5
There are three other papers in the symposium:
Perspective I by Professor Barbara Ann Atwood is available here,
Perspective II by Professor James G. Dwyer is available here, and
Perspective III by Professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone is available here.
I am reading this book NOW and was warned I would get sick... and I am. TLH (blog editor)
about the book:
For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in his stunning book in 1992, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.
Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.
This episode of #REDHOOPTALK discusses protecting the Indian Child Welfare Act with Dan Lewerenz, citizen of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. ICWA is legislation passed in 1978, developed by advocates fighting state judges, child welfare agencies, religious entities & boarding schools to return children taken because of historic racist ideology.
Today, advocates fight to protect ICWA from continued racism & conservative political groups and corporations wanting more land and resources that are seeking to do away with Tribal Sovereignty.
Our guest expert is DAN LEWERENZ, a citizen of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Dan is a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund (www.narf.org). Before joining NARF, Dan was an attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of the Solicitor, Division of Indian Affairs; a law clerk to the Hon. Claudia Wilken (N.D. Cal.) and the Hon. Leo I. Brisbois (D. Minn.); and an associate in the Oklahoma City office of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP. Dan earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he graduated cum laude and Order of the Coif. Before going to law school, Dan spent more than 10 years as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press, and was a board member, officer, and president of the Native American Journalists Association. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University.
Utah: Bill takes on ‘excessive removal of Native American children from their homes’
SB28 protects Native children in the state welfare system.
Men, women and children from Native
American tribes throughout the West show their regalia during the Grand
Entry at the 41st Annual Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah Restoration
Gathering, Aug. 13, 2021 in Cedar City, Utah. (Leah
Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Utah
continues to neglect Indigenous children and families, tribal community
leaders and experts told members of the Senate Government Operations
and Political Subdivisions on Monday, February 1, 2022.
Indigenous leaders hope the bill SB28
would fix some of the inequities which have plagued Indigenous
residents of Utah for the last 126 years. The bill creates an Office of
American Indian-Alaska Native Health and Family Services under the Utah
Department of Health and Human Services to make sure that Indigenous
children and families get protection when they enter the state’s child
welfare system.
SB28 also moves the Indian Child
Welfare Act Liaison and the American Indian-Alaskan Native Health
Liaison from two different state agencies and brings both roles into the
merging Utah Department of Health and Human Services. The merger is
expected to take effect in July.
Supporters of
the bill say the proposed merger streamlines how the government responds
to Indigenous children and families when these children are taken by
welfare agencies and also ensures that the Indian Child Welfare Act of
1978 is enforced. Also known as ICWA, the federal law governs the
removal and placement of Native children to combat the high number of
Indigenous children removed from their homes.
The
bill “combats the excessive removal of Native American children from
their homes and acknowledges the alarmingly high percentage of Indian
families which are broken up by the removal of children,” Sen. Jani
Iwamoto, D-Holliday, told The Tribune.
Paul
Tsosie, legal counsel to the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute
Reservation, said that SB28 also allows Utah to meet the burden of
higher protections for Native families in the state, a burden he says is
spelled out through the U.S. Constitution and the treaties between
tribes and the federal government.
“The [Indian
Child Welfare Act] specialist is crucial to help all parties correctly
apply ICWA in the Utah State Court system,” Tsosie said.
The
goal is to make sure that cultural sensitivity and Indigenous values
are being taught to children who go to any home in the state, Tsosie
added.
Rupert Steele, chairman of the
Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, and Moroni Benally, a
lobbyist for the Navajo Nation, and other tribes requested the
Legislature pass the bill to protect the well-being, safety and health
of the approximately 41,644 Indigenous children and families living in
the state.
I’m familiar with Indigenous resurgence
and how it’s connected to the restoration and reparation happening
within Indigenous communities — work that often focuses on healing
intergenerational divides caused by Indian Residential Schoolsand the 60s Scoop — but this idea of “re-indigenization” was different.
It appeared to justify the idea that any person who discovers they
have a “root Indigenous ancestor” from anywhere between 150 to 400 years
ago must claim an Indigenous identity and proudly take up spaces deemed
to require Indigenous perspectives and voices.
Part of this process appeared to involve attaching and embedding
oneself, not within the particular Indigenous community or Nation where
their long-ago “Indigenous” ancestor hailed from, but within internal
institutional Indigenous communities or organizations that fronted as
“Indigenous communities” for the purpose of institutional or “urban”
legitimacy.
Department of Human Services says reforms are starting to work and newer state program shows promise.
By Jessica Washington, Fuller Project/Special to the Star Tribune | January 24, 2022
Photo: Jessica Washington/The Fuller Project. Caption: Teresa
Nord works as a parent mentor at the ICWA Law Center. Nord, who is a
Navajo and Hopi Indian descendant, says she had her daughter removed by
child protective services.
Teresa Nord regained custody of her eldest daughter several years ago, but the experience still haunts her.
"I
live with this constant fear," says Nord, 42, a Navajo and Hopi Indian
descendant who lives in Glencoe, Minn. "I call it child protection PTSD,
that they're just gonna one day knock on my door."
In
2015, Nord's then 6-year-old daughter told her she had been abused by
one of her mom's close friends. Nord reached out to a social worker for
help — only to have her daughter immediately removed by child protective
services.
Nord
spent three years fighting to regain custody, but her daughter's time
in foster care left her with deep abandonment fears and exacerbated
other mental health challenges. "The foster provider told her, 'Your mom
is a bad mom. You're never going to see her again [and] you might as
well get used to that,'" Nord says.
Recent
discoveries of mass graves on former indigenous boarding school sites
have led to an international reckoning over the atrocities committed by
the U.S. and Canadian governments in the name of assimilation. And
political leaders like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have acknowledged the deep trauma the schools inflicted upon generations of Native families.
However,
Native parents and experts in Native child welfare in Minnesota say
that many of the underlying beliefs about Native families that fueled
the boarding school systems are perpetuated by the state's modern child
welfare system, with devastating effects.
Many
Native mothers like Nord can't shake the fear of having their children
ripped away from them or the ripple effects of generations of Native
removals.
"There's
a really explicit connection in the indigenous community's mind between
boarding schools and the child welfare system," says Nicole
Martin Rogers, a White Earth Ojibwe descendant and senior research manager at Wilder Research,
a research organization that works with nonprofits and governments.
That's because boarding schools are "how the system first started
taking kids away from their families," she said.
The boarding schools legacy
In
the 1800s, the federal government established mandatory boarding schools
for Native American children, with the mission of assimilating Native
children. The first boarding school in Minnesota opened in 1871.
Children in these schools often were starved, beaten and forced to sever
their connection to their Native heritage and language.
Although
these schools mostly were discontinued by the 1950s, Native children
continued to be removed from their homes at staggering rates through
adoption.
Native
children were removed from their families in Minnesota and other states
at such high rates that outrage from Native communities led to the
creation of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
ICWA
mandates that child welfare agencies give special consideration to
cases involving enrollable tribal members in the form of consultation
with tribes.
But for Native women like Nord, who is a tribal descendant but not an enrollable member, these protections don't apply.
Social
workers and courts often fail to give Native parents adequate and
culturally appropriate guidance on how to reunite with their children, a
core tenet of ICWA, says Sadie Hart, an ICWA compliance court monitor
in Ramsey County. And they often mandate parents to follow impossibly
strict deadlines to resolve issues related to poverty or addiction to
regain custody, without providing adequate support to do so, she says.
Looking
back on the boarding school and adoption eras, it's easy to say they
were wrong, says Shannon Smith, executive director of the ICWA Law
Center. But she says the underlying mentality persists, as does the
impact, often due to factors like cultural ignorance or mistaken beliefs
about Native parents.
"I
think a lot of times removals [are] society … equating removal with
safety. And that is an equation that is just automatic. And I think
that's fundamentally flawed," Smith says.
Indeed, some experts say, poverty can often look like neglect
to social workers, especially in families of color. Even when poverty
is causing instability that puts kids at risk, removal may not be the
best option and can exacerbate rather than fix the root issues.
In Hennepin County, where the ICWA Law Center is located, Native Americans account for roughly 26%
of those living in poverty, although they make up just 1% of the
population, according to the county's 2018 report "Child Protective
Services: Reform and Child Well-Being."
"There
are so many indigenous families living in poverty," says MartinRogers.
"It's hard not to consider it neglect … if the caseworker walks into the
house and there's no food in the refrigerator or the kids don't have a
bed to sleep on or other things that can result from someone just being
really poor."
Canada: Indigenous community finds 93 potential unmarked graves
Williams Lake First Nation unveils findings of preliminary search at former ‘residential school’ known for abuse.
A
child stands next to candles during a vigil on Canada's first National
Day for Truth and Reconciliation, in Ohsweken, Ontario, Canada [File:
Carlos Osorio/Reuters]
Warning:
The story below contains details of residential schools that may be
upsetting. Canada’s Indian Residential School Survivors and Family
Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day at 1-866-925-4419.
Canada – An Indigenous community in Canada’s western
province of British Columbia has found dozens of potential unmarked
graves on the grounds of a former residential school, the latest such discovery over the past year.
Williams
Lake First Nation announced on Monday that preliminary results of the
first phase of a geophysical search at St Joseph Mission Residential
School uncovered 93 “reflections” – believed to be unmarked gravesites.
“Ninety-three is our number,” Chief Willie Sellars told reporters.
A child's dress hangs on a cross near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. (Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)
The
leadership of Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc hopes to identify and locate
missing children believed to be buried in unmarked graves near the
former Kamloops Indian Residential School (IRS) with the help of
previously undisclosed documents set for release by the federal
government.
The federal government plans to transfer more than 875,000 records
through a recently signed agreement with the National Centre for Truth
and Reconciliation (NCTR), the archival repository for all of the
material collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Those
files include the school "narrative" for Kamloops IRS, which summarizes
the institution's history, including its administration, attendance
record, key events and reports of abuse.
"We have to find answers," Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir told CBC News.
"Access
to the records means not having to re-traumatize ... residential school
survivors to pinpoint information about who attended KIRS and who could
possibly be in the unmarked graves."
Tk'emlúps
te Secwépemc sent shockwaves around the world last May when it
announced the preliminary findings from ground penetrating radar scans
— 215 suspected graves of children near the site of Kamloops IRS.
Now,
the community and residential school survivors are waiting for their
chance to review these records for the first time, which could help
piece together what happened at Canada's largest residential school. KEEP READING
PLEASE WATCH
The
Fifth Estate shows how a B.C. First Nation is dealing with the traumatic
discovery of what are assumed to be the graves of children near a
former residential school, as it tries to lead the way for other
communities coping with a similar tragic history. 45:35
California paved the way for reparations conversation. Will America ever follow?
About 60 years after mandatory attendance
for Canada’s brutal Indian residential school system ended, the country
created its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission. From the late
1800s to the mid-1940s, this school system prioritized the erasure of
Indigenous culture in Canada. Earlier this month, Canada’s government
agreed to pay $31.5 billion to fix country’s welfare system and to pay
reparations to indigenous people harmed by it, a settlement aided by
what the country learned from its commission.
Yet the closest thing America has to any of the
aforementioned commissions is California’s first-in-the-nation
reparations task force, which started in 2021, roughly 400 years after slavery first began and 156 years after Congress abolished it.
Former patients can contact any of the four law firms involved in the class-action lawsuit.
Archive photo of unidentified children at Charles Camsell Indian Hospital. Photo: APTN file
The Hope for Wellness Help Line offers immediate help to all
Indigenous Peoples across Canada. Call 1-855-242-3310 or connect to the
online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca
A class-action lawsuit against the federal government over the
treatment of patients in Canada’s Indian Hospital system has not been
settled or begun a claims process.
A lawyer issued that statement Thursday after incorrect information
appeared on Facebook this week garnering hundreds of responses from
former patients.
“There’s no settlement and there may not be one,” said class-action lawyer Doug Lennox of Klein Lawyers in Vancouver, one of four law firms suing the federal government on behalf of thousands of former patients.
“This may be one of those cases that goes to trial.”
Last week, Fred Wilson, a First Nations health support worker on
Vancouver Island, posted an ad for one of the law firms that said, “The
Indian Hospital Claim Process is starting” and at the bottom, “Fred will
Email you a form to start the process.”
Fred Wilson is a health support worker raising awareness about the Indian Hospital class-action lawsuit. Photo: Submitted.
But the process hasn’t started yet.
The four firms are suing Canada for $1.1-billion in damages alleging
the operation of 29 segregated facilities known as “Indian Hospitals”
was negligent and breached fiduciary duties owed to Indigenous Peoples.
The case was certified on Jan. 17, 2020, and still has a long way to go.
“There’s a lot of complicated issues to go through,” said Lennox
Thursday. “We’re still gathering information on how many patients went
through the hospitals and how many may still be alive.”
“Indian hospitals” operated between 1945 and 1981 for Indigenous peoples to be treated for tuberculosis and other ailments.
The Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Alberta. Photo: APTN file
The Charles Camsell in Edmonton was one of the largest, with a patient population of more than a thousand at its peak.
“The class was consent certified but all that means is we have the
right to proceed on behalf of the class,” added lawyer Steven Cooper of Cooper Regel in Alberta, another of the four law firms involved.
“That’s no guarantee of settlement or success at trial.”
Both lawyers say they are months – possibly years – from a final result.
And mistakenly using the words “Indian Hospital Claim Process” in the ad didn’t help.
This ad on Facebook wrongly said the claims process was starting. Photo: Facebook
“I heard from at least 300 people,” said Wilson, who is working with
Klein to create awareness of the lawsuit among Indigenous Peoples.
“It’s my mistake; 100 per cent my mistake. I’ve updated that now.”
The new post now asks: “Do you qualify?”
Former patients can contact Wilson or any of the four law firms involved for a qualification form.
“There’s a lot of people out there who still haven’t heard about this case,” said Lennox, who is also involved in the ‘60s Scoop class-action settlement.
“We’re very grateful that they called us, but just understand it’s a
longer process than you may have thought based on Facebook.”
‘60s Scoop
There are many Indigenous class-action lawsuits going on at the same time.
“There’s so many wrongs to right,” said Lennox, “but it’s confusing and very hard for people to navigate.
The Federal Indian Day School
settlement is offering compensation for damages and abuses suffered by
students forced to attend one of the identified Federal Indian Day
Schools or Federal Day Schools.
The Indian Residential Schools Day Scholars settlement is for students who attended an Indian Residential School during the day only (and did not sleep there overnight).
The Sixties Scoop
Class-Action settlement is for First Nations and Inuit children removed
from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive
parents between 1951 and 1991.
Millenium Scoop is another name for two agreements that could compensate for the racist underfunding of child welfare services on reserves and in the Yukon.
Collectiva
Lennox said the claims administrator in the ’60s Scoop settlement, Collectiva, posted an update on its claims process on Dec. 20, 2021.
It shows there were 19,041 claims approved, 697 rejected, 3,306 require more information and 2,876 are being assessed.
Still, the claims are behind schedule, said Lennox.
“It’s not on the original schedule that was planned, but there was a
(coronavirus) pandemic and some cases turned out to be more complicated
than anyone expected,” he explained. “We are getting closer to the end.”
Collectiva’s figures also show 8,850 claims were denied.
“It’s frustrating (for those turned down) but at least it’s an answer
for some people,” said Lennox, “They may qualify for other
settlements.”
Day Schools
One complaint about the Day School claims process is that it is going too fast.
Claims administrator Deloitte set a record, Lennox said, by processing and paying more than 70,000 claims in the first year.
“That kind of speed in getting people money, I can’t think of any
other class action that has moved that much money to that many people
that quickly.”
However, some claimants who received payment reconsidered their claims and wanted to refile.
“They thought about it more and want to change their answer,” Lennox said. “But a judge said No.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Jan. 21 to correct the Day School and Day Scholar criteria.
The Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, and Stephanie Scott,
Executive Director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
(NCTR) are pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement
that outlines how and when Canada will
share historical documents related to Residential Schools. This
co-developed approach will ensure an efficient and secure transmission
of documents while protecting and respecting the privacy of Survivors.
The timing will be set by the National Centre for Truth and
Reconciliation and will begin with school narratives.
Canada recognizes the importance of preserving and sharing
documentation that will help the National Centre for Truth and
Reconciliation honour and remember the children who attended Residential
Schools, while respecting Survivors' wishes, legislation, court orders,
settlement agreements and ongoing litigation processes. The Memorandum
also outlines next steps to acquire records of Residential School
history. This also highlights the new collaboration between the NCTR and
Canada, and is a step towards a
renewed relationship with Indigenous Peoples, accountability, and a
stronger understanding of the legacy of Residential Schools.via
Quick facts
On December 10, 2021, Minister Miller
issued a statement committing to a new approach for federal document
disclosure related to Residential Schools.
The transmission of documents will occur in an order and schedule
that works for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR)
and will include additional documents to those previously provided to
the NCTR by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In 2015,
Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and other federal
government departments provided over 4 million documents to the TRC to
support their work.
In 2016, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada allocated $10 million
to the NCTR in response to Call to Action 78, which recommended funding
to assist the NCTR in establishing a national archive of information
related to Residential Schools. In 2018, Crown–Indigenous Relations and
Northern Affairs Canada provided $500,000 to the NCTR to support their development of a national student death register.
NEYAASHIINIGMIING — Kegedonce Press proudly announces the release of These are the Stories: Memories of a 60s Scoop Survivor by
author, editor and journalist Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith. This
timely collection of auto-biographical essays addresses a topic that has
gained increasing attention in Canadian news and cultural media; the
historical and ongoing treatment of Indigenous children in Canada.
Miskonoodinkwe Smith relates her experiences in the child welfare
system after she and her siblings were taken from her mother on Peguis
First Nation. The stories describe the author’s failed adoption by a
non-Indigenous family, her quest to find her birth mother, and address
the lasting harm caused by the seizure of First Nations children from
their homes and communities. While this is a story of the lamentable
failures of the Canadian Child Welfare system, it is also one of hope,
as Miskonoodinkwe Smith relates her journey towards home and healing.
Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Chair for Truth and Reconciliation, Lakehead University writes:
“Christine’s story illuminates a pathway trod by far too many
Indigenous children over the last 100 years. When Indian Residential
Schools didn’t ‘kill the Indian in the child’, Child Welfare agencies
stepped in to finish the job. There was light; however, in the darkness
for Christine. Light that healed her brokenness through kindness, the
connection of friends, and the reconstitution of a family. Lost and
found, and lost again is a tragic summary of her experience of being
scooped, to abandoned, to finding solace in the arms of a mother who
died far too soon. Still, her strength shines through in her hope, her
joy of storytelling, and her endearing ability to break open the hearts
of those around her. She has a rare courage, and I’ve always admired her
ability to show us all how it’s done, because this is a woman who truly
understands how to ‘walk in beauty.’”
Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith is a Saulteaux woman from Peguis First
Nation who currently lives in Toronto. She graduated from the
University of Toronto with a specialization in Aboriginal Studies and
received her Master’s in Education in Social Justice. Her first
non-fiction story, Choosing the Path to Healing, appeared in the 2006
anthology, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces. She has written for the Native Canadian, Anishinabek News, Windspeaker, First Nations House Magazine, New Tribe Magazine, Muskrat Magazine, and the Piker Press.
Kegedonce Press hosted an online book launch for These are the Storieson
January 22 with moderator Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler and introduction
by Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux. Details on Facebook @60sScoopBookLaunch.
Kegedonce Press is a dedicated Indigenous publisher, based in
Neyaashiinigmiing and Owen Sound, Ontario. It has been publishing books
involving Indigenous peoples at all levels of production since 1993.
Searching for solutions, Zacharias Kunuk’s latest film takes a grounded, Indigenous approach.
Taqqut Productions
Indigenous people are frequently asked for solutions based on traditional knowledge. From environmental stewardship to psychedelics and mental health,
the thirst for “ancient” answers to contemporary problems can run a
wide gamut. But in legendary Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s latest
animated short, Angakuksajaujuq: The Shaman’s Apprentice, that notion of easy answers is turned on its head.
The film, which was recently shortlisted for the
Academy Award for Best Animated Short, follows a shaman and her titular
apprentice after they are summoned to heal a sick community member.
After traveling across the icy landscape, the pair arrive to administer
aid to the patient, a young hunter sick with fever. During their first
attempt to heal the man, the shaman asks him, “Did you do anything to
deserve this?” The unspoken question here is: Is this man living a
proper Inuit life or has he strayed too far away? In this sense, the
shaman and her apprentice act not only as healers but as keepers of
tradition. This will become clearer later in the film as the pair embark
on a trip to the Underground to visit The One Below for answers. They
seek not only to understand the hunter’s dilemma, but also to determine
the next steps in how to fix it.
The Shaman’s Apprentice is not a
“climate” movie per se, but its icy setting and theme – the search for a
solution – will feel highly relevant to climate-concerned viewers. In
this sense, it is likely to draw comparisons to recent disaster films
like Don’t Look Up, which offers funny, easy, and some might say mean-spirited answers to our current climate dilemma. But an Indigenous film like The Shaman’s Apprentice
relies more on interpretation, experience, observation and
introspection than flashy hijinks. The director does not hate on his
subjects; there will be no destroying of a whole arctic village for
laughs. It is clear that Kunuk feels a deep connection to this
community. He does not have the luxury to blithely kill off his subjects
as a cautionary tale.
Many non-Indigenous viewers will not have heard of
Kunuk (which is, again, why Indigenous films like these are important
contributions to our current cinematic landscape) but the 63-year-old
Inuk filmmaker has been making movies for over 20 years. Standouts
include Atanarjuat:The Fast Runner in 2001, and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen in 2006, both of which depict slices of traditional Inuit life and
culture. What makes Kunuk’s films stand out in particular is their
authenticity. They are raw and real. You feel cold when you see his
characters in their arctic conditions. You feel the isolation, the hard
work it must be to live in Inuit country, especially for those of us who
are nowhere near such a region. They deal with very basic things like
love, death, jealousy, trust, and life in a region and community far
away from a local grocery store or hospital.
Kunuk is not known for animated films, but one could say after viewing The Shaman’s Apprentice
that maybe he ought to delve into the genre again. The animation is
mesmerizing. Lines in the elder Shaman’s face are oh-so-subtle: the
droop in her mouth, the way her eyes narrow with concern when faced with
a dilemma. The animators somehow make the Shaman older and wiser in
ways that differentiate her from her younger apprentice. They have
traditional Inuit tattoos. Light and shadow dance off their faces to
illustrate dramatic mood and tone, just as they would on actual human
beings. I’d argue that half the fun of watching a stop motion film such
as this is shouting to yourself or whomever you’re watching the film
with, “How did they do that?”
But for all its artful craft, one might say Kunuk
is more invested in this story, and in that way, humanity at large. He’s
fascinated in the way knowledge is passed on and the ways people must
rely on each other; In the way that humanity can course correct itself
when needed.
Taqqut Productions
In Kunuk’s world, life is beautiful and
complicated. The film draws from a traditional Inuit story, one in which
the protagonists must trust each other and draw upon a faith deep
within. At the beginning of the journey to the Underground, the Shaman
tells her apprentice, “If you lack confidence you may not return, do you
understand?” The apprentice simply looks back with a look on her face
that says, fake it til you make it.
Subtle moments like these remind us that representation is more than an oft-repeated refrain in 2022. Indigenous-made TV like Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls
have reinforced just how much better Indigenous films are when they are
made with authenticity. No longer do we have to wonder, “Is this really
an Indigenous point of view?” because the new work being created is
Indigenous made. When we see stories like The Shaman’s Apprentice, that references an Inuit deity from the Underground called Kannaaluk, we can trust that Kunuk is telling us a story from his vantage point, from his community.
And not to beat up on blockbusters like Don’t Look Up, which admittedly made me laugh more than a few times, films like The Shaman’s Apprentice
are likely to stay with you longer. It isn’t just because it’s an
Indigenous film made by an Indigenous director which touches on
Indigenous themes like respect for elders and teachings as well as the
unique ways we pass down knowledge. It has more to do with how films
like Don’t Look Up aim for low hanging fruit that comes from a
detached place of privilege. In contrast, stories like Kunuk’s are
timeless; a more substantial meal as opposed to something fun, quick and
easy to consume mindlessly. GRIST
Kim Wheeler was adopted during the Sixties Scoop and fought to find her way back to her culture My name is Kim Wheeler but some know me as...
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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
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Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie
NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS
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We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022#AdoptionIsTraumaAND#AdopteeTwitter#FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
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.
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