Should States Guarantee a Right to Know Your Biological Parents?

 

Until recently, children of closed adoptions in Georgia would have to hire an attorney and make the case in court that they needed to know the identity of their biological parents. But a new law ensures that adoptees who are at least 18 years old can get access to a copy of their original birth certificates.

 STORY: https://www.governing.com/policy/should-states-guarantee-a-right-to-know-your-biological-parents

A Baby Adopted, and ICWA failed

 

A video leaks of a wealthy politician describing how he adopted a Native child, leading to outrage from the child’s biological family and members of her tribe. 

LISTEN:  https://revealnews.org/podcast/native-adoption-utah-politician-northern-cheyenne/

Sixties Scoop Survivors call for more support in reconnecting with families

STORY: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/its-been-a-painful-journey-sixties-scoop-survivor-recounts-difficulties-finding-biological-family/

“I always knew I was adopted, I always knew I was Indigenous, but I didn’t know what my connection to the community was,” she said. 

In 2015, Strongwind put in a request for her birth certificate, which had her biological mother’s name listed. Katherine Strongwind at four years old. (Handout)

Sixties Scoop Survivor returns home

A Manitoban taken from his family during the Sixties Scoop has returned to Manitoba for the first time in decades. CTV’s Joseph Bernacki reports.

 

Hooker, who has lived his life in New Zealand, was never able to locate his birth mother, until now.

STORY: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/its-pretty-amazing-sixties-scoop-survivor-returns-home-to-manitoba-50-years-after-being-taken-from-his-home/

During 2020 Zoom Meeting, Boss Recognizes Employee as Child Who Disappeared...

WARNING: I think A.I. made this video.

 

This case involves child trafficking and illegals adoptions. SHOCKING!

Roadblocks

A few years ago, I received an email request to help the daughter of an adoptee. She was writing a dissertation on forced assimilation practices from the boarding school movement to the current foster care system for Indigenous communities in the U.S. "And, for that, I am also writing segments about my own life," she told me.

 I told her that her story is about ROADBLOCKS.

I wrote to her:

I cannot stop thinking about your work. I am trying to research missing children, especially from Carlisle. Some died, but how? Some were placed with farm families off school grounds. Then disappear into thin air.

What the governments did in establishing these residential schools was to create hostages - so their parents wouldn't make war.

Abusing a child is a criminal act but because it was a church school, they got a free pass? No charges?

Like slavery, they made examples and tortured and killed kids to scare the rest of the students... to make them literally insane and fear for their lives.

With adoption it was more permanent - families would be torn apart forever. Sealed files prevent reunion. Adoptees lose everything.

YOUR story is about your truth, how you are running into every roadblock to find your own tribal identity after his adoption. Most of the men adoptees tell me they never had a good relationship with a woman. They could never trust anyone.

This interior trauma follows an adoptee their entire life.  Maybe it happened to your dad, too.  Lots of medical terms exist: severe narcissistic trauma, PTSD, etc.

YOUR story is the roadblock. The printed one-sided oppressor history is bad which is also the goal of oppression.

If you tell your story of the roadblock, people will understand how the gov't wanted this to play out. Not only your dad but you are on the outside as well.

 

Tribal sovereignty - gone. Measuring blood - eventually there won't be any Indian left with enough blood. All the plan.

Family lore is not enough anymore... you have to be able to prove your direct connection to a tribe and have relatives who know you and accept you.

I opened my adoption despite all the roadblocks and was 38 when I finally met my birthfather.  Am I enrolled? No. Why? I do not have a copy of my original birth certificate from Minnesota. I have met relatives on both sides.

 

Despite every roadblock, many many adoptees are finding their way home.  I have two close friends who live on their rez and have met all their relatives. Long process but they did it.

 

Sibling drama ‘Meadowlarks’ examines ‘60s Scoop fallout

Family drama ‘Meadowlarks’ brings scattered ‘60s Scoop siblings together for one weekend

• Cassandra Szklarski The Canadian Press
• Sep 7, 2025

TORONTO - Indigenous performers Michael Greyeyes and Michelle Thrush say the power of film is in bringing light to dark places, and that’s what they hope they can do with their ‘60s Scoop drama, “Meadowlarks.”

Directed by Tasha Hubbard, the family saga about four scattered siblings brought together for one weekend makes its world premiere Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival, and screens again Monday.

It’s inspired by Hubbard’s 2017 documentary “Birth of a Family,” in which four Cree siblings who were taken from their mother as children gather for the first time as adults to piece together their family history.

Reached before TIFF in Naples, Fla., Greyeyes said the government policy remains little-known and “tragically” misunderstood today, more than a generation after 20,000 Indigenous Canadian children were put into foster care or placed for adoption with white families.

"There are various things that we talk about in our culture and people are familiar with them, like MMIW (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls), things like intergenerational trauma — this kind of stuff, people have an understanding of it. And when I go, 'It's about the '60s Scoop,' even people who are pretty versed are like, 'Hmm, what's that?',” Greyeyes said in a joint video call with Thrush, who was in Calgary.

“This is not something that either Canada or the United States are proud of and they buried it.  And part of our job as Indigenous artists is to make sure that the world knows our stories."

Thrush agreed, describing the job of an artist as "we bring light to places that were previously dark.”

“We often enter into territory that's not always talked about or safe or in general conversation," noted Thrush.

Thrush said much of the work involved conveying the inextricable bonds of siblings, but that it wasn't hard to forge a connection with her co-stars, also including Carmen Moore and Alex Rice.

“The characters, as siblings, they lost so many years together. And I felt like working with these three actors and Tasha as our leader, that was our mission, was to fill in that beauty and that love and that light for so many of our community members who are finding their way home,” said Thrush.

“And how incredibly courageous that is for so many people in our communities."  

Reached in Edmonton, where she is an associate professor at the University of Alberta, Hubbard said Indigenous characters are too often treated as set dressing and their stories reduced to sad and tragic tropes. Indigenous creators are changing that, she said.

"We're not just victims all the time, our characters in our films are complicated and beautiful and messy and struggling and overcoming. We have this range of humanity that's been denied for a long time when it comes to film,” said Hubbard.

“I want to send a shoutout to (APTN/Crave series) ‘Little Bird’ and that beautiful series that told the story from childhood to reconnection and the struggles around that."

"I think this film is in conversation with that, (this time focused) around five people in their 50s, which is a special time of life." 

“Meadowlarks” is set to open in theatres in November. The Toronto International Film Festival runs through Sept. 14.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 7, 2025.  

VIA

 

 

REVIEW: https://nextbestpicture.com/meadowlarks/

• 
  
• Press Materials

1. TIFF Lightbox
2. Film + Events
3. Meadowlarks

Meadowlarks

Tasha Hubbard

WORLD PREMIERE

Canada | 2025 | 91m | English

Special Presentations

Film Description

Based on her 2017 documentary Birth of a Family, Tasha Hubbard’s Meadowlarks is an emotional drama that follows four siblings, separated by the Sixties Scoop, as they come together over a week.

Based on her 2017 documentary Birth of a Family, acclaimed filmmaker Tasha Hubbard has turned to drama for the first time.  With Meadowlarks, she takes the story of four siblings, separated as babies, who are reuniting 50 years later during a week spent in Banff.

Kicking off with awkward small talk, gifts, and forced bonding events, the one brother and three sisters do their best to get to know one another after decades apart.

Their forced separation at birth was part of the Sixties Scoop, the term given for the then-common practice of removing Indigenous children from their families, often without consent, and placing them with the child welfare system. While documentaries have covered this topic over the years, nothing has ever fictionalized the experience of uniting as adults and coping with the consequences.

To tell her story, Hubbard has assembled a terrific roster of Indigenous acting stars to play the siblings, including Michael Greyeyes (40 Acres, TIFF ’24), Michelle Thrush (Bones of Crows, TIFF ’22), Carmen Moore (Unnatural & Accidental, TIFF ’06), and Alex Rice (On the Corner, TIFF ’03).  Their surname translates to Meadowlarks.

An emotional journey handled with care, respect, and beauty — one of the Birth of a Family siblings is credited on Meadowlarks as executive producer while Hubbard is a Sixties Scoop survivor — Meadowlarks will leave you in tears, hugging your family members closer.

Content advisory: mature themes

 

Remains of Native American children to be returned to Oklahoma

This week, the U.S. Army announced that 19 Native American children will be disinterred from the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where they were buried after being taken from their families more than a century ago.

After more than a century, Native American children buried at a Pennsylvania boarding school will be returned to their families, marking a significant step toward healing

VIDEO: https://www.koco.com/article/remains-of-native-american-children-returned-oklahoma/65985824 

"These children have been waiting anywhere from 145 years to 126 years to come home,” said Norene Starr, special projects coordinator for the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes

The effort to bring the children home has been ongoing for years, as tribes have been asking for their relatives back from the boarding school where more than 200 children died and are now buried.

"They have been gone, they’ve been missing, all this time, their families had no idea where they went or what happened to them. Some of them were never notified,” Starr said.

The 19 children are from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe.

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe expressed hope that the journey to peace can begin, despite the long wait.

"It's going to bring a lot of peace, maybe not so much closure. It's something we have to do, and we have to do it for our people, and these children, we need to bring them home, so they can rest where they came from,” Starr said.

The tribes view the homecoming as a step toward healing after more than a century of loss.

"There is peace, and healing, and we have to be aware, we have to know and acknowledge everything that has happened before us," Starr said.

(Use the search bar to find all the coverage on Carlisle and the repatriation of these children...Trace) 

 

The Hug

 READ: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/briefings/measuring-mistrust-polls-politics-and-power

IN PICTURES

Jonathan Hooker shares a hug with his biological mother, Patsy George. Hooker is among an estimated 20,000 Indigenous children taken from their families during the ’60s Scoop. (Ruth Bonneville / Free Press)

MMIWG: Patricia Calahasen

 

True North True Crime podcast

Ep. 130/ September 4, 2025

It was the early hours of August 3rd, 2001, in Edmonton, Alberta, when fire crews responded to a dumpster blaze behind a central apartment building. Once the flames were out, they made a horrifying discovery — the burned remains of a young woman.

For nearly two weeks, investigators worked to find out who she was. They canvassed hundreds of apartments and narrowed their search to a short list of missing women. Dental records would confirm the victim was 18-year-old Patricia Calahasen.

What police uncovered next was a story of trust betrayed, a violent assault, and a desperate attempt to destroy the evidence. The person responsible was just 17 years old. But for Patricia’s family, the fight for justice has lasted decades.

--

This podcast is recorded on the territories of the Coast Salish people.

Memoir gives voice to #60sScoop experience of being raised outside of Indigenous culture

Brittany Penner. Photo supplied. Credit Michael Maren.

 

By Shari Narine, Windspeaker.com Books Feature Writer
September 4th, 2025  

Children Like Us: A Métis Woman's Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home is Brittany Penner’s account of being adopted as a baby by a Mennonite family in Manitoba and searching for her birth parents.

Such an adoption practise—having white families raise Indigenous children—continues, points out Penner, who is now 36 years old.

“I really keep thinking about…how many children and teenagers are still facing realities like this where…they have been cut off from their first families, where they're being raised outside of their culture, and how it's not something that's in the past. It is something that is still very present across our country today,” said Penner, who has Anishinaabe, Cree and European settler lineage.

When Penner started writing her memoir, it was under a different title. But when she explained it to people, the phrase “children like us” kept coming up. 

“It was always in reference to…children who were Indigenous, who were placed for adoption or relinquished or apprehended or in foster care. And that was just how I think, and my siblings and my cousins, collectively, thought of ourselves,” she said.

Penner and the other Indigenous children who were fostered or adopted by her extended Mennonite family were part of the Sixties Scoop, a common practise by the Canadian government to place Métis, First Nations and Inuit children with non-Indigenous families in other provinces and sometimes in other countries.  The Sixties Scoop began in the 1950s, ramped up in the 1960s, and carried through until mid-1980. It’s estimated 20,000 children were taken.

Penner was the only child her parents adopted.  She had numerous foster siblings (21 before her seventh birthday), who she connected with as brothers and sisters only to have them torn away from her over the years.  Due to these losses, as a youngster she became obsessed with when she would be taken away, and it was a fear she lived with despite her mother’s attempted reassurances that that that would not happen to her. Her father’s Mennonite family, including his parents, adopted and fostered numerous Indigenous children. These were the Native aunts and uncles and cousins that Penner grew up with.

In offering her story, Penner cautions the reader in the book’s foreword that this is “not a memoir wherein I ask you to choose a side.” She says that mattered to her because, when she was growing up, she was told she “should be grateful” that her adoptive parents had chosen her.

As she writes in her memoir, “I’m adopted. I’m reminded of this again and again and again—until I begin to believe there is something inherently wrong with me for not feeling unendingly lucky.”

keep reading👇 

Hiatus

Yup, every one needs to go outside and relax.

We'll be back posting next month! 

‘Sisters in the Wind’

Indigenous Author Centers Foster Youth in Upcoming Thriller

By Nancy Marie Spears

Angeline Boulley’s third novel, “Sisters in the Wind” chronicles an Ojibwe teen girl’s experience in foster care. Provided photos.

“Native families are like onions,” fiction author Angeline Boulley writes in her latest novel about Indigenous families caught up in the child welfare system. 

They are “rough-looking on the outside,” she goes on. “People want to peel the outer layers and toss them away, as if they have no value. But each layer is protecting the next, down to its innermost core. That green center, where the onion is sweetest, that’s the Native child. Surrounded by layers of family and community.”

Boulley’s third book, “Sisters in the Wind,” offers a rare Indigenous-centric glimpse into the failings of the country’s child welfare system. The young adult novel, set to publish next month, is meant to show what can happen when a federal law meant to ensure that Indigenous families remain intact is not followed, and how a child’s life can be improved when it is, the Michigan author said in a recent interview.

The thriller follows Lucy Smith, an Ojibwe teen who is running for her life, away from traumatic figures she encountered while growing up in foster care. As an adult she navigates a difficult childhood spent in various placements before finding family and healing. 

Publisher’s Weekly called the book a devastating, gripping tale “that serves as a searing critique of the ways that systems can fail vulnerable youth.”

At points in the novel, Boulley’s protagonist experiences dehumanizing moments common to foster youth everywhere, including when she is forced to carry her belongings in a trash bag during a move to a new home. 

Recently, states including New York and Texas have prohibited child welfare agencies from doling out trash bags, and now require them to provide proper suitcases to children. Such laws, “need to be everywhere,’’ Boulley said, adding that she believes making foster youth use garbage bags sends the clear message, “that they themselves are trash.’’  

An insight into Angeline Boulley’s creative process: Color-coded spreadsheets detail characters’ lives and her cat, Pietro, comforts her. Provided photo.

As an adult, Smith eventually goes to work as a research intern for a company that trains child welfare professionals on the workings of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The 1978 federal law, known as ICWA, requires state foster care agencies to take extra steps to ensure Indigenous families stay together. The fictional company in the novel is based on real work Indigenous people are doing to preserve families and tribal communities in Boulley’s home state of Michigan, she said.  

In the case of the novel’s protagonist, ICWA was not followed as she moved through the foster care system. In one bleak scene, a social worker tells Smith that identifying as Indigenous will only muddle her situation.

“It complicates everything,’’ Smith is told. “Just say you’re Mexican.”

Later, Smith comes to believe that the abusive situations she endured in non-Native foster homes never would have happened had she been placed with tribal relatives. 

Boulley, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa, hopes a particular message in her novel will reach child welfare professionals who might read it:  

“When ICWA is followed correctly, it works,” Boulley said. “The issues that arise primarily come when social services and court personnel don’t understand the law. They continue with assumptions and misconceptions, and that ends up complicating children’s lives.’’

Boulley was never in foster care herself. But she and her siblings grew up spending summers visiting the Sault Ste. Marie reservation in Michigan where she knew several young relatives being raised by kin outside of the foster care system. 

“Growing up, I didn’t think it was anything unusual to have cousins that were raised by my grandma,” Boulley said. “That was just normal.”

Her work on “Sisters in the Wind’’ began years ago, but she felt an urgency to complete it following recent legal challenges to ICWA. In a United States Supreme Court case two years ago, multiple states and three foster families argued that the federal statute was unconstitutional and interfered with a non-Indigenous couple’s right to adopt an Native child. 

A Supreme Court ruling upheld the law in June 2023. But, Boulley said, “We know it’s not the final assault on tribal sovereignty.’’

SOURCE:  https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/indigenous-author-centers-foster-youth-in-upcoming-thriller/265041

UC Officials to Face Lawmakers Over Failure to Return Native American Remains and Artifacts

 delay delay delay....

Top officials from the University of California were called to account Tuesday morning for their ongoing failure to return thousands of Native American human remains and hundreds of thousands of sacred cultural artifacts, as required by both federal and state law.

The hearing - scheduled for 9 a.m. in Room 1100 of the Capitol Annex Building at 1021 "O" Street - is a joint session of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee and the Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs.

Despite three critical audits over the past five years - in 2019, 2021, and most recently in April 2025 - UC has made limited progress in complying with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), enacted more than 30 years ago, and a similar California law passed 24 years ago.

https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/uc-officials-to-face-lawmakers-over-failure-to-return-native-american-remains-and-artifacts

Diné designer Amy Denet Deal brings indigenous fashion to Santa Fe

What brought you to Santa Fe? Were you born on nearby Diné land?

I was born in ‘64. The Indian Child Welfare Act was [enacted] after I was born, so I was adopted out. During Indian relocation in the 60s, my mom was relocated to Ohio, which was a very common way that the government spread out the Native youth to break up the uprisings.

She got pregnant with me out in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest, and I got snatched up by Catholic Charities and adopted out with no connection to my birth family and was raised by non-natives in the Midwest.

I had a great childhood, but no connection to culture — not for lack of love, just for lack of education and lack of protocol by the government. It’s a little bit different now: I'm very supportive of the Indian Child Welfare Act because it protects our children from what I've been through.

In hindsight, I learned amazing things in the outside world that I'm able to bring back. My reintegration— coming home — was in 2019. My daughter graduated high school, so in my empty nest phase, I was like, I'm going to learn what it means to become a Dinemic matriarch. I came home.

KEEP READING:

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/profiles-strategies/2025/08/amy-denet-deal.html 

Recovering The Lost Knowledge of Our First Nations

A Used Book from 1896 Yields a Fascinating Find

 

Some History and a Challenging Question by Steven Newcomb

A Used Book from 1896 Yields a Fascinating Find

Read on Substack 

 

Excerpt:

Two of the contributors to the book were U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes from Massachusetts, and his wife Anna L. Dawes.  She wrote Chapter XIII of the book, titled “The Story of the Indian.”  An excerpt of Ms. Dawes’s chapter (with edits based on my Domination Translator added), reads:

“At the time when our forefathers first landed on these shores, they found the Indian here [living free and independent]. Whether at Plymouth or Jamestown, at the mouth of the Hudson [River] or in Florida, their first welcome was from the red man. . . [T]he white settler coveted the land and pushed the Indian off it that he might dwell there in peace. And it must be said that in the seventeenth century [the 1600s] he [the Christian European] violated no tradition, set himself against no law, human or divine, when he did this [pushed the Indian off the land by establishing domination over it].

“Possession [domination] was still the right of the stronger, the world over, and the conquest [domination] of new countries the chief glory of king and commons alike. To flee away from oppression [domination] was the only refuge, and to the oppressor [dominator] as well as oppressed [dominated] it seemed a natural resort. The country was broad enough for both, thought the white man. If the red man could not live with the new comers on the coast, let him fly to the fresh wilderness of the interior; and so he did, year after year, until one day there was no more wilderness [where the Native peoples could live free].”

Anna Dawes’s explanation acknowledges that the Original Nations and Peoples of the continent had been living perfectly free for countless generations when the Christian Europeans arrived and “coveted the land,” meaning “to desire what belonged to someone else.”  She goes on to describe a centuries-long process whereby, for generations, the free Nations and Peoples were forced by foreign and invading colonizers and their descendants to live under the invading People’s claim of a right of domination, which she calls “oppression.”

As question arises:  Will it be possible for the Original Nations and Peoples which have been living under the invading claim of a right of domination for so long, to one day free themselves from that claim?

CLICK LINK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/stevennewcomb/p/some-history-and-a-challenging-question?r=cbskx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false 

 

DAWES ACT:

 READ:  https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dawes-act

 

Rebuild progress two years after the destructive Lahaina fires

MAUI and Lahaina's wealthy residents

And it’s now been over two years since Lahaina was destroyed by the tragic wildfires of August 8th of 2023, that killed 102 people, left thousands of people homeless.

???  “Lahaina’s not going to get rebuilt for another five years.” ?  WTH? I'd say this was expected... Native Hawaiians are stuck, out of luck and cannot afford to live on their own lands! ... That was THE PLAN! Trace

READ: https://www.hawaiifreepress.com/Articles-Main/ID/45975/Lahaina-rebuild-could-move-along-faster-if-

Who are Museums Really For?

 

The film tells the story of the accidental discovery of the Cheguigo Monolith, an ancient stone figure, by a 14-year-old boy exploring the countryside in 1960.

It’s a stark reminder: Sometimes the best way to kill something and rob it of its history is to place it in a museum.

Binnigula’sa’ (Ancient Zapotec People) (2024) is directed by Jorge Ángel Pérez and was screened at the Blackstar Film Festival. It is available for viewing online. 

READ MORE: https://hyperallergic.com/1031896/jorge-angel-perez-binnigulasa-ancient-zapotec-people-film/?vgo_ee=ky%2B0bH0Hkh0ZfZImUhZc6T6FhVh601PcE66%2BMeqQyg%3D%3D%3AXQQhbg4hUPprXCbmwp2MEQT7bkdrds6i

The Indigenous Paleolithic - Paulette Steeves

 

My friend Paulette!

Meet Raven Reid | Reverie 2024

 

In the fall of 2024, ‪@cbcmusic‬ and ‪@SOCANmusic‬ launched Reverie: The Indigenous Music Residency, an initiative created to foster the talents of Indigenous musicians. The program brought together six artists, including singer-songwriter ‪@ravenreid9080‬ , an incredible artist with ancestral ties to the Mikisew First Nation.  Originally from Yellowknife, NWT, and raised in Prince Albert, she now lives and creates in Saskatoon. Reid’s voice is powerful both in and out of her music.  She is also a respected public speaker, using her platform to share her personal story and advocate for survivors of the Sixties Scoop.

Meet Raven Reid | Reverie 2024, Raven Reid, Sixties Scoop survivor, Indigenous folk music, singer-songwriter, Indigenous artist, Mikisew Cree First Nation, Yellowknife, Saskatoon, healing music, storytelling, folk singer, Canadian music, protest songs, social justice, Indigenous rights, mental health awareness, resilience, overcoming adversity, inspirational music, new music, independent artist, live performance, guitar songs, powerful vocals, songwriter, Indigenous culture, First Nations, singer, acoustic, folk 

Erase the People and Sell The land

 

Dakota wife of Little Crow and their two children at Fort Snelling, MN concentration camp in 1863 (left), Palestinian woman Samah Abu Latifa, who fled her home amid Israeli strikes, shelters with her family in a kindergarten, in khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 10, 2023 (right) 

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK AND READ ON SUBSTACK... very important story! ... Trace

Erase the People and Sell the Land by Sean Sherman

Live Streaming Genocide and Famine... Thoughts from 1863 Minnesota to 2025 Gaza

Read on Substack

Piapot First Nation members learn more about their family histories at genealogy workshop

 

Dwayne Noname is happy he found out more about his great-grandparents and wants to share with family what he has learned. (Louise BigEagle/CBC)

Dwayne Noname always wanted to know where exactly he came from and a workshop in Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan is helping him find out.

Noname's community, roughly 90 kilometres north of Regina, hosted a genealogy and kinship workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.  Piapot members were taught how to trace their family trees and how to gather and organize family photos, documents and oral stories, something Noname said he was happy to see people participating in.

"It's quite interesting to see where everybody comes from, my parents, grandparents," said Noname.

Noname said now that he has a paper trail of his ancestors, he hopes to pass the knowledge down to his relatives' children who want to know more about their family and where their last name came from.

Through learning more about his great-grandparents, Noname also learned that he is Saulteaux.

"I thought I was Cree," he said.

"I feel confident and feel really great about myself who I really am as a person."

Chief Mark Fox said In a written statement that the workshop was held to help reconnect members to their roots, family names and stories.  Fox said the workshop will also help Sixties Scoop and residential school survivors recover their loss of identity.

"Knowing your history is knowing your story," Fox's statement said.

READ MORE:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/piapot-family-genealogy-workshop-1.7603484 

Indigenous historian Cody Groat credits Laurier with shaping his path as a storyteller and scholar

 

Groat's father, Bill (left), a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, passed away in 2022. The sharing of his story, with an examination of broader themes including intergenerational trauma, Indigenous masculinities and the long-term effects of colonial policies, is Groat’s latest project. 

Groat’s time as a PhD student also led to his first university teaching role, stepping in as a sessional instructor at St. Paul’s University College (now United College) at the University of Waterloo. The course on Indigenous Studies provided Groat with an opportunity for a deeply personal teaching moment. 

“My dad, Bill, was a Sixties Scoop survivor and a transport truck driver — just an average guy,” says Groat. “I asked him to come speak to my class about his experience as an Indigenous person in the child welfare system.  About three minutes into the lecture, he just started bawling his eyes out.  He’d never talked about his life before, and it was just a release.” 

The experience resonated deeply, and Groat’s father went on to guest lecture several more times, including for Brookfield’s History of Adoption classes at Laurier Brantford.  

“He never finished high school and had some literacy issues, but he loved being a ‘university instructor,’ as he called himself,” says Groat. “He wanted to tell his story so others could learn from it.” 

Groat is Mohawk and a band member of Six Nations of the Grand River.  

READ MORE:   https://www.wlu.ca/features/2025/summer/indigenous-historian-cody-groat-credits-laurier-with-shaping-his-path-as-a-storyteller-and-scholar.html

Kamloops #60sScoop survivor finally finds family roots at age 70

 It's NEVER too late! ... Trace

Herb Charlie is a Sixties Scoop survivor and member of the Sq’ewlets First Nation who lives in Kamloops, pictured here at the Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society.

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

CONTENT ADVISORY

Kamloops Indigenous elder Herb Charlie was forcibly removed from his biological mother two days after he was born in Vancouver in 1955.

He was placed in an orphanage with hundreds of other babies for two-and-a-half years before being placed in the foster home of a white woman.

Charlie was one of more than 20,000 First Nation, Metis and Inuit children in Canada removed from their homes from the early 1950s to the early 1980s in a government program known as the Sixties Scoop, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Indigenous babies were placed with non-Indigenous families without the parent or band’s consent as part of an effort to assimilate them into white society.

According to a report Charlie recently obtained from the federal government, during his first two years of life he was over institutionalized resulting in delayed walking and speech. 

In that same report, Charlie is described by professional social and care workers as an unattractive baby, a dirty little Indian, a retard and a moron.

“Back in the time when I was born it was an era where prejudice was very high against Indigenous people, the racism was worse back then,” he said. 

keep reading👇 

Returning items takes time, research, negotiation and deep trust

 What a remarkable decision! Trace

Revere Auctions is the only known auction house with a formal process for returning spiritual and cultural belongings to Native nations.

By Sofia Barnett

The Minnesota Star Tribune | August 3, 2025

Sean Blanchet, co-founder of Revere Auctions, looks through the warehouse in St. Paul. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Before every auction, Sean Blanchet sends a spreadsheet to Washington, D.C., where it lands in the inbox of the Association on American Indian Affairs.

There, researchers comb through the list of Native American items up for sale at his St. Paul auction house — tribal masks, feathered war bonnets, ceremonial objects — and flag anything with spiritual or tribal significance.

And when they do, Blanchet doesn’t haggle. He pulls it from the Revere Auctions catalog and sends it home.

“My number one goal is to move the object from where it is, to where it should be,” he said.

Blanchet’s approach is practically unheard of in an industry where tribes are often forced to buy back their own stolen history — or watch it disappear into private collections.

According to AAIA CEO Shannon O’Loughlin, Revere is the only auction house in the United States — and the world — with a formal process for reviewing and returning Native items.

“It is extremely surprising,” she said, “because he’s taking his good faith responsibility, as well as his ethical and moral responsibility, seriously.”

O’Loughlin’s organization has tracked more than 15,000 potentially sensitive Native items sold at auction in 2025 alone. That number exceeded 20,000 last year. Despite the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, she said, there is no real enforcement mechanism for items held in private hands — where most auctioned collections originate.

An ethics statement on Revere’s website acknowledges that many Native American items currently on the secondary market were stolen or unethically purchased. Blanchet sees the moral gap clearly.

“Some of these super sacred objects,” he said, “definitely should not be sold.”

Sean Blanchet, co-founder of Revere Auctions, stands next to a Native American war bonnet that the St. Paul company is helping to repatriate. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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LONG TIME COMING!

 

 

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has some 908 individual remains and 79,628 funerary objects in its collection, which are subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

“We never ceded or relinquished our dead. They were stolen,” James Riding In, a retired Arizona State University professor who is Pawnee, has said of the unreturned remains.

There are 574 federally recognized tribes and approximately 400 additional tribes that are not federally recognized.

 READ MORE:

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/08/pa-state-museum-closes-native-american-exhibit-returns-1000s-of-artifacts-under-federal-law.html 

Army Conducts Eighth Year of Disinterment and Return of Native American Children at Carlisle Barracks

The U.S. Army will continue its mission to reunite Native American families with their ancestors through the eighth year of disinterment efforts at Carlisle Barracks, beginning on September 5, 2025.

The individuals scheduled for disinterment include Wallace Perryman of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, along with Belle Cahoe, Wash E. He, Tabitha Carroll, Jane Lumpfoot, Leah Road Traveler, Percy Whitebear, George Harrison, Charles Whiteshield, Matavito Horse, Nannie Little Robe, Dora Morning, Louise Thunder, Giles Hands, Ruben Tanpeds, Henry Morning, William Sammers, Abe Lincoln, and Elsie Davis—all from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.   

READ MORE: https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/army-conducts-eighth-year-of-disinterment-and-return-of-native-american-children-at-carlisle-barracks

How the system was rigged from the beginning (in Australia)

 

The Haves and the Have Nots: Native Title and the Mob Left Behind by Professor Megan Davis

Read on Substack

 

LINK 

Native American remains uncovered in Belmont, Indigenous tribe leaders say

California's NAGPRA

NAGPRA: Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians and California State Parks Celebrate Cultural Items Returning Home

 GOOD NEWS:  https://www.parks.ca.gov/NewsRelease/1406