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The Sixties Scoop

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The Sixties Scoop “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”: Canadian Policies of Child Apprehension and Relocation From Indigenous Communities By Julia Peristerakis A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts Department of Sociology University of Manitoba August 2014 Copyright © Julia Peristerakis Abstract Debate has been reignited about whether genocide occurred in Canada. The residential school system has garnered attention as a system of attempted genocide, involving the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities with the goal of assimilating those children into Anglo-European culture. The residential school system began to wind down in the 1960s, but the introduction of provincial child welfare services on reserves and the migration of many Indigenous families to urban centres led to increased apprehension of children from their families by the state. Most of these children were placed with non-Indigenous foster and adoptive families, often out-of-province and sometimes out-of-country. This period of apprehension and relocation of Indigenous children came to be known as the Sixties Scoop. In this paper, I examine the continuities between the residential school system and the Sixties Scoop era of the child welfare system using a relational genocide framework to analyze attempted group destruction. The main finding of this thesis is that the forcible removal of Indigenous children from one group to another threatened the survival of Indigenous communities and the ability of groups to reproduce themselves according to their own cultural codes. ii Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Christopher Powell, for his excellent guidance and support at every stage of the planning, research and writing process. I am grateful for his knowledge, patience and insightful feedback, which kept me focused and motivated throughout this project. I would also like to thank the rest of my thesis committee, Dr. Andrew Woolford and Dr. Kiera Ladner for their valuable feedback and encouragement. I am also grateful to the staff and faculty of the Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba for their ongoing support and advice. I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to my family and friends who have encouraged me throughout this project. Finally, I wish to acknowledge that this research was supported by the Barbara Payne Memorial Award, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Award and Department of Sociology and Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Tri-Council Award Holders Top Up. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction and Historical Context ...............................................................................1 Situating Myself ...................................................................................................................1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................3 Historical Context ...............................................................................................................5 The Indian Residential School System in Canada ...............................................................9 The Sixties Scoop Era of The Child Welfare System ........................................................12 Chapter 2: Theoretical and Methodological Framework ...............................................................14 Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 15 Genocide Framework .........................................................................................................16 Relational Sociology ..........................................................................................................19 Genealogy ..........................................................................................................................21 A Decolonizing Methodology ............................................................................................23 Chapter 3: The First Era - The Residential School System ..........................................................27 Traditional Education .........................................................................................................27 Beginning of the School System ........................................................................................28 An Expanding System ........................................................................................................31 Violations in the Schools ..................................................................................................32 Inuit Experiences ...............................................................................................................36 Metis Experiences .............................................................................................................40 Resistance ......................................................................................................................... 41 The End of the System .......................................................................................................43 Chapter 4: The Second Era - The Sixties Scoop ............................................................................45 The History of Child Welfare in Canada ...........................................................................45 Origins of the Sixties Scoop ..............................................................................................46 A Third Era: The Millennium Scoop .................................................................................54 Chapter 5: Findings and Discussion ............................................................................................. 62 Continuities Between the Systems .....................................................................................62 Devaluing Indigenous Families and Homes ......................................................................63 Differing Worldviews and Lifeways .................................................................................68 Interconnected Issues .........................................................................................................74 Chapter 6: Conclusion, Limitations and Future Research .............................................................81 Genocide in Canada ...........................................................................................................81 Ongoing Resistance ...........................................................................................................86 Limitations and Future Research .......................................................................................88 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................90 iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT Situating Myself My position writing this thesis is that of a non-Indigenous Canadian woman. My mother is a fifth generation Catholic Canadian of European and British descent while my father is Greek immigrant, currently living in rural Manitoba. Growing up in Winnipeg, I have always been fairly cognizant of the systemic discrimination and racial oppression facing the Indigenous peoples in Manitoba. But it was not until my first years of university that I was able to apply those terms to what was such an obvious occurrence in this country. My first real understanding came from reading Beatrice Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree and Yvonne Johnson’s Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman. The latter is a personal account of poverty, addiction, abuse and sexual violence, in which Yvonne eventually finds herself on the streets of downtown Winnipeg. Reading about her life experiences enabled me to begin to acknowledge my own class and race privilege within Canadian settler society. As a descendant of European settlers to Canada, I am not removed from the issues facing Indigenous Peoples in Canada. I am, in fact, quite directly implicated in them and specifically in the history of the residential school system in Canada. My mother’s oldest sister was a teacher in the Assiniboia Residential School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I first learned about residential schools at 9 years old while riding my bike with my mother past the former residential school. We stopped and she carefully explained to me that my aunt had worked in that residential school, which was one of many institutions to which Indigenous children were brought, away from their homes and families. She further explained that while terrible abuses had happened to many of the children in the school system, that my aunt was a kind and dedicated teacher. 1 Since this was in the 1990s, I imagine now that my Mother was learning, perhaps for the first time, about the horrors and multiple abuses that many students had faced in residential schools. During this time, media coverage was increasing and Survivors were sharing their stories, in the thousands. The horrors of their experiences were shocking Canadians across the country and more truths were still to be exposed. I remember that day with surprising clarity and still feel uneasy when I pass by that old school building. Years later, while working at the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence
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