Help this Sixties Scoop survivor look for his birth family

By Barb Nahwegahbow

Sixty-year old Timothy Marks is a Sixties Scoop survivor and he’s looking for his birth family. He knows he is Mohawk and is registered at Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. But he grew up far from his home territory. The family who adopted him moved him to Hungary when he was just three years old.

Marks tells his story in halting, broken English and frequently turns to his translator, a Hungarian-born man, Laszlo Hollos for help in understanding questions and to communicate his answers. Marks’ first language is Hungarian.

“How am I going to find my family,” he said. “Because I’m wearing my adopted father’s name? He pulled a creased and much-handled letter out of his pocket. It’s from the Brant Family & Children’s Services in Brantford. It gives his birth date as September 12, 1957 and his birth place as Lady Willingdon Hospital in Ohsweken, Ontario. Both his parents were “full-blooded Indians” from the Six Nations Reserve. Marks is Mohawk and he’s registered at Six Nations. His birth name was Robert Louis T. and he was placed in foster care a few days after his birth.

Further information in the letter says his mother was born and raised in Buffalo, New York although she returned to Six Nations on a regular basis. She met Marks’ birth father during one of those visits and had an affair with him, unaware that he was married and had a family. When she learned she was pregnant and was made aware of the father’s situation, the letter says she chose to give up her son for adoption.

In 1959, Marks was adopted by a Hungarian-born woman and her British or Scottish husband. He was three years old when his adopted mother decided to return to her country of birth accompanied by her husband and newly adopted son. Her parents had emigrated to Canada in 1926 when she was three.

“It was not good,” Marks said of his adoptive situation. His adopted mother was physically and verbally abusive. His adopted father was not so bad, he said. Marks was fourteen when his adopted father told him not only was he adopted, but that he was Indigenous Canadian.  Marks was married four times and has five children aged 15 to 35 years.

Marks’ translator and friend, Laszlo Hollos said, “a point that should be stressed is the plight he went through by being taken to a communist country at the height of the Cold War. A lot of people here, they read Marx and Engels and on paper, everything sounds beautiful. But in practice, it was horrible. He went to the worst possible place on earth.”

“It was very bad,” said Marks about growing up in Hungary. “Every week, the police take me away for nothing. Once for having long hair, they took me in for 24 hours.” When he was in custody, the police would slap him around and degrade him verbally.

Marks and Hollos met when both were staying at the Native Men’s Residence and they became fast friends. Since coming to Canada three years ago, Marks was homeless, moving from shelter to shelter. Now, the friends share a two-bedroom apartment.

“I’m sad,” said Marks about his loss and being so far removed from his heritage and his family. He attended the recent Na Me Res Pow Wow and said, “It feels very good,” to be here and to hear the drumming. “Everywhere there is something [Indigenous events], I go,” he said. But still, he’s not angry or resentful about being given up for adoption. But he’d like to claim his birthright as an Indigenous person and learn about his culture, a birthright he’s been denied for 60 years.

If you have an information that can help Timothy Marks, please email news@anishinabek.ca