Opinion: Where is home? A perspective from a Sixties Scoop survivor

By Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith

Aanii Christine nitiishinikaas. Peguis nitoonci. Mashkedebejiki ni totem. (Hello, my name is Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith. I am from Peguis First Nation and Buffalo is my clan). My Anishinaabe name is Miskonoodinkwe (Red Wind Woman) which I came into later on in life when I returned to the teachings and language of my culture.

I am a Sixties Scoop survivor, a Bill C-31 status Anishinaabe woman, and a daughter of a Saulteaux mother and a Cree father. I was born in Winnipeg over 40 years ago. Unfortunately, my parents separated while my mother was pregnant with me. This period of time was difficult for ni mama (my mother). As a result, child welfare officials from the city stepped in and took me and three other siblings away from her. When I was three-years-old, and my sister, Doreen Marguerite, and I were adopted together into an affluent Caucasian family and lived in the province of Ontario.

My childhood was not happy, in fact it was rather traumatic and has left searing emotional scars on me, even to this day. My adoptive home was fraught with many emotional, physical, mental and spiritual abuses. In this adoptive home, I was treated like a prisoner. My freedom was being able to attend school, but while at home, I was locked in my bedroom with bolts on the door and an alarm. If the alarm went off, I received beatings. I was starved as I was not allowed a lot of foods, which led to the life-threatening eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, from the age of 12 until my 20’s.

At the age of 10, my adoptive parents, under the guise of saying I would be going to a boarding school, dropped me off at a home for troubled kids. After a few visits, I was made to believe that I would be heading back home for a visit. Instead, I was given notice that I would not be returning home, and in fact was returned to care under the Roman Catholic Children’s Aid Society. Knowing that my adoptive parents didn’t want me left me beyond scarred, even though they were abusive towards me. I often felt that because they didn’t want me, no one would ever want me, let alone love me. I was devastated.

I still remember the day I was sitting in the courtroom and hearing my then adoptive father state to the judge, “We do not want Christine anymore. We give her up to the Children’s Aid Society.” At the same time, they effectively cut me off from my only friend and ally, my sister, who was only 10 months older than me. She continued to live with them.

I stayed in that group home in Ontario for a year and then moved through three foster homes in the next seven years. I was supposed to transition out of the Children’s Aid Society by living in an independent living home, after my third foster home, but due to difficulties with my anorexia and the onset of acute depression and suicide attempts, the Children’s Aid kicked me out of their care well before I was able to receive any treatment. At that time, I reunited with my birth sister and the adoptive father who had given me up. The relationship with my past adoptive father was difficult to say the least and contributed even more to the health difficulties I was going through.

At this time, I also regained my Indian status. It seems kind of funny to me now, but I did not regain my Indian status on my own. I regained my status upon the advice of my family doctor at the time, when she realized that I could not afford to pay for my anti-depressant medications. So although I knew I was status Indian, I really did not understand what “being status” really meant because I had no one in my life to ever talk to me about my heritage.

I grew up knowing I was different, in the sense that I was First Nations, but did not come into knowing my culture until I moved to Toronto. Coming into my culture, traditions and the ways of my people did not happen until I was well into my 20’s and early 30’s because at that time I was finally surrounded by people who took an interest in showing me that it was okay to embrace my culture.

I began searching for my birth family and was fortunate to find my biological mother who was living out in Saskatchewan at the time. Finding her was a dream come true for me because all my life I had wondered who she was and what she looked like. Through a repatriation worker, my mom and I had a reunion in Winnipeg, and I got to meet my uncles and aunt on her side of the family. Sadly, I found out that my biological father had been murdered in 1996. In the past couple of years, I have finally made contact with a half sister and brother from his side and have finally been given a picture of him.

In my years since moving to Toronto, I eventually learned that I had to cut any contact I had with my adoptive father and mother to keep myself in recovery. This decision, though difficult, also led me to going to Victim’s Compensation with the help of my psychiatrist and the Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee office and testifying in a hearing what my adoptive parents did to me. I was successful in suing them for what they did. The money I received wasn’t that important, even though it was helpful. Essentially, all I wanted was an apology from my adoptive parents for what they did to me. I never received that apology, and I have had to live with knowing that I will probably never get that apology from them.

Acknowledgement of my history and my journey as an Anishinaabe kwe has been difficult. It does not come naturally or easily because of all the complexities it has attached to it. All the years of searching for myself and searching for my mother and the rest of my biological family has been tiring but also rewarding. It still makes me angry and divided in how I feel towards the Canadian government and their assimilationist policies towards what has happened with my people and countless other Indigenous children.

The impact of the Sixties Scoop has made me question the concept of home, and what it actually means. When I contemplate what home is, I think about my biological family, question the audacity of the Canadian government and their puppets who took my siblings and I away from my mother, and that we were kidnapped to another province. It has taken me years and I’m still healing from that so-called family that adopted me, only to have them give me up and put me back into care at the age of ten. Going through the foster care system and becoming a ward of the Children’s Aid Society is something no child should have to go through.

Where is home I ask? I made Toronto my home after I moved here for treatment that quite literally saved me from an untimely death. I found my birth mother in my early 30’s and I travelled back and forth and fought to establish a relationship with her because that is what I wanted the most. Holidays and birthdays are hard because I have often felt like I’m the one who is long-lost because I am now an orphan and have been for years, especially since my mother died a year and a half ago. I can no longer call her or reach out to her; she became and was the glue that held me together in so many ways because I could finally say, “I have a mom”. I can’t say that anymore, and that hurts me to the core. It’s a pain that never goes away.

Others have stepped in and have helped me to establish what home could mean. I thank the Toronto Indigenous community; I thank First Nations House at the University of Toronto and other individuals I’ve met while I was fortunate to study at the University of Toronto, not only for my undergraduate degree but also my Masters degree.

Canada, you made me and countless other Indigenous children/people feel lost because really, what is home without community, culture and language? Home – what is it? Where is it? These are questions that often leave me reeling and wondering if I will ever feel at home spiritually and emotionally. There’s a physicality to what home is, and Canada and their assimilationist policies took that away from me and that is not something easy to get over.