Manitoba ’60s Scoop survivors sent abroad want reparations

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This article was published 26/09/2017 (2944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A grassroots group of ’60s Scoop survivors are asking Ottawa to compensate Indigenous Manitobans who were whisked away from their homes to places as far-flung as New Zealand.

“Canada committed genocide against ’60s Scoop survivors, by removing us from our nations, our Aboriginal rights and our families,” Duane Morrisseau-Beck, co-director of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network, told reporters Tuesday

Roughly 20,000 children were taken from their families across Canada and placed in provincial foster homes or adopted abroad. It is unknown how many were taken from Manitoba.

The activist group is calling on the federal government to rise above overlapping lawsuits and start a process to compensate survivors. Ottawa says talks are ongoing for an apology and compensation.

The group is also likely the first to seek a means of repatriation for children Canada sent abroad.

That would include Brent Mitchell, whom child-welfare authorities apprehended at the age of one. They circled him through eight foster homes before sending him to New Zealand at age five, in 1963. Canada paid for his foster care, in an abusive home.

Mitchell was told his mother was “an Indian” from Canada, but it wasn’t until 1997 that he was able to track down his mother’s Métis roots in Sagkeeng First Nation.

“When I was 15, I asked to come home and was told I had no family,” Mitchell told reporters, holding back tears. “I’ve had three suicide attempts over my life. I was diagnosed with PTSD.”

He’s since been able to connect with two of his six siblings, all of whom had been adopted. The three of them discovered a shared sense of humour, and made a bittersweet visit to Sagkeeng together.

“We could envision ourselves running through the bushes and enjoying ourselves. So what, if we didn’t have running water or a toilet? We wouldn’t have worried about that,” he said.

“We would’ve been with our mother and grandmother, but we’ve missed all of that.”

That pain resounds with Morrisseau-Beck, though he was raised within the province.

The Métis man was born in October 1968 at Sainte Rose du Lac, near Dauphin. Morrisseau-Beck spent his first few months in hospital before being put up for adoption and sent to The Pas.

After a few months in hospital, Catholic staff convinced Morrisseau-Beck’s mother to sign away her rights to both of her children because she had gotten pregnant as a teenager and the father didn’t have a job. The same thing happened to his brother.

“You don’t even have to live far to feel isolated,” he said. “I was a complete emotional, mental mess.”

In despair, Morrisseau-Beck turned to alcohol and unsafe sex, leading to addictions and HIV. At a particularly low point, the aspiring musician pawned off his guitar for drugs. But during a visit to a sweatlodge, an elder told him he had to find his family.

Morrisseau-Beck listed himself in Manitoba’s adoption registry, and he established contact with his birth mother.

He now holds a government job in Ottawa and testified last month at a United Nations body in Geneva.

His group is assisting University of Regina professor complete a research project on the ’60s Scoop, which has also helped link families. This week is the group’s third annual meeting.

Outside of the group, as many as 18 court battles are seeking compensation for ’60s Scoop survivors, with two class-actions filed in Manitoba alone.

In February, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett announced the government wouldn’t appeal an Ontario case that found liability on Ottawa’s part, and said an apology is in the works for survivors in each province.

Bennett’s office said Tuesday that it has engaged the plaintiffs of the various lawsuits in a consultation process.

“The ’60s Scoop is a dark and painful chapter in Canada’s history and resolving these cases is a vital step in our journey of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” read a statement. “Negotiation, rather than litigation, is the government’s preferred route to settle differences, and right historical wrongs.”

But activists were confused last month when Ottawa filed a response in the Ontario case, saying any compensation would require individual assessment instead of a blanket cash payment. Bennett’s office says it’s committed to the negotiating process, but has to continue filing responses to the Ontario case until plaintiffs withdraw the suit.

Ottawa seems to share activists’ vision for reparations and an apology that goes beyond a simple cash transfer, with Bennett’s office mulling “revitalizing and restoring language and culture through community programs.”

Federal liability would surround breaking people’s ties with their culture by transferring them to provincial care. Abuse and living conditions would fall under provincial responsibility.

In June 2015, former premier Greg Selinger made Manitoba the first province to apologize for its role in the ’60s Scoop.

Mitchell returns to rural New Zealand shortly, where he has a construction job and a home. He said it’s easier to move on with his life as he gets his roots back.

“I just want to let other survivors know that there’s hope to find your family,” he said, thinking of his four missing siblings. “There’s light on the horizon, and I will find them.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca