Sixties Scoop survivors start support line

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This article was published 27/11/2017 (2882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A grassroots group of Sixties Scoop survivors launched a toll-free support line on Monday, pooling their funds to help the thousands coming to terms with being ripped from their families.

“It’s community-led; it’s by survivors and for survivors,” said call-taker Colleen Cardinal, who co-founded the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (NISCWN).

“Who better to understand your story than other Sixties Scoop adoptees who have been through it themselves?”

The group, which isn’t connected to any litigation, is using donations from survivors, unions and corporations to pay for calls from across Canada and the United States.

The aim is to provide a confidential service to refer people to nearby groups, books and counsellors — but more often, just to be a listening ear for people in distress.

Eight hours into the hotline’s existence, Cardinal had taken five calls, mostly from western provinces.

Last month, the federal government announced it would settle as many as 19 lawsuits and compensate Indigenous people who had been placed in non-Indigenous foster homes when they were children, often without a reason. It’s unknown how many Manitobans were caught up in the Sixties Scoop, which spanned the 1960s to the 1980s, and involved roughly 20,000 children.

Carolyn Bennett, the minister for Crown-Indigenous relations, announced the $800-million payout will compensate each survivor from $25,000 to $50,000 and create a new “foundation for healing” aimed at reviving Indigenous languages and cultures, with a separate legal fund.

Cardinal said the announcement gave solace to some, but consternation to others who don’t know if they’ll be compensated. She says dozens of people in either situation felt traumatized by having the issue in the press, and there wasn’t a federal hotline to help with that.

“We’re having to pick up that slack, and provide the resources,” Cardinal said.

She said Bennett’s office referred the group to a civil servant, who helped them fill out an application for funding. Until then, it’s coming from the group’s coffers.

“We’ll be picking up the cost; I’m not sure how. Even if we have to pay out of our pockets, we would. Because there’s such a need for this.”

NISCWN co-director Duane Morrisseau-Beck was taken from a hospital near Dauphin months after his October 1968 birth, and put up for adoption in The Pas.

“This is an anonymous service that we’re offering, that’s really about listening to what they want, and see if we can give them the support that they need,” he said.

The Métis man’s mother says Catholic hospital staff convinced her to sign away her parental rights because she was a teenager and his father didn’t have a job.

Morrisseau-Beck says the trauma led him to alcohol and unsafe sex, leading to addictions and HIV. Counselling and practices such as a sweat lodge helped him find his family and go sober. He says that healing journey would have happened sooner if he had more information.

“Survivors are still just finding out,” he said. “They’re trying to find information about it.”

The phone line runs 12 hours a day, and Cardinal says volunteers will soon join her, after receiving training in dealing with distressed people.

Ottawa is under pressure to compensate people from the Métis Nation, because only Fist Nations people were involved in the lawsuits that are now being settled. The Liberals have said that people outside the litigation will be able to apply.

It remains unclear how much liability legally rests with Ottawa, because many provinces led the resettlement of Métis people.

In June 2015, the Manitoba government apologized for its role in the Sixties Scoop. The government led by Premier Brian Pallister hasn’t said whether it will voluntarily offer compensation; when asked this month, the province instead sent a statement pointing out that no one had yet sued them.

The Sixties Scoop Support Line accepts toll-free calls daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 1-866-456-6060.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca