‘I knew I had a brother,’ chief Marcia Brown Martel on the Sixties Scoop
[Marcia Brown Martel is the representative plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Aboriginal children who were taken by the government and fostered or adopted by non-Aboriginal families during the so-called Sixties Scoop. CBC NEWS]
By Dene Moore
From the 1960s to the 1980s, thousands of First Nations children were taken from their families and placed in non-Aboriginal foster homes or adopted to non-Aboriginal families.It’s known as the Sixties Scoop.
A Toronto judge is hearing a class-action lawsuit this week on behalf of those children, who say the cultural effects were akin to residential schools.
Marcia Brown Martel, 53, is the representative plaintiff in that lawsuit.
Removed from her home in the Beaverhouse First Nation, near Kirkland Lake, Ont., at age four and placed in foster care along with her six siblings, she was adopted by a non-Aboriginal family at age nine.
She shares her story with Yahoo Canada News.
Q: What was your experience?
As a child I was taken away from my community and family.As I became an adult and was drawn back into learning more about where I came from, I found that I didn’t fit in because I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know the customs, I didn’t know the traditions, I didn’t know why things were done in a certain way….
Q: And how did you fit in with your adoptive family?
I always knew that I was native and it was pointed out to me. Sometimes people would say “Oh, that’s our little squaw.” People didn’t do it to be mean to me. They did it because they believed it was acceptable, that it was an acceptable thing, kind of jokingly speaking about how different I was.I didn’t know what racism was. When I was little I just knew that there was something that was wrong about my brown skin.I understood as a child that all native people were alcoholics. When I got older, I couldn’t truly understand how a whole, entire nation of people could be alcoholics. But I was told so I knew it was true and I was fearful of it. What if that happens to me? Like it was something that was inherently going to happen to me because I knew I was of First Nations descent.
Q: How old were you when you were taken from your family?
I was four or five years old and I was finally without them entirely when I was seven. I never got to see them again, not for a visit or anything. They were gone from my life.That’s awfully young. When I think about my own son… I can’t imagine that for him. I am a mother and I just can’t imagine someone taking my little one from me.
Q: How old were you when you were adopted?
I was adopted by the time I was nine.
Q: And how did you reconnect with your family?
A series of unfortunate events, let’s put it that way.Because I’ve been through so much trauma in my life, I just went with the flow of things. I knew the trauma that was happening. I was not oblivious to it.I had become accustomed to it. Here we are again: I have no roof, we have no money. I have no people.[In 1981, at age 17] I ended up coming into North Bay airport and meeting — it was one of the fortunate things in that series of unfortunate events — my biological sister and her husband. They brought me to their home and it was in my First Nations community and I began the challenge of repatriation.
Q: How did you do that?
It was a struggle for my community, for my family members, for myself.Had we had guidance, to say this is the kind of thing to expect, these are the conversations you might want to have, don’t go too fast, pace your introduction, things like that, things would have probably been easier to cope with.You truly do not fit in and the loss of somebody that you’ve already lost before really doesn’t matter, because you’ve lost them already.It was difficult. I would really have liked to have had some help.
Q: And since then?
Through the first months it was exceptionally difficult.I had to go through those misconceptions and lies because my community and my family were told that I was mentally handicapped. I had to deal with that and their own anger and their understanding of who they believed me to be.
Q: Where did the belief come from that you were mentally handicapped?
From social services, child care workers and the education system.They labelled me as mentally handicapped.My first language was Algonquin. That’s the language I knew when I went into the child care network and it was like they completely forgot that I didn’t speak their language. English was not my first language.To label me as mentally handicapped is a result of the inability for me to be able to speak English and that was not my fault.
Q: What is your relationship with your community now?
I am the chief of that community.
Q: How did that come about?
Thirty-five years of listening and learning.I went through programs and workshops and things like that to help learn how to help others integrate into their communities. Because it was so hard for me and I knew others would have to come through this.I took my experience and said, here’s a better way. It took 15 years.
Q: What happened to your siblings?
I was totally oblivious to what my siblings were going through.I would have moments of memory. I would try very, very hard to remember. I used to make maps, the trails I would walk when I was young, how the shoreline looked. And I would write out my siblings’ names and put them in order, who was the oldest and who was the youngest.I knew I had a brother, Teddy, but I had no concept of what he looked like.They were all taken.
Q: Have you all been reunited now?
Some of our siblings passed away before we got to meet them.
Q: And your parents?
In 1981, when I returned, I was very fortunate to be able to spend time with both my parents.In the first year, I moved back to my parents’ home and I lived in the bush with them for a while. We lived in the bush and I went trapping with them. It was incredible.
Q: Do you have contact with your adoptive family?
No. I have no contact with them at all.No matter where you live, there are challenges and difficulties. [I have not told my story] to be mean or to be spiteful. It was there so that others of the Sixties Scoop would be able to say, ah, crazy stuff does happen. I wanted to be able to say, yes, abuses happen to unprotected children. They do. And I wanted people to know that the sharing of that story is a healing process as well.
Q: What do you hope comes from the lawsuit?
That there will be a law one day in Canada that says our children are so cherished that we protect them by law, not just by whim or an interpretation of a declaration.You help people. You don’t take their children away.
Q: Do you have concerns about Indigenous children today?
There are more children within the child welfare system in Canada than there has ever been. Our children are being taken for the same reasons. Our children are being taken from their mothers right from birth.The interview has been edited and condensed.
