English - Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies

Many who were not direct victims of abuse were direct witnesses of abuse and also
suffered the effects of the trauma as they were raised by parents who went through
residential schools. It is estimated that a minimum of 375, 000 Aboriginal peoples
have experienced intergenerational impacts of residential schools.
STERILIZATION OF ABORIGINAL WOMEN
In the United States, a 1974 study of the Indian Health Services by the Women of All
Red Nations (WARN) revealed that as many as 42% of all Indian women of childbearing
age had by that point been sterilized without their consent. In Alberta, 2,800 people
were sterilized between 1929 and 1972, under the authority of the province’s Sexual
Sterilization Act.
Women of Aboriginal ancestry were denied their legal rights and could be designated
for sterilization without consent. The policy was intended to stop “mental defectives”
from having children; meaning that Aboriginal women, simply for being Aboriginal
women, were deemed to be mentally defective (OFIFC, 2008).
“’60s SCOOP”
The removal of Aboriginal children from their communities through cross-cultural
foster placement and adoption is a major cause of family disruption. Children
removed from their families are severed from their roots and grow up not knowing
what it is to be Inuit, Métis or a First Nation member. Yet they are set apart from their
new families and communities by visible difference and often made to feel ashamed
of their origins. At the same time, their home communities and extended families
are robbed of part of the next generation (RCAP, 1996c).
The “’60s scoop” was an active practice of removing large numbers of Aboriginal
children from their families and placing them with white, middle-class parents
during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Aboriginal children were apprehended from
their homes without the knowledge or consent of their families and bands. In 1959,
only one percent of children in care were of Aboriginal ancestry. By the end of the
1960s, 30 to 40 percent of children in care were Aboriginal, even though they only
constituted four percent of Canada’s population.
Statistics from the Department of Indian Affairs reveal that a total of 11,132 Status
Indian children were adopted between 1960 and 1990. Approximately 70 percent of
those children were adopted into non-Aboriginal homes. By the 1970s, one in three
Aboriginal children were separated from their families of origin through adoption.
These children experienced great losses including their birth names, tribal identity,
cultural identity and loss of First Nations status.
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The Child and Family Services Act of 1984 aimed to end this practice and ensure that
Aboriginal adoptees in Ontario would be placed within their extended family, with
another Aboriginal family or with a non-native family that promised to respect and
nurture the child’s cultural heritage. The Act also dictated, however, that the child’s
birth records remain sealed, unless both the birth parent and the child asked for them.
This aggravated feelings of loss and frustrated attempts by adoptees to learn about
their roots.