The case highlights the themes of Indigenous kinship and sovereignty, legislated Indian identity, and the growing involvement of social workers in the lives of Aboriginal people in the mid-to late-twentieth century. With the goal of eliminating Indigenous legal and kinship forms, the Indian Act colonized adoption so it could be used as a method of assimilation rather than as a traditional form of Indigenous alliance creation and childcare. It also explores the complications that emerged as legally defined Indian people came into contact with provincial child welfare legislation. The article uses the case to examine Canadian settler-colonial beliefs about blood and belonging. The legal adoption of ''Frances T'' in 1937, considered to be ''in the best interests of the child'' by social welfare professionals, took on gendered and racialized meaning in the discourse of the Indian Affairs bureaucrats who subsequently attempted to overturn it. This article offers a case study of a transracial adoption involving a mixed-heritage child and a legally Indian adoptive couple. In this article, I treat these narratives as storytelling and argue that understanding these adoptees' stories allows for a multifacted and complex understanding of the impacts of the Sixties Scoop on First Nations people, and those families still in the settled land often referred to Canada and the adoptees growing up or still living far away. I then turn to the first-person narratives of three adult indigenous adoptees who were adopted from Canadian First Nations into white families in the U.S. Then, I explore the importance of centering the stories and experiences of adult adoptees when considering transracial, transnational adoption. In this article, I explore the targeting of indigenous children and families through education and adoption in Canada through the residential schooling programs and the Sixties Scoop. The establishment of what came to be called the Sixties Scoop in the Canada and the Indian Adoption Project in the U.S.-as well as the cooperation between agencies of both projects to place indigenous children in adoptive homes across settler state lines-was an extension of governmental goals to eliminate indigenous people as cultural, social, and legal entities. After residential schools in Canada began to be phased out in the mid-20th century, scholars agree that federal agencies and child welfare agents turned to adoption as the new agent of colonization and assimilation of Native children. Settler governments' attentions to indigenous children crystalized in the late 19th century. Indigenous children have always been a target of the settler government attempts to assimilate and eventually eliminate discrete indigenous populations in Canada and the U.S. The issue admits of considerable urgency given that Alberta continues to have one of the highest proportions of Indigenous children and youth in various child welfare and juvenile institutions (Alberta Office of the Child Due to Alberta’s particular legal and political history, these groups were uniquely impacted by Alberta’s Sixties Scoop policies and practices. Reside in Alberta, including Blackfoot, Cree, Dene, Métis, and Nakoda (Stoney).
Within the Province of Alberta there are three treaty territories (Treaty 6, 7, and 8), 140 reserves, and eight Métis settlements.
The report will discuss some similarities and distinctions with other jurisdictions in Canada in order to situate Alberta in the broader context. Very similar trajectories of slow institutional reform, missteps and tragedies unfolded in comparable jurisdictions such as Saskatchewan (Stevenson, 2013) and very differentĬontexts such as British Columbia (Smith, 2009). Alberta was not unique in the development of its child welfare policies with respect to Indigenous peoples.
This report aims to provide a summary of the historical, cultural, and policy context within which the Sixties Scoop developed and was addressed in Alberta.
0 kommentar(er)
