MOVING BEYOND THE HURT
CAROL DANIELS REFLECTS ON THE SIXTIES SCOOP
After the publication this year of Carol Daniels’ book of poetry, a friend said, “That’s deeply personal. How do you feel about having that out there now?”
The slim 100-page volume, entitled Hiraeth, is composed largely of Daniels’ reflections stemming from her upbringing as one of the children of the Sixties Scoop. Thousands of newborns were taken from their First Nations or Metis mothers and adopted mainly into white families, ostensibly because their birth mothers were deemed unfit to raise them.
As these children grew up and became increasingly aware, they faced the confusion of being born to people from one culture and raised by people in another. Usually a minority in their adoptive families’ communities, they often had to deal with bullying and discrimination. They faced a much greater challenge than most in trying to find their place in the world.
“I needed to purge. I needed to get that out,” Daniels — an author, artist and former longtime journalist — said in a recent interview in her cosy, art-filled Regina Beach cabin, while her dog provided energetic company and birds trilled outside in the spring sunshine.
– Carol Daniels I’m just really grateful that they (adoptive father and his mother) were a part of my life.
“There are probably all sorts of people like me who have similar feelings but don’t know quite how to articulate it, or face the fact that those things happened to you too.”
Hiraeth (pronounced HEREeyeth) is a Celtic word that Daniels came upon by chance. It means “a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.”
The book ranges from dark to light, including poems about racial prejudice, cruel comments, her adoptive mother, hypocrisy, abuse, even missing and murdered girls, through to others regarding love, lust, belonging, discovering her Indigenous culture, her adoptive father, and her children.
Daniels was born in the Grey Nuns Hospital (now the Pasqua) in Regina in 1963. She was immediately taken from her unwed Cree mother, who was a registered nurse from Sandy Bay, for adoption by a family in a farming town southeast of the city.
“I just can’t imagine the heartbreak of bonding with a child (before it is born), and giving birth, and then just having the baby taken away,” she says.
Daniels says she remembers as a child hearing social workers at her adoptive family’s home say they couldn’t find any suitable native homes for the children, which is why, they said, they put them into white homes.
“That’s not true. They took us out ... as a way to assimilate a whole group or generation of Indigenous people, and try to have us turn away from our own culture,” she says.
Daniels’ theory is that the Scoop happened because children in residential schools — who did have some knowledge of their own culture because they had lived with their families for the first few years of their lives — “weren’t assimilating fast enough ... so let’s take them out right at birth, because that way they will have no memories, and they’ll be easier to assimilate.
“It’s insidious, but it makes sense.”
Growing up in the community she was in, without any other Indigenous people around, “I was so ashamed of my brown skin,” she says.
“All of the terrible language I heard at home — you know, ‘dirty greasy Indians,’ that whole stereotype — I heard that all the time. And because you hear it all the time, it’s normal; it’s a normal conversation. So I was very ashamed of my roots.”
She specifically points out, however, that those kinds of comments were never made when her adoptive father was in the house. He and his mother were very loving and supportive of her.
“I’m just really grateful that they were a part of my life,” she says.
Daniels began her journalism career while still in her teens.
“It was actually a Plan B,” she laughs. She had decided she wanted to spend her life being an author and an artist, but the adults around her told her she would starve. “Be reasonable,” they said.
While journalism at the time had no diversity (“it was white guys ... working in newsrooms”), it had some appeal for her because it did have the same elements of creativity, she says.
In Grade 11, she volunteered at CKCK radio; in Grade 12, she was editor of the high school newspaper; after graduation she attended SAIT in Calgary for two years, taking the cinema/television/stage/ radio course.
After that, she worked in Regina as a producer at CKRM radio, and by 19 was a weekend anchor at CKTV.
When CBC Newsworld launched in 1989, Daniels hosted This Country for a year, the first Indigenous woman to anchor a national broadcast in Canada.
Later, she spent eight years in Yellowknife as the anchor at CBC North, before returning to Saskatchewan with her three children.
Daniels said as a result of working as a journalist, “that’s when I started meeting ... Indians! Who were really amazing people!”
One of the first Indigenous people she met in this way, who was to have a major influence on her, was the Saskatchewan painter Allen Sapp.
He was a “kind, gentle person” who, when he met her, immediately started speaking to her in Cree, which of course she didn’t understand. He decided to mentor her, and encouraged her to paint and express herself artistically.
“(As a result of my journalism career) you start meeting the more cultural people within our communities, and that’s when I started to learn about our traditions and our culture and our spirituality — and that everything that I had been taught in that community where I grew up was wrong.”
“I got along with my family until I started learning about who I was, and I started dancing at powwows; I sing with my drum; I’m involved in other cultural and spiritual practices. And so the more involved I got with my own culture, the further away I became from them, particularly after my dad died.”
Daniels says she struggled with feeling like she was ungrateful.
“You (her adoptive mother) raised me, you fed me, I suppose you did your best to love me, in her own way. She wasn’t a bad woman, she just sure didn’t like my people.”
Daniels is now in contact with her biological family, “and we stay in contact,” she says.
“We visit each other and we talk to each other. (On Mother’s Day) I got texts and notes and phone calls from my sisters — you know, ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’ “
Daniels says she has an “absolute belief ” in the arts as a force for healing. She says there is currently a revitalization of the drumming tradition in northern Saskatchewan, specifically in La Loche and Buffalo Narrows. The drum has been largely absent in that part of the province since 1885, after the Riel Rebellion, when the Canadian government made it illegal to drum, or smudge or sing, she notes.
After the shootings in La Loche in January 2016, “the community leaders in La Loche were saying, ‘We need some help,’ “she recalls. Daniels was involved in the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society at the time, and suggested a drummaking workshop, to “reintroduce the drum back up there.”
She did that, and then stayed for another week and a half, “because, if you have a drum, well, you’ve got to learn how to use it.”
One thing led to another, and the revitalization seems to have taken root.
“About a month ago,” she said in mid-May, “they did drum making at the high school in La Loche.”
She said the drum is being used for suicide prevention workshops, and there is a group that regularly gets together and sings.
She said she has heard the community hopes to have a song ready to sing at this year’s La Loche high school grad.
There is also a movement in Buffalo Narrows to have a similar drum-making process, she said.
“So it makes me very happy.” Daniels is also involved — through the Exchange and the southeast regional libraries — with a project to install little “leave a book, take a book” libraries on reserves in southeast Saskatchewan.
“Here in Saskatchewan, we don’t have one library on any of the reserves. And it actually made me quite ashamed for this province.”
Staff with the southeast libraries have collected wooden structures that look more or less like large wardrobes; 12 of them will be delivered to reserves in the region and stocked by the southeast library system.
“I’m sure if anybody wants to donate books, they can,” she notes.
The structures will be decorated, mainly by youth, with the help of six artists, and will hold materials to encourage family literacy. They will be placed in locations of high visibility and accessibility, such as the health centre, band office or rec centre, for example.
In the past, she has enjoyed developing and facilitating Indigenous youth writing workshops organized through the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild.
“Some of the writing that is inspired is raw, strong, courageous and amazing. Not all kids involve themselves in sports.”
Daniels also does artist in residence programming, largely with “non-native kids, pretty much,” and they are “wonderful,” she says.
“Here in Saskatchewan, in terms of our communities coming together, and that’s everybody, we need new beginnings. We can’t stay stuck in that era of, well the one I grew up in. That time is past.”
Daniels says she doesn’t really yet have much of an opinion regarding the recent Sixties Scoop settlement, because the details have been sparse.
“From what I’ve read, I’m happy that the money is going to be going to, hopefully everybody who was scooped up.”
She hopes language revitalization is available to anyone as part of the settlement.
“Language has spirit,” she says. Her sisters help her with any of the Cree in her writing. “It comes from my family up north. I wish I had grown up listening to it. But, I can listen to it now,” she says.
Daniels loves living in Regina Beach.
“I’m never leaving this town,” she says with a smile. “There’s such a vibrant artists’ community here that I just feel really comfortable.”
“I long to just write,” she adds. “Walk my dog, and write, and just have kind of a quiet life in my little cabin in the woods.”
She has finished her second novel, and has two poetry manuscripts that she wants to get out. All of them, in one way or another, celebrate Indigenous women and women in general, but the novel explores other topics as well.
If those don’t keep her busy enough, she can work on the other big project she has in mind — the WIN Festival — a celebration of women’s Indigenous networking, an idea she has developed along with Saskatchewan singer Connie Kaldor. She first thought of it when the 20th anniversary of Lilith Fair came around last summer, she says. “As Indigenous women we need to celebrate bringing together all areas ... traditional, cultural, music, dance, visual art, film. WIN would showcase the many talents of so many Indigenous women artists.”