Sixties Scoop survivors calling for new settlement
REGINA She was five years old when she realized she and her brother were different.
Running around in the store, she called out to her mom that she wanted a candy. Other customers looked at her in disbelief. “How could that be your mom?” their faces seemed to say.
“Here we were, two little native kids, and my parents were white,” recalls Coleen Rajotte.
As little kids, the experience confused them, and they began to wonder where their parents were and what had happened to them. That’s when they found out they were adopted.
They were some of the lucky ones. They were not abused by their adoptive parents, like many other Sixties Scoop survivors were. But whether they grew up in a loving home or not, survivors carry the pain of lost years with their birth families and the trauma that resulted from the Scoop.
It is for this reason that Rajotte and a group of Manitoba Sixties Scoop survivors are leading a national movement to oppose the settlement agreement that was announced by the federal government in October 2017.
“I believe that the children that were taken away ... deserve at least similar compensation to what residential school survivors (got),” she said during a presentation at the University of Regina on Saturday afternoon.
“I’m sorry, $25,000, that’s not a significant amount of money. It’s kind of a slap in the face for people who have been horribly abused.”
The settlement, as it stands, offers compensation to all First Nations and Inuit children who were removed from their homes between 1951 and 1991, resulting in a loss of their cultural identities. According to the agreement, if there are fewer than 20,000 eligible recipients, $750 million will be split between them, up to a maximum of $50,000. If there are more than 30,000 eligible recipients, the $750 million will be divided evenly among them, which would result in payments of $25,000 or less. Another $50 million is intended to fund a foundation that will focus on reconciliation efforts.
Rajotte said she isn’t trying to get the settlement scrapped, but wants to prompt the federal government to consult more survivors and renegotiate an agreement more in line with the process residential school survivors experienced.
“My father is a residential school survivor,” said Jonathan Price, also a Sixties Scoop survivor. “When he went and ... told his story, he came back and said it was a healing process. That’s what I would like for all of us.”
Price is travelling with Rajotte, helping her get signatures to object to the settlement before the federal government’s April 30 deadline. They are visiting major cities across the country in an attempt to educate survivors about the agreement. They are also distributing information and notice of objection forms to jails across the country.
They need at least 2,000 notice of objection forms to be signed in order to appear before a judge on May 9 and 10 in Saskatoon and officially object to the agreement.
Sachia Longo attended Rajotte’s presentation and said he agrees with the opposition to the agreement. His parents adopted three Indigenous children in the 1970s and early ’80s and said their experience growing up still haunts them.
“It was not good at all. There was abuse and they’re still living with the effects of that,” he said.
“The agreement doesn’t take into account the physical and sexual abuse that these thousands of people suffered and there should be compensation for that.”
With the deadline for signatures just two weeks away, Rajotte estimates they have about 500 so far and are working hard to inform survivors and rally more opposition.
“We all deserve a voice,” said Price. “That’s what we’re trying to do, to get people to object so that their voices can be heard.”
Forms can be downloaded at stopthesettlement.com, where a copy of the settlement agreement can also be found.
The children that were taken away ... deserve at least similar compensation to what residential school survivors got.