Stolen from home at age 2 for life overseas - a survivor’s odyssey
TAKEN from his family and home at the age of two – and an alcoholic by the age of 11 – it took decades before Dark Cloud beat his addiction and gained an education in his new home Bristol, thousands of miles from his birthplace.
The 53-year-old from Easton was a survivor of the so-called Sixties Scoop in Canada, where authorities would ‘ scoop up’ indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes or adoption.
From the 1950s to the late 1980s, around 20,000 aboriginal children were taken from their families and adopted by primarily white middleclass families, sometimes overseas.
Dark Cloud said he was taken by authorities when he was two years old. He said: “The Canadian government and social services came in with their fancy cars and gave us fancy toys, candy, sweets and said: ‘Would you like to come into our fancy cars?’ and of course we’re children, we’re naive, we’re excited. We’re like ‘Yay, we get to go in this car, how cool is this?’
“Then, that’s it - we never returned home.”
Dark Cloud says he was effectively kidnapped from his troubled family in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and transplanted into a different culture and moved overseas.
“We were driven straight to a residential school, where they stripped us of our language and our spirituality. They put Christianity upon us.”
He was given the name Dark Cloud by the medicine man in his city, which in his native language, is Makadayannad.
“He gave me such a negative name because he said I come from a dark place and he knew I’d be taken away. He said as I get older there’ll be a silver lining around the dark cloud, like my silver hair.”
He was taken to Singapore by his British adoptive family and from then on they moved to many different countries, including the Philippines and Hong Kong.
Dark Cloud began drinking aged nine and was diagnosed as a chronic alcoholic at age 11.
“My birth mother was a coke addict and alcoholic - she didn’t realise she was pregnant with me until she was four months into her pregnancy, so I was born a baby alcoholic.
“In the late 1970s there weren’t really rehabilitation centres like there are now and we were living in a third world country, so it was something I just lived with.
“During that time, there was also kidnapping of foreign students happening in the Philippines, so my British father said he would prefer for me to drink inside the house where he could see me.
“Every weekend, he would leave hash and alcohol in my room so I would be under his supervision.
“The amount I was drinking was affecting everything, but especially my education. I was kicked out of schools constantly due to my behavioural problems.
“As soon as I was separated from my two sisters and my birth mother, I always knew I was different to my white British family. My skin and my accent separated me instantly. They had two children also but I always knew I stood out.
“I felt like I didn’t belong there,” he recalls.
He said he and his British family weren’t close at all and he was “pretty numb” his entire life and would run away from home all the time.
They later moved to Maidenhead in Berkshire and one day he overheard his parents saying they were going to send him to boarding school.
Dark Cloud
“They didn’t know what to do with me. So, when I overheard their conversation, I ran away from from home at age 15.
“I hitchhiked from Maidenhead all the way to the south of Croatia.
“I went to London first and began working at a market in Covent Garden.
“I got a job as a helper where I would load the trucks with products with the driver. One day we were driving to Calais to transport items.
“When we got to Calais I ran away. Back then it was really common for people to do this.
“I managed to hitchhike to Croatia, but that was when the Bosnian war was happening.
“So, I decided to turn back and got myself to Northern Italy.”
In Northern Italy, he managed to get seasonal work, but as the years went by his alcoholism got worse.
He came back to England at the age of 23 to seek medical help.
After not having seen his family for eight years, he returned to Maidenhead hoping they would still be at the same address, but another family had moved in by that time.
His British family had though left him a letter saying that he should get in touch with his aunt and uncle, as they had moved back to Canada.
He managed to get hold of them and his father came back to the UK and gave Dark Cloud some money, his adoption papers, his passport and various other documents.
He said: “I ended up living on the streets of London as a drunken Big Issue seller.
“With the help of an organisation, I was referred to a treatment centre in Weston-super-Mare for seven months.
“Following this, in 2000 I moved to Bristol. I ended up staying in a dry house.
“And then I went to college to learn to read and write and get my GCSEs. Then I went on to a university course in counselling.”
Some outreach workers managed to put him in touch with a member of his blood family in Canada.
“I didn’t go to Canada then because I was still drinking, but I managed to speak to my blood aunt and she told me everything about my family.
“She told me she didn’t know who my father was.
“My blood mother was 19 when she fell pregnant with me and my sisters and I were taken away from her.
“One of my sisters died in a house fire and the other was married to an alcoholic.
“At the moment, she’s on the run and nobody knows where she is.
“She also told me that my blood mother committed suicide on my 18th birthday because she couldn’t deal with the fact that she had had all her children taken away from her.
“I hope that by sharing my story, people will realise that this is an example of what the Sixties Scoop did to First Nation people.
“Not only did they steal our culture, but they tore up our whole family. I’ll never know who my father is. I’ll never get to know who my mother was.”
Dark Cloud’s story is now widely recognised in Bristol and a mural of him was painted by artist Madpainted in 2019. It is located by the M32.
He even had a short film created about his experiences.
Now he’s living in a shared apartment in Easton and has been living dry in the city for the past 20 years.
I always knew I was different to my white British family. My skin and my accent separated me instantly.
The Canadian government and social services came in ... and said: ‘Would you like to come into our fancy cars?’ Then, that’s it - we never returned home.