FORGET-ME-NOT

Surviving the infamous ‘Sixties Scoop’ of Indigenous children is an ongoing process

Maxine Joan Joanna Sunday Cook Jesmer. These are some of my names. In a way, they reflect who I was to different people at different times in my life. My biological parents named me Maxine. My adoptive family named me Joan, which I soon changed to Joanna. Deep down, however, I know I have another name, a name given to me by the Creator. I have always known this name, my heart’s name, from the time the Creator sent me to Earth to learn some lessons. My heart’s name is Forget-me-not.

In 1962, when I was still Maxine, my life was changed utterly by a phone call and a ring.

I was growing up in Red Lake with my parents and brothers and sisters when my dad got an upsetting phone call from his sister. Her husband had beaten her. Our family’s plans for a holiday were put on hold while Dad went to rescue her. It was a long drive, and on the way back, Dad’s friend took over at the wheel. He fell asleep, and the car flipped over into a ditch full of water. The driver lived, but my dad and auntie both drowned.

We were devastated. My mum was pregnant, and just two weeks after Dad’s death, she went into the hospital to give birth to my little brother, Tommy. My oldest brother, 19-year-old Walter, was left in charge of his younger siblings: Shirley, Oscar, Maryann, Hellen, me and Donny. During this time, while Mum was away, I found a ring. I absolutely loved rings, but this one was too big. I admired it on my hand, but it wouldn’t stay on properly. It would slip around and was in danger of

falling off. I was five years old, so of course I knew what to do: I got a hammer, planning to bend the ring if I hit it just right….walter found me afterwards with my finger turning blue, and naturally he took me to the hospital, where the ring was cut off. Every family has a story about a mishap like that; the story of some minor crisis that enters the lore of shared experience and gets retold with teasing fondness for years. But in our case—we are Cree, and this was in Canada in the 1960s—the ring incident set in motion a terrible process that would rip apart our grieving family at a time when we needed one another the most. Mum was forced to leave the hospital without her newborn son, and she returned home to an empty house. Try to imagine that. What had happened to everyone? She must have been frantic, but she no longer had her loving husband to turn to, and although her in-laws lived in that community, they were grieving the deaths of their brother and sister. They could not offer her the comfort and support she needed. Walter was there, but the rest of her children had disappeared. Mum’s parents and siblings lived in a tiny, remote, fly-in community called Deer Lake, but she would not leave Red Lake to go live with them and accept their comfort. She remained in the family home, hoping against hope that her children would be returned to her. The authorities who took us separated the girls from the boys. My sisters and I were sent to a nunnery, where we stayed together for several weeks.

Then one night we went to sleep together, but I woke up utterly alone. I was five years old, and over the course of a few weeks, I had lost my father, my mother, my brothers, and now my sisters. I felt abandoned, and so afraid to fall asleep. I knew why my family was gone. I believed, I profoundly felt that it was my fault that I had lost my family. This was the beginning of my feelings of being separate from everyone else—different and unworthy.

Every six months after that I was sent to a different, non-native foster home, where I learned the meaning of prejudice. This was a very confusing time for me. The basics of life were being met, as I had food, shelter and clothes, but I had no defenders against the injustices of childhood, and I was expected not to show my feelings. I don’t remember every foster family from those years, but some of the memories remain clear.

At one home, another foster kid told me I had to get into my pyjamas after school, sit at the end of my bed, and wait until bedtime. It was daytime, and I wanted to play.

At another home, and another school, I had a teacher who was a nun, and she used to separate me from the other girls in class. One time, she took us to church, and as usual I had to sit separately, but when everyone else left, I was not allowed to go. I was left by myself in the church. This was the manner in which I was disciplined for speaking my

language, a kind way of shaming a Cree. Isolation, fending for myself, forming my own negative views of myself. The belief that I must deserve unkindness started early.

At another home, several foster children were told to pick up debris in the yard. An older foster child took the branches I had picked up. She was trying to be kind, but what I got was unfair—i was smacked for not helping with the chores. I learned that the foster parents didn’t care. I had no voice and no words, but I could feel, and what I felt was anger.

So many of my experiences in foster care were hurtful. They stung like embers blowing from a fire, landing on me no matter where I went. But the sting of those sparks did not compare to how it felt to be without my family. To miss your mother’s loving gaze, to be robbed of your siblings’ laughter, to not belong, these are not flesh wounds, but firebrands to the heart.

By the time I met my adoptive family, I believed that no one wanted me. The courts dictated who my new family would be, a workaholic man, a bipolar, alcoholic woman who hated girls, and their three-year-old son. The family was relatively comfortable but my new mother wanted us to look like we were wealthy. We lived in Aurora, Ont., where my adoptive father was a veterinarian. I think he chose to work long hours because he had known starvation in Poland, and he was never going to let that happen to his family. He had been an air force pilot, a military man, so everything in his life was black and white. His physical and emotional remoteness meant that I was left to fend for myself against my adoptive mother’s unpredictable and often abusive parenting. Life in that home was to be bitter and unjust. That first summer, I was locked out of the house in the afternoons, and one day my adoptive brother, who was three, was locked out with me. He had to go to the bathroom. He called it a strange name. I didn’t know what he meant, so I told him to go somewhere. He had a bowel movement in front of the back door. When our mother came out back, she swung the door open right over it. She yelled at

me and hit me, as if I had done it. I was eight years old, but apparently I was responsible for the actions of my little brother. I was furious, but the fury burned silently within me.

That night I was sent to bed early, with my little brother. Why was she treating me like this, like a three-year-old? Before I went to bed, I took a strip of bacon from the fridge to eat. As I was passing by, my adoptive mother grabbed the bacon out of my hand and hit me in the face with it. I was shocked and confused. Wasn’t I allowed to eat before bed? I remember lying awake, feeling afraid and angry— and also determined that when I was old enough, I would go to bed when I wanted to.

At the beginning of my first year of school in Aurora, the principal insisted on holding me back a year. My mother tried to get me into the proper grade, knowing I could do the work, but the system did not bend for a Native child in a white community. To the principal, I was Indian, so I wasn’t smart enough. In reality, I was bored in that Grade 2 class, but I adjusted because I had to.

The kids in that school began to pick on me. It was not only verbal abuse, but also physical bullying that I had to defend against. Eventually, I started to fight back. In one incident, a boy had some chains and he swung them at me, but I grabbed them and yanked them from his hands. No one really bothered me much after that.

As I grew to adolescence, new problems arose. When I was 13, my mother wouldn’t buy me a bra, though the boys at school were teasing me. That summer, I got a job on a farm and bought one myself. I will never forget my mother’s response: “It’s about goddamn time!” The cruelty and injustice of her words were sickening, but I was too afraid to rebel or say anything to her because I knew she would yell at me, hit me or even worse, send me back into the foster care system. That was the biggest threat—sending me back to foster care. That fear was so big, real and terrifying that it was like a shadow following me, growing and darkening even after I reached adulthood.

I learned from harsh experience that it was better to say nothing, because if I did speak, this new mother would say that I was wrong, disrespectful, or lying. One time, she insisted that I was lying when I mentioned that my biological mother had been taller than my father, though she knew

neither of them. Her accusations were as vicious as they were arbitrary. Once we were on a trip to the Bahamas and my mother began to harass me about the Christmas thank-you cards that I hadn’t sent out yet. She went on about it all through dinner, making it seem like I was a horrible, ungrateful child and not just a regular, procrastinating kid. I wanted to run away, or throw up, but I knew I had to just sit there and listen. Pick, pick, pick. I’m bad, and everything is my fault. If I said anything, I knew my father would discipline me. He was such a big man, I was intimidated by him. He was my first bully; restrained and non-verbal but threatening. His warning was a smack in the back of the head with one finger. I swallowed so much anger, it was like a companion, always with me.

As a teenager, I went to an all-girls school in Toronto called St. Clement’s, where I received a good education. I had to travel there every day from Aurora, though, which meant a 12-hour day. I developed motion sickness, so I was sick every single day at school. My mother knew about this and gave me Gravol to try to counteract the sickness, but it was clear that my health, happiness and friendships were less important to her than where I was educated. The rich and famous connections at that school created opportunities. Her priorities taught me that my body and spirit weren’t of value. Through these years, my anger began developing into depression.

My adult life has been indelibly marked by the traumatic experiences of my childhood and adolescence. I had been torn from my family, bounced from foster home to foster home, alienated, and bullied. I was adopted, but not treasured. Like so many other Sixties Scoop survivors, I struggled all my life against feelings of unworthiness and repressed, shocking loss. My relationships suffered along with me, and sometimes I chose relationships that reinforced what I had learned about love.

In recent years, I have made progress down the path of healing. Through concerted and ongoing efforts, including traditional Mohawk healing practices, I am overcoming the wounds of my past. Sharing my tears in story form has been a part of that. I am still here. I survived. Joanna Maxine Jesmer. Forget-me-not. Like my namesake flower, am both delicate and hardy. I have been through winter’s long oppression, and I welcome spring. n