AMANDA, 16
His
story “is sort of my story, too,” Amanda says.
As young children she and her brother were inseparable — until they started a long journey in foster care, sometimes together, but mostly apart.
Amanda — whose name has been changed to protect her privacy — has been in 19 foster homes, all told. That sounds like a lot, but she insists it isn’t.
“I know people who were in 50 foster homes by the time they were five.”
She describes her experiences as a series of “ups and downs” — there were homes she really loved and homes where she and her brother were abused.
“(They) would hit me and punch me and call me ‘bitch’,” she says of one home where she lived for a number of years. “I guess I’m over it now.”
Her brother, however, was there for much longer, which Amanda believes left him emotionally scarred. He was finally moved to a facility downtown after two attempts to run away and a threat he’d “kill himself if he didn’t get out.” They are now reunited. For all that, Amanda credits her time in foster care with making her who she is. As she puts it, “extraordinary, funny, smart, kind, warm-hearted and fabulous.”
She worries more about her brother. For all the attention on murdered and missing aboriginal women, she wishes people would speak more about men as well.
“My father, paternal grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle, male cousin and male friend have (gone) missing or died. In all honesty, aboriginal men have been affected by death (more) than aboriginal women in my family. We need to start focusing on all the factors,” she says.
“We should be (focused on all) missing and murdered aboriginals.”