Adam’s personal account touched readers across the country
Readers reacted with shock and sadness to reporter’s quest to reconnect with family
I awoke on the morning of Saturday, April 29, to the sound of a cellphone ding indicating an email.
It was from a woman I’d never met, and it began: “I’m on the subway in Toronto and I’m crying.”
The woman was contacting me because she’d just read “Scooped: how I lost my mother, found my family and regained my identity,” in the National Post.
That intensely personal autobiographical feature story about my experience as a child of the ’60s Scoop ran in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and in the National Post across the country.
The woman’s heartfelt personal email was the first of dozens I received that day and in the weeks and months since then.
It may be the most far-reaching article I’ve written in my 28 years with The StarPhoenix.
The story began with an account of my lifelong memory of the day I was taken from my mother in Uranium City by a social worker and an RCMP officer, flying on a plane and arriving on a farm and into the care of Shirley and George Major, who were suddenly my new parents, and their three children, my new siblings.
The story told of my experience as a Dene child growing up in a non-Native context and my unsuccessful efforts to learn about my Indigenous heritage in the school system in the 1960s and ’70s. It recounted the decades-long and often frustrating effort to reconnect, first with my sister Rose, then my extended family and my mother, and the search for two mysterious siblings who existed for me only as names with birthdates.
In the more than 36 years it took to find them, I reconnected with my mother, Mary Jane Adam, a survivor of the Indian residential school system, who lived in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We had a 15-year relationship before her death at age 72 in 2006.
More than eight years later, when I finally found Ben and then Esther, through word of mouth and Saskatchewan’s post-adoption registry, we began planning our first-ever siblings gathering.
On April 1, 2015, I met Marie Wilson, one of three commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into Indian Residential Schools. She told me the gathering with my siblings was an event worth documenting.
Just as the TRC called to action Canadians and their governments to reconcile the fractured relationship with Indigenous peoples, Marie’s words inspired me to contact Tasha Hubbard, an award-winning Cree filmmaker. She took my story to Bonnie Thompson and David Christiansen with the National Film Board of Canada, who agreed to produce a documentary.
The result was Tasha’s featurelength film, Birth of a Family, which was released earlier this year.
When I told StarPhoenix editor Heather Persson about the plan to make a film, she immediately offered to support the project in any way she could.
The idea of a newspaper feature that would provide the film’s background story was a natural fit. Heather met with Tasha, Bonnie and David.
They established a partnership that saw the NFB share its footage with the StarPhoenix and the National Post for videos that would enhance online the print version of “Scooped” and promote the film.
In our newsroom, Lifestyles editor Cam Fuller worked with me, gently dragging out specific details that sometimes brought me to tears, but helped bring my family’s experience to life on the page.
Sean Trembath used his film-school training to create a dramatically-lit video to explain the scoop. Stephanie McKay oversaw gathering photos and video and communicating with the National Post.
The article was published three days before Birth of a Family’s premiere on May 2 at the Hot Docs International Film Festival in Toronto.
I’ve been delighted by the response to “Scooped,” including emails from long-lost friends and people I’ve never met, many of whom were other adults who were children of the ’60s Scoop.
Reader’s Digest purchased the right to reprint a somewhat condensed version in its September 2017 edition.
Birth of a Family has screened at community events across the country. CBC Television purchased the rights to broadcast a shortened version in November, and the NFB has hired educators to create teaching materials to go with the film to classrooms that request it.
Many Canadians have opened their minds and hearts to the need to change Indigenous childwelfare policies, which too often undermine and damage families and communities.
That openness and sincerity gives me hope that all citizens will stand beside us and demand that governments respect our community workers and leaders, who know what needs to be done, and to heal and support parents who struggle to be their own best selves so that they may be the parents their children need.
Many Canadians have opened their minds and hearts to the need to change Indigenous childwelfare policies, which too often undermine and damage families and communities. That openness and sincerity gives me hope ...