The City of Thunder Bay has proclaimed today as Indigenous Survivors Day and is hosting several community events ahead of Canada Day.
Sixties Scoop survivor Troy Abromaitis said he created Indigenous Survivors Day to honour children who were taken from their families and lands. He said Thunder Bay is the first city to make it a full-day event and he hopes other communities will follow.
The Sixties Scoop refers to the period between the 1950s and early 1990s during which thousands of Indigenous children in Canada were apprehended by child welfare agencies and placed with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive parents. Many children were subject to physical, emotional or sexual abuse while most lost connection to their cultures and languages.
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The systematic removal of First Nations children from their families from 1991 on is referred to as the Millennium Scoop. The practice resulted in more Indigenous children ending up in foster care than were sent to residential schools at their peak.
Birth alerts — when child welfare organizations notify hospitals if they believe a pregnant patient may be “high risk” — led to newborns being taken from their parents for days, months or even years. The province ordered an end to birth alerts in 2022 after finding it disproportionately affected Indigenous and racialized families.
Indigenous children made up 53.8 per cent of all children in foster care across the country, according to Statistics Canada data from the 2021 census.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/indigenous-survivors-day-1.7573871
#Indigenous #Survivors and #School matters #Foster #Care
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