The outcome of intercultural placement carries the seeds of alienation from self

Policies and practices reflect longstanding and deeply embedded mother-blaming culture and father invisibility ideologies that shape child protection systems. With regard to children in this year of reconciliation, one has to believe another solution is possible, that whatever solution brought about does not stem from ideology, that big changes are going to happen in this lifetime. Children need to be safe, but they also need to be among their people.




In 2014, I met Mark, a young Inuk at the General Store of an eastern township. Mark knew he was Inuk, but didn’t know the community he came from, not even the names of his parents. And he didn’t speak Inuktitut. My feeling that he’d been robbed of his identity was tainted by the memory of a little girl who might have had the same story, had her substitute parents not gone north to get adoption papers signed when, at six, she was due to enter school. Her life outcome would be similar to that of Dolores unless the parents remedied to the situation while she was still quite young.

Of course, each story is unique, but the outcome, though different for each child, carry the seeds of alienation from self.

Interview with Dolores in Chilliwack

My meeting with Dolores was unusual in the sense that we were both on our way out from an establishment and prompted to get out in front of the exit doors. There was an awkward moment of not knowing what was going to happen. We finally sat down and after exchanging for a few minutes and after I named my purpose, I took these notes on her story. I have two names for Dolores, but I do not know her last name. I agreed to keep it out so that information about her family could remain confidential. There is also hope in her testimony.

At 75, Dolores, an articulate Lil’wat Nation woman, does not live on the reserve. She has a companion that doesn’t pull her down even if he is stuck in the past. Dolores told me a bit of her story and as I want to inform my readers about the cost of being placed in another culture, I thought this would bring food for thought.

I met Dolores at the end of a long, hot day. It would have been nice to be out by the pool, it was just so hot. But here we were in a library seeking the coolness of their air-conditioning while we chatted about the conditions of life in the Indigenous communities.

“I was removed from my family and community of Whistler when I was two years old and was surrendered to adoption a year later with information being falsified in my CAS file. My birth father was listed as “one-eighth Indian”. Brought to an urban setting, I grew up with a sibling in a white family and thought of myself as white until the age of 23. Other than the fact that I tanned well in the summer, our parents made no difference between us.

My memory of that family is about an emotionally intense family. I felt accepted and loved nonetheless, participating in church, music, and the girl guides. Today, I recognize the violence in the family but I have been in so many violent relationships through my adult life, it just never impressed me that much. There was a pattern of domestic violence as we, girls, were shamed and screamed at often.

But to me, the real violence is more about what my family hid from me. They didn’t call it lying, they just never spoke about it. They were well-intentioned parents co-opted into the assimilation process by their urgent need to help a poor child, preserving me from ending up homeless, addicted or psychologically scarred.

At 23, I had never heard my language spoken, and I was not given any information about my specific culture. What I understood was, that basically, I had grown within a system that said that I did not exist, except as an object to be programmed into the dominant society.

When I finally discovered the truth, I started looking for my mother. In the beginning, it was positive and very nurturing as my mother introduced me to my lost Nation and large family but early in the relationship it became clear there was a divide “bigger than the mountains that separated us”. My two children had even further to go to grow into “Nativeness”, their father is white. My white upbringing represented a major roadblock and we just stopped visiting.

Dolores spoke of hurting so bad she felt she had been torn apart. She then tried to reach out to her dad but he had died just a few years before, drinking himself to death.

From that point on, I tried reconstructing who I thought I would have been but it was an impossible task. It took years of yearning and tears of desolation before I was able to let go of my desire to be speaking the language I was born into and act like my people. I could never learn our protocols and master them.

This quest spiralled into dangerous behaviors, drinking much and generally being obnoxious to her substitute family. Months of illness and suicidal depression, she gave in to the pain she was feeling and she put her life at risk.

I felt “split into two different Dolores: one at home with my white family, the other working in a Native organization. My marriage ended as my husband was unable to accept or understand this wild woman. When I switched into “white mode”, I would forget protocol and my Native friends barely recognized me putting my new Native friendships in jeopardy.

A life full of “firsts” probably saved me. I learned to do beadwork, pine-needle baskets, taking part in powwows, trying to make up for 23 years of non-native identity.  Angry about the loss of my Native culture, I mourned and rejected the white direction I had been given as a child. But, culturally, I was confused. For six years, I wandered in a state of various stages of confusing grief. Eventually, through a ceremony, while learning to drum, I found some kind of peace and it brought a whole new sense to being Native at every level of my body, mind, and spirit”.

The cleavage caused by this rupture of identity caused this woman’s sorrow until an elder taught her a powerful lesson. Well into her 40s, an elder gave her valuable advice during a ceremony. I was told that “people can try to hurt you but they cannot change who we are”. From that time on, Dolores started to grow.

“Soon, there will be a reunion for reconciliation in our town and there will also be drumming at the events. I plan to make about 40 pine-needle baskets to give away as gifts to relatives who participate”.

The story of Dolores is not unique. Instead of being at home with their parents, brothers, and sisters, tens of thousands of First Nations children are in foster care, staying with distant relatives or living in institutions (2011 statistics).

Petition to empower the mothers and to reduce placements of the children

Like all that matters, we have to make the connections with what we can all do to help. No Child Should Take the Long Way Home carries a petition to be given to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. We hope to restore dignity but also their rights to families and communities in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada.