Millennium Scoop: How foster care is causing isolation, loss of identity for Indigenous children

VANCOUVER -

It has been years since the last of Canada’s residential schools closed its doors, but the hardship continues.

Today, Indigenous children are overrepresented in Canada’s foster care system, which continues the cycle of suffering and loss of identity.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, spent his entire childhood in foster care.

“I came home virtually not knowing who I was,” Phillip said.

He returned to the Okanagan nation as an adult – alone – and unable to speak his people’s language.

“It was traumatic, it made me feel very insecure and less than,” he said.

“I engaged in alcohol and drug abuse. Suicidal thoughts were my constant companion.”

Phillip believes the isolation endured by Indigenous children in the former residential school system continues today in the form of foster care.

Dr. Jacqueline Marie Maurice, CEO of the ‘60s Scoop Healing Foundation, is a survivor of the ‘60s Scoop - a time when thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their birth families, often without consent, to live with non-Indigenous families.

She said Canada is now in a millennium scoop.

“As the ‘60s Scoop wound down around the mid-1980s, there was a bit of a calm, but then around 1991 you had the next scoop,” she said.

Numbers from the 2016 census show eight per cent of all children in Canada aged 14 and under are Indigenous. However, of all the children 14 and under in foster care, Indigenous children make up 52 per cent.

This is a disproportionate amount caused by intergenerational trauma, according to Maurice.

“When you haven’t had those basic needs of comfort, security, love, shelter, safety in your own life, it’s pretty hard to pass it on to the next generation,” Maurice said.

In 2019, the federal government passed Bill C-92, giving First Nations the option to care for at-risk youth in their own communities.

Phillip said legislation helps, but reconciliation starts with education.

“Canadians must, at a very early age, know and understand the colonial history of this country,” Phillip said.

If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419

Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.