Could we have done better?

Richard Wagamese, Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) novelist, journalist, mentor, born October 4, 1955, in northwestern Ontario, died March 10, 2017, in Kamloops, BC.
A well-known Indigenous writer in Canada, Wagamese won several awards including the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize in 2013 and the Writers' Trust of Canada's Matt Cohen Award in 2015.

His novel, Indian Horse, was the People's Choice Award winner in the national 2013 Canada Reads competition.

His novel, Medicine Walk, is a national bestseller.

Wagamese

Richard Wagamese was born to the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in Canada. When he was almost three years old, his parents left him and his three siblings alone in a bush camp for days. Cold and hungry, the children managed to cross a frozen bay to seek shelter.

A provincial policeman spotted them and dropped them off at the Children's Aid Society, but this story can have no "happily ever after" ending.

From there, the siblings were taken away in what is now known as "the Sixties Scoop," a government program in Canada that aggressively "scooped" Indigenous children from their homes and placed them in foster care.

Much has been written about the horrors of the Sixties Scoop and the years that followed, but I am no expert on that subject, nor even on Richard Wagamese.

Far from it...

My own reaction to the story of Wagamese's childhood is the story I wish to tell here. Richard Wagamese was born in 1955, a year that drastically changed my life. I was nine years old, with one younger brother and one little sister, and our mom was about to have a new baby.

Photo from Pexels

Having been of little help with my two siblings, I was so excited to have another sister when wee Barbara Diane was born! After all, being nine years old (and almost grown up, or so I thought) meant I could help Mom with the new baby.

However, due to a mysterious something called "the RH factor" my baby sister died after three days.

I didn't even get to see her, because children weren't allowed to visit hospitals in  the 1950s.

But no, again, I'm not here to talk about baby Barbara, her short life, nor even her death, although it proved to be of lasting devastation to me after all my excitement.

No, I want to tell you about two little Indigenous boys who did not come into my life.

Some while after Barbara died and, because the doctor told Mom and Dad to avoid further pregnancies, they decided to look into adoption. Apparently, however, the part of the British Columbia bureaucracy that handled adoption applications also handled fostering. Therefore, when no child was available for adoption in our bureaucracy's jurisdiction, Mom and Dad were told they could foster two small Indigenous boys.

Photo from Pexels

My mother was horrified. "Foster them? Do you mean we might have to give them up?"

Mom could not face losing another child, and especially two children. "I would be happy to adopt both of them, but I cannot give them up."

The subject of their ethnicity didn't factor into the equation. They could have been purple people from Pluto but, if they were little ones in need of love and caring, Mom would have adopted and loved them and cared for them, but wouldn't have given them up any more than she'd have let go of me, my brother or  my sister.

"Horrified" hardly suffices, now that I look back on it. My brother, sister, and I were raised to believe that ethnicity didn't factor into any equation whatsoever. "All men are created equal" could have come from my father if that great American Thomas Jefferson hadn't already said it.

Now, however, I can look back and answer my own question: could we (Canadians and especially British Columbians) have done better than the governments of the 1950s and 60s did in their dealings with our Indigenous peoples?

Yes, we certainly could.

It seems to me, from the distance of many decades, that the federal and provincial governments of Canada could have done far better. Many, many lives, old and young, were ruined by the thoughtless scooping-up of Canada's youngsters in such a cavalier manner.

I can't even excuse them on the basis of their having had good intentions because, clearly, some of them did not. Many, so many children suffered beatings at the hands of their so-called caregivers, and many suffered more than mere beatings: torture, rape, starvation in the name of discipline...

Yes, Canada, we could have done better!

Yes, my beloved British Columbia, you too.

Posting for Our World Tuesday at a time when

I think of the world in which

so many of Canada's First Nations people suffered, and too many died.