This resulted in the Survivors of the Sixties Scoop growing up with a loss of their heritage and sense of belonging. Social workers and welfare authorities whose mandates should have been to exert a positive influence in historically under-serviced and under-resourced communities instead chose to remove children from their homes and tear families apart. The Sixties Scoop policies are just one phase of a larger history that is characterized by physical, structural, environmental and cultural violence against Indigenous Peoples. Issues like poverty and unemployment that disproportionately affect Indigenous communities due to centuries of discriminatory policies and structural violence were also seen as sufficient grounds for the apprehension of children from otherwise happy homes.

Observations of practices that were not typical of European-Canadian families, like traditional diets for example, resulted in loving and stable families being pulled apart. Social workers would seize children without consent, often as a matter of routine, using reasoning that was deeply entrenched in racism. What they called proper care was based on their own lived experience rooted in a European-Canadian system of values, and training that did not include exposure to or understanding of Indigenous family structures and caregiving, nor of Indigenous worldviews and ways of knowing and being. Most of these workers were not familiar with the culture and history of the Indigenous communities they worked in. By the mid-1960s, the number of Indigenous children in the child welfare system in some provinces was over 50 times more than it had been at the beginning of the 1950s.Дecisions to place children in care at that time were made by social workers who were primarily non-Indigenous and who worked within a white-Euro-Canadian values system. Amendments to the Indian Act meant that individual provinces now had authority over certain areas, including Indigenous child welfare. вЂSixties ScoopвЂ™ refers to a process that began after 1951, as the government started to phase out mandatory residential schools. The Sixties Scoop is one of many examples of centuries-long government efforts to assimilate Indigenous cultures and Peoples into Canada. The practice of removing children from Indigenous communities without their familiesвЂ™ consent has existed since European settlers formed colonies here on Indigenous territories, now referred to as Canada.

Many of the children were then adopted by non-Indigenous, mostly white households throughout Canada and the United States.Д«eing physically, culturally, emotionally and spiritually cut off from their birth families, communities and Nations continues to affect Survivors of the Sixties Scoop, their descendants, their communities and their Nations many years later. These policies resulted in thousands of Indigenous children being taken from their families and communities without consent and placed into foster homes. Please click here for more information on supports within the Hamilton Indigenous community.What has come to be known as the Sixties Scoop refers to a number of policies that were enacted by Canadian provincial and territorial child welfare authorities starting in the mid-1950s. To access your case record with The ChildrenвЂ™s Aid Society of Hamilton, please contact 90, ext. The settlement includes people who are registered Indians (as defined in the Indian Act) and Inuit, as well as people eligible to be registered Indians and were removed from their homes in Canada between Januand December 31, 1991В and placed in the care of non-Indigenous foster or adoptive parents. They also lost critical connection to their language, culture and identity. Those affected lost all contact with their children and families. Thousands of Indigenous children were removed from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous families. The Federal Government of Canada and certain survivors of the Sixties Scoop have reached a settlement of class action lawsuits that provides compensation for certain survivors of the Sixties Scoop.

Sixties scoop