The phrase first appears in print in a 1983 report commissioned by the Canadian Council on Social Development, titled "Native Children and the Child Welfare System",[8] in which researcher Patrick Johnston noted the source for the term and adopted its usage.
[2][9] It is similar to the term "Baby Scoop Era," which refers to the period from the late 1950s to the 1980s in which large numbers of children were taken from unmarried mothers for adoption.
The government policies that led to the Sixties Scoop were discontinued in the mid-1980s, after Ontario chiefs had passed resolutions against them, and a Manitoba judicial inquiry had harshly condemned them.
[14][15][16] On 14 February 2017, Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba ruled that the government was liable for the harm caused by the Sixties Scoop;[17] and on 6 October 2017, an $800-million settlement was announced for the Martel case.
[18] The beginning of the Sixties Scoop coincided with Indigenous families dealing with the fall-out of the residential school project which had negative results on their social, economic, and living conditions.
During the Sixties Scoop, children were forcibly apprehended from their Native land and community for an extended period of time, often without knowledge or consent from their families or tribes.
According to the TRC Commission's final report, published in 2015: By the end of the 1970s, the transfer of children from residential schools was nearly complete in Southern Canada, and the impact of the Sixties Scoop was in evidence across the country.
[22]First Nations consistently fought to resist these policies in a variety of ways, including the courts (Natural Parents v. Superintendent of Child Welfare, 1976, 60 D.L.R.
He stated that there has been an increase in the number of children from these communities who are up for adoption because of the rise in illegitimate births and marriage breakdowns among Indian and Métis people.
The series website includes images of the AIM newspaper advertisements featuring photographs and personal and health information about the Indian and Métis children available for adoption.
It also includes an internal memo, dated 25 September 1973, from AIM director G. E. Jacob, that recommended as an Award of Merit to a supervisor in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Mrs. D. Wilson, as Salesperson of the Year.
[2][9] Johnston, in researching his report, collected statistical data from various stakeholders within the community, including different levels of government, Aboriginal organizations, and band councils.
He got the idea for the term "Sixties Scoop" from a social worker who disclosed "with tears in her eyes – that it was common practice in BC in the mid-sixties to 'scoop' from their mothers on reserves almost all newly born children.
It names one segment of a larger period in Aboriginal child welfare history where, because questionable apprehensions and adoptions figured prominently, a label was applied.
[11]It found that Manitoba's non-Indigenous agencies often required single, Indigenous mothers to live on their own, as opposed to in traditional, multi-generational households, to regain custody of their children.This demand goes against the native patterns of child care.
[11]Membership changes in the new Indian Act also prevented single Indigenous mothers from living with their children on reserves and complicated placements with family members.
[27] The Kimelman Report included 109 recommendations to address issues that ranged from cultural sensitivity to maintenance of family ties, formal training for professionals, structure of the system, and having records accessible by computer.
[37][38] Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) documented the experiences of Indigenous children who were removed from their families and placed in residential schools by the government.
Published in 2015, the TRC report addresses the effects of the Sixties Scoop as well that of residential schools on Indigenous communities:The effects of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop on Aboriginal people and their families resulted in generational and historical trauma that negatively affected parenting skills, social values, economic conditions, and future success.
The lessons learned in childhood are often repeated in adulthood with the result that many survivors of the residential school system often inflict abuse on their own children.”[40] Stereotypes about Indigenous people lead child welfare workers to more quickly decide to remove children from contemporary homes.
Such action of kidnapping kids and keeping them away from practicing their cultural values has resulted in the destruction of their social and political structure which was the norm of the Aboriginal communities.
Scholar Chris Walmsley notes in Protecting Aboriginal Children (2011) that some social workers find themselves in a similar alienated relationship to communities.
[42] Canada's 1.4 million First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people[43] disproportionately experience poor living conditions and substandard schooling, among other issues.
The tribunal ruled in January 2016 that the Canadian government's failure to provide equitable and culturally based child welfare services to 165,000 First Nations children amounted to discrimination.
On August 25, 2017, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recommended for Canada to end its underfunding of First Nations, Inuit and Métis child and family services; ensure that all children, on and off reserve, have access to all services available to other children in Canada, without discrimination; implement Jordan's Principle fully to ensure access to services is not delayed or denied because of funding disputes between the federal, provincial and territorial governments; and address the root causes of displacement, such as poverty and poor housing, that disproportionately drive Indigenous children into foster care.
[47] In 2009, Beaverhouse First Nation Chief Marcia Brown Martel filed a class action lawsuit in Ontario on behalf of Indigenous children affected by the Sixties Scoop.
On February 14, 2017, Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba ruled in favour of the plaintiffs in the case known as Brown v. Canada (Attorney General).
The uncontroverted evidence of the plaintiff's experts is that the loss of their Aboriginal identity left the children fundamentally disoriented, with a reduced ability to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.
It will provide status First Nations and Inuit who were adopted out of their families and communities as part of the Sixties Scoop, with $25,000 to $50,000 in compensation, depending on the number of claimants who come forward.
[66][67] In the United States, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), 25 to 35 percent of Native children nationwide were being removed from their families in 1978.