Fostering Indigeneity - A reflection of the experience as an Indigenous foster kid

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Content warning: This article discusses systemic violence.

Today, many Canadians are familiar with the “Sixties Scoop,” during which provincial authorities seized nearly 20,000 Indigenous children and placed them in the child welfare system or residential schools. These government-funded, church-run institutions were violent, operating to commit cultural genocide. However, the less known is its descendant, the “Millennium Scoop,” referring to the seizure of Indigenous children since the year 2000, which similarly follows systematically removing and placing Indigenous children with typically non-Indigenous people.

The Millennium Scoop, however, strictly uses the foster care system. A 2021 study noted that in Canada, Indigenous children make up 53.8 per cent of those in foster care, despite being only 7.7 per cent of Canada’s total population under the age of 15. My family is a product of the Millennium Scoop. Foster care and our experiences continue to deeply affect our identities, particularly in relation to our Indigeneity.

My birth mother had 12 children over 20 years, starting when she was 17. I don’t know the full details of her life, but I know enough to understand that it was harder than anything I’ve been through. Her difficulties began long before her pregnancies. She was just a girl who took on more responsibilities than anyone could bear, and she is still struggling with things she never got the chance to heal from. She tried her best but made many mistakes, so our entry into foster care was as necessary as it was damaging.

I am baby number six, born into foster care. In my early childhood, I bounced between living in foster homes and with my birth family on our reserve — a piece of land designated by the government for Indigenous communities to live and govern themselves. With my birth family, I experienced more immediate dangers associated with the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual violence of poverty.

With my foster families, the dangers were more complex. Food insecurity caused by a lack of income was reframed as food restriction due to me being “too fat” or “too hyperactive.” My foster family ignored the complexities of my identity and experiences. It didn’t matter that I was scared of when or where my next meal would come from. It didn’t matter that I was at a healthy weight and physically active. It didn’t matter that my ADHD and other mental diagnoses were responsible for my energy.

This is not all to say I didn’t, or don’t, experience genuine love. When I was around seven, my first foster parents, who let us call them Mommy and Daddy, took in my two younger siblings and me. I knew my little brother had cancer; just before coming to our foster home, he had been receiving treatment in what I saw as the most glorious city in the world — Toronto. During our weekly visits with our birth family, our three eldest siblings raved about how there was a McDonald’s on every street, and they promised they’d take me there one day. They would show me how to make fun symbols with my hands, and I’d mimic their finger tattoos on my skin with pen ink.

At Catholic school, I learned Anishinaabemowin again, and for the first time in a long while, my little brother’s hair grew. He didn’t live long, but our families gave him all of the love and safety he needed at the end. We were very lucky to be found at that time by those people, even if they couldn’t keep us.

The next foster home I lived in didn’t hold the same values. They used the worst aspects of Christianity, like judgment and fear-based teachings, to teach me the idea that God’s love is conditional, and Indigenous culture and people here were met with discomfort at best. In this home, stripping me of my culture and community was supposed to heal me. I was meant to be removed from danger so that I could grow and choose my identity, under the premise that I choose the ‘correct’ one. Growing up under this implicit and explicit pressure is incredibly difficult. No matter how much effort you put in, it will never satisfy the invisible expectations when you are born fundamentally ‘wrong.’

I don’t know the life stories of my three eldest siblings, and I won’t get the chance to know them again. They’re judged for choosing their lives, for choosing their deaths to any extent. The only time we are given our context is when people congratulate me on how far I’ve come. The world forgets that the only reason I am here at all is because my older siblings came and left first. The way the world receives our Indigeneity endangers us, but it is also our only way home.

https://thevarsity.ca/2024/11/11/fostering-indigeneity/