Canada seeks to compensate indigenous taken from families

[Judi Lynn]

Rob Gillies, Associated Press
 Updated 5:54 pm, Monday, October 30, 2017

TORONTO (AP) — Colleen Cardinal often wondered why her parents turned bright red in the sun but she grew dark along with her sisters. The puzzle was solved when she was a young teen, and the woman she had thought of as her mother disclosed that she had been picked out of a catalog of native children available for adoption.

Cardinal was one of thousands of indigenous children taken from their birth families from the 1960s to mid-1980s and sent to live with white families, who officials at the time insisted could give them better care. Many lost touch with their original culture and language.
 
It echoes the history of residential schools in Canada. Some 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their families over much of the last century and put in government schools, where they were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.
 
The government has since apologized and offered compensation for the victims of residential schools, and now it's paying compensation for what is known as the "Sixties Scoop" in which children were essentially scooped up from reservations and their native families. But many say the settlement is too little, too late.

More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Canada-seeks-to-compensate-indigenous-taken-from-12316196.php

[StevieM]

1. The Baby Scoop Era was such a disgraceful time, in Canada as well as the United States.

And native children were particularly targeted. That's why the U.S. Congress had to pass the Indian Child Welfare Act. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has recently gutted it.