The "Going Home At Last: 60s Scoop" Story

It was an ordinary day.  I have just read one of the most remarkable stories I have found in quite some time.  The story was about a Canadian program known as the "Sixties Scoop" and the effect it had on a young man from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  First I thought it best if I do some research on the "Sixties Scoop" and what I discovered was heartbreaking as well as unthinkable.  How could a government justify STEALING thousands of native children from their parents to try and make them fit into the society that the government thought was best for them.  And, as I read on and on I realized it had happened before and will more than likely happen again in the future.  I was in high school when the fostering and adopting (stealing) took place and continued into the mid-1980s.  This all happened in Canada when thousands of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children across Canada were taken from their homes by provincial welfare workers. These children were then fostered or adopted by non-Indigenous families both in Canada and abroad.  It was all part of the residential school system which was a government-sponsored religious boarding system whose purpose was to force Indigenous children to assimilate into Euro-Candian culture.  

This was a 1975 Government of Suskatchewan
adoption poster.  The real names of the two
children circled are Barry and Lionel Hambly.
They were the subject of Red Road, a documentary
on the 60s Scoop.

Close to 150,000 children were taken from their families and forced into physical, emotional and sexual abuse.  This all grew to be known as the 60s Scoop.  It all began when the Indian Act was amended in 1951 and one of the amendments allowed provinces in Canada's jurisdiction to take over the welfare of Indigenous children.  Now, I know, I'm probably older than most reading this, but do you see this didn't happen hundreds of years ago.  I happened in my lifetime.  That's awful, absolutely awful!!  And now money is being thrown about to try and remedy what happened.  No amount of money will EVER fix this.  I just read a story in the Lancaster Newspaper titled "FINDING CLEO".  The story is about a nearby Columbia, Pennsylvania man, Johnny, who was removed from Canada with the remainder of his siblings in the 60s Scoop who finally landed in Lancaster County, Pennslvania.  He at long last has discovered one of his sister's fate through a journalist's podcast.  The journalist, a member of the Okanese First Nation in Canada, Connie Walker, has recently turned her attention to missing and murdered women and girls from the 60s Scoop.  

Johnny's sister Cleo.  The only photograph he had
of her.  Her gravesite was found in New Jersey.

Another of Johnny's sisters read of her work and contacted Connie who in turn told of finding the grave marker of Johnny's younger sister Cleo.  April, a year ago, Connie visited with Johnny in nearby Silver Spring, PA.  She told of finding Cleo's marker in Park View Cemetery in suburban Medford, New Jersey.  It's a small rectangle of granite a few feet from a wrought-iron fence along a residental street.  There's a large shade tree nearby with American flags scattered about.  And, to believe that Johnny's youngest sister was only 100 miles away was almost too much to bear for this bear of a man.  Many of these people who were sold into slavery, and worst, aren't too much younger than me.  To think, if the circumstances may have been slightly different, this story might have been about me and my sibling.  Johnny has now been able to trace at least part of his history back in time.  But, what about the other thousands and thousands of children sold in the 60s Scoop.  It sends chills up and down my spine that something like this happened so close to me and I never knew about it.  It certainly is something I will never forget.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.