Editorial: What do we do when an action intended for good, goes wrong?

This past summer, an Indigenous woman stopped by our office to talk about her work with a sixties scoop foundation. She wanted to talk about the possibility of the EMC offering an official apology to people like her who had been adopted or fostered in non-Indigenous EMC homes. She grew up not far from me and had stories about the abuse she and her Indigenous friends had faced in the area. 

We talked about the abuses and how to follow up with those but didn’t make a lot of headway in that direction—she had little reason to believe, she said, that our process to address the abuse would happen at all or do any good if it did. What she wanted was an apology from us for having adopted Indigenous kids at all. 

I wrestle with this. This one is personal to me. Our family has been a mixed one since 1995 when two children born to my husband’s adopted Indigenous sister joined the three children born to my husband and myself (both white) and we became one family.  

Taking kids away 

There’s no question that the sixties scoop was a tragedy. Not just a tragedy–a crime. Children should not be removed from their biological family without very good cause. And if they really need to be removed, it is reasonable to expect that kids should be raised in a home as close as possible to their natural family. That didn’t happen for many Indigenous kids who were taken for cultural reasons and placed in white, urbanized homes.

But was it wrong to foster or adopt? 

But was it wrong that Christian families chose to foster or adopt children who had been removed from their homes? Does EMC need to apologize for that?

If EMC does need to apologize for past adoptions, then the obvious follow-through is to stop doing it. But then what about the children who can’t be with their biological parents and have no one in their communities willing or able to step in? What do we say about those families who are currently fostering Indigenous kids as an expression of their love for Jesus and for the children? Are they doing a wrong thing? And what about other cross-cultural adoptions? Is adopting from other countries a completely different kind of thing or are we repeating many of the same mistakes?

There is one obvious difference and that is around how Indigenous kids were removed from their parents. These are particularly tragic and don’t necessarily apply to other scenarios. But some of the complications do. There are vast economic inequities that contribute to some families not being able to raise their children, and many of those are directly linked to the policies and actions of western nations. It’s not just Canadian Indigenous people who have a troubled history with people of European descent. Identity is also going to be an issue for any child when their family and friends are different from them—this is not specific to Indigenous children.

We may indeed be participating in an unjust systemic issue by fostering or adopting, but what about the child who needs a home today when broken systems are the only ones in place?

The stories we’ll tell

The impact of fostering/adopting cross-culturally, particularly Indigenous kids and the sixties scoop, is one we’ll look at in this issue. It is far-reaching and we’ll touch on just a few of the stories. The greatest impact is on the child removed from their family and community, and Josh Dueck will talk about that and what, in the midst of that, drew him to Christ. Another EMC writer who has asked that all names, their own included, be changed or withheld to protect their family will talk about the impact on the foster family. Norm Hiebert, a retired social services worker, will talk about the foster system and Jeremy M. Bergen will talk about when to give apologies, something he has studied in depth.

Wherever we land on the question of an apology, it would be short-sighted not to listen intently and respectfully to the people who share their accounts of growing up cross-culturally. It would be irresponsible not to learn from the past so we can avoid at least those pitfalls that are known. And it would be a mistake not to look at our past blunders and consider whether an apology is appropriate and necessary. Maybe it isn’t, but then again, maybe it is.

Note: Though this issue is relevant to all of Canada, Manitoba seems to have had some of the worst policies and outcomes and EMC families in Manitoba were especially heavily involved in fostering Indigenous kids. As a result, this issue is more Manitoba based than we prefer.