My experience as a white child growing up in an extended family with adopted Indigenous children.

Background & Introduction

The negative effects of cross-cultural adoption on Indigenous children have been well documented. Between the 1950s and 1980s, roughly 20,000 Indigenous children were removed from their homes and communities and placed in mostly white homes in what has become known as the 60s scoop. In 1985 the Kimelman Report found that the status quo was not serving the best interests of Indigenous children, and sweeping changes were made to the child welfare system. Indigenous agencies gradually took control of Indigenous child welfare, and the number of Indigenous children placed in non-Indigenous homes decreased. However, some cross-cultural fostering and adoption of Indigenous children continues. People have argued over what’s best for Indigenous children (staying in an unstable situation with their biological family vs. going to a more stable non-Indigenous home), and one can see some merit in both arguments. However, for everyone involved, it seems clear that the child welfare system is broken.

Broken systems hurt everyone. The child welfare system has hurt Indigenous children and families the most, but it also has left a mark on the non-Indigenous families and children who have been involved with it. Much has been written about the negative experiences of Indigenous children in the care of white families, and rightfully so. However, what is the effect of this broken system on the non-Indigenous (white) families who chose to foster or adopt Indigenous kids? In many cases, these were people who had good intentions. Were they seeking to make the world a better place by taking in needy children? Were they Christians following God’s command to care for the poor and the orphan? Were they people who had tried unsuccessfully to have biological children of their own? These are a few of the many questions I wonder at.

Regardless of intentions, the fact that many Indigenous children have struggled in white foster homes is something that white foster and adoptive families need to wrestle with. In the book, Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization by Enns and Meyer, Elaine Enns reflects on the conflicting feelings in her extended family around their adoption of Indigenous children. She writes:

…the best intentions cannot cancel out the terrible impacts experienced by my Indigenous cousins (and thousands of others) as a result of being wrested from their families and communities. Coming out of that conversation I felt what Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Canadian TRC, meant when he kept insisting that Indian Residential Schools and their legacies “are not an Indian problem, but a Canadian problem”. And I understood more deeply what Harry Lafond had told me a few years previously: “My loss” he said simply, “is your loss.” (Enns & Meyer, 233)

The complicated and conflicting feelings of loss, guilt, and grief that white people experience as a result of their participation in an oppressive system like the child welfare system, are symptoms of what Enns calls a “moral injury”. Not to be confused with the trauma that victims of oppression experience, moral injury is experienced by people who are complicit in oppressive systems and realize that their past actions and their morality are in conflict with one another. In thinking about her own Mennonite family and community, Enns wonders whether their struggles with mental health are partly a result of the moral injury sustained by their involvement with the Sixties Scoop (Enns & Meyer, 232).

Reading Enns and Meyers, I begin to wonder how my own family has been shaped by our experiences with cross-cultural fostering and adoption of Indigenous children. The following is my own personal story.

Becoming Aware

Like everyone, my life has been greatly shaped by my family. Growing up with Indigenous cousins who were fostered and adopted has no doubt shaped my perceptions, expectations, and interactions with Indigenous people today. Through my cousins, I was exposed from an early age to some of the intergenerational trauma that they carried. And though I did not experience this trauma myself I learned a lot. I learned about children being taken from their homes, abuse, and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). I also gained a surface-level understanding of who First Nations people were and why my cousins looked different than me.

All of these things were a normal part of growing up in my family, and it wasn’t until I was an adult taking Indigenous Studies courses in university that I began to wonder how these experiences had shaped and formed me. In university, I was taught that white people like my family who adopted or fostered Indigenous children were part of the problem. I learned that my family members were complicit in a broken system that took Indigenous children from their homes and communities, stripped them of their culture, and tried to assimilate them into mainstream white Canadian culture.

During a university summer job with MCC Indigenous Neighbours Program, I was part of a sharing circle where I heard firsthand stories from Indigenous adults who had been fostered into Russo-German Mennonite families. I heard how despite the best intentions of these families, they could not fill the void of what was missing for their Indigenous children. They also could not protect their Indigenous children from the racism (implicit or explicit) that was found in their communities, schools, churches, or even in their homes. What especially bothered me from these stories was the pervasiveness of implicit racism within these Mennonite families. It made me wonder in what ways my cousins may have experienced racism within our family. I also resonated with the feelings of disconnection in these stories. It’s hard to explain, but in watching my cousins at family gatherings over the years, I had always had a feeling that all was not well. We couldn’t connect as a family in ways that were normal, and I had a sense that my cousins didn’t always feel secure and connected to the family.

As I dig into my childhood and my family’s experiences with fostering and adoption of Indigenous kids I realize that I’m left with many unanswered questions, assumptions, and feelings. I can’t speak for my family members, but I still feel that it’s important to share my experiences and perspectives. For me, it’s a part of my own journey toward truth and reconciliation.

Some Stories: Clarissa

My earliest memories of interacting with an Indigenous family member are not actually of my cousins, but of my foster sister Clarissa. Clarissa was a bright and cheerful girl with a beautiful shy smile who came to live with our family when she was four years old, and I was two. My memories of her are few, but I’ve watched enough family videos to see that she was a good older sister to me for the short time she lived with us. Occasionally on weekends, she would go on visits to see her biological sister in another foster home. My mother tells me that whenever Clarissa left, I, as a two-year-old, would say, “I miss my girl!”. Clarissa lived with us for one year and then moved into the home where her sister was living. I don’t remember how it felt for me as a three-year-old to have her leave for good, but I can imagine it must have had some effect on me. Although not comparable to the feelings of loss and displacement that foster kids must feel, I guess I was exposed in a small way to these feelings of loss, albeit within the confines of a stable and loving biological family.

We lost touch with Clarissa in the years that followed, but feelings of loss for me would be compounded when we learned a few years ago that she had been murdered. To this day, when I see her face in the news articles, I’m filled with sadness for the loss of the little girl I remember. There is still some level of attachment there, even though it has been so many years. And when I learned more about her adult life, she seemed to have been doing well for herself. Lord have mercy.

Family Gatherings

Growing up, family gatherings on my mother’s side were always chaotic affairs. In my immediate family, I am the eldest of three kids in a span of six years. In that same span of six years, two of my aunts (one single and one married) also fostered and subsequently adopted three children each. All of these cousins are Indigenous, and at least half of them were born with FASD. In addition to my cousins, my grandparents also fostered a boy named Darrell, who was a few years older than us. He did not claim any Indigenous identity that we knew of, though he may have been Metis. Darrell had severe behavioural issues and, as the oldest, was often the ringleader of any shenanigans that took place.

Feeling unsafe

Looking back, I think I often felt unsafe playing alone with my cousins at family gatherings. The level of physicality of play seemed really high with my older cousins, and someone often ended up hurt. My parents told us later on that they were not comfortable leaving us for sleepovers with our grandparents since they thought the home situation with Darrell there was unsafe. My younger cousins had more severe FASD, and although they were less physically threatening, they would regularly tell lies while playing. We quickly learned not to trust what they said. I think this lack of trust led to a general feeling of insecurity while playing, as we never knew who would have our back. On one visit, my sister remembers being spied on by these cousins while she was in the shower. This is another example of the feelings of mistrust and insecurity that I felt.

Feeling awkward

If playing alone with my cousins often left me feeling unsafe, times with the whole extended family (cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents) often felt awkward. I wonder if this was because there was little sense of family unity or collective belonging. Let me use an example to illustrate what I mean by this. Singing hymns or Christmas carols around Christmas time is an important cultural practice for Russo-German Mennonites. I could tell even as a kid that it was important for my grandparents and parents that we kids sing along. However, my Indigenous cousins did not sing, for whatever reason, and would make jokes and laugh and goof off during the singing time. I would have liked singing but felt torn between pleasing my parents and grandparents and fitting in with my cousins, who seemed to have no use for singing Christmas carols or any part of the Christian traditions for that matter. If I chose to sing, I ran the risk of looking “uncool” in front of my cousins. However, if I chose not to sing, I would be letting down my parents and especially my grandparents, who wanted to ensure that their Christian heritage was being passed down.

This leads to another point; that as one of the biological children, I felt that in my grandparents’ eyes, I was somehow more special or relatable. However, as a shy and emotionally perceptive kid, this was not the attention that I wanted in front of my cousins. To complicate things further, it often felt that my parents and aunts and uncles knew this and were compensating for it by paying more attention to my cousins. After all, they needed more help anyways due to their behavioural challenges. These are tough things for a kid to understand and process.

Throughout all of these family gatherings, there was one thing that seemed to improve the feelings of family unity and collective belonging. For a few years, one of my aunts (who was mostly single and didn’t have any children) was in a common-law relationship with an Indigenous man. The presence of an Indigenous uncle at these gatherings seemed to provide a calming presence for everyone, and I could see how my male cousins especially looked up to him. It’s too bad that their relationship didn’t last.

Feeling pressure

Finally, in addition to the feelings of insecurity and awkwardness, there was another challenging dynamic to growing up with Indigenous cousins. This was the pressure to be a good example for my cousins. Mostly this meant behaving better at family gatherings but also included our behaviour and lifestyle choices when we were not together. Sometimes this was as simple as having my good school grades pointed out to my grandparents.

Another pressure that I felt was the pressure not to complain. I knew from my parents at a young age about the tough situations my cousins had come from in their biological homes. It’s always a bit rich to hear a white person complaining/sharing tough experiences when there are really hard things that Indigenous people face every day. This is probably a feeling that was baked into my subconscious from a young age (“you shouldn’t complain, look at how much harder life is for your cousins!”)

Later, as young adults, there was intense pressure on my siblings and me from my parents not to drink alcohol. After all, “look at what alcohol did to our cousins!” Thus, our choices of whether or not to drink alcohol would be scrutinized through the lens of FASD and the examples we were setting for our younger Indigenous cousins who had FASD.

Concluding Thoughts

As I dig into my past, I realize that growing up with an Indigenous foster sister and adopted Indigenous cousins has shaped my siblings and me in many ways. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how different our upbringing had been. Many of my peers have grown up with close relationships with their cousins and grandparents, things which I did not have growing up. While some of my cousins have found various levels of success in the world, the challenges that we faced as we grew up and the different paths that our lives have taken, mean that I will probably never have close relationships with them. 

I have one last story to illustrate how formative this experience has been for my family. A few years ago, when my siblings and I were all newly married but without children, we were sitting around talking about our family. Over the course of this conversation, we realized we had all come to the same conclusion, independently from one another, that we would never want to foster or adopt children. We all agreed it was based on our experience of growing up with our adopted/fostered cousins and the challenges we saw in that way of living.

Cross-cultural fostering and adoption of Indigenous children make the problems that Indigenous people face become personal to us. Through my family’s experience with Clarissa, I, in a small way, am connected to the painful reality of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada. Through our experience with my younger cousins, we have a firsthand understanding of the devastating effects of alcoholism and FASD that is so prevalent in some Indigenous communities.  I’d like to think that my formative experiences with adopted Indigenous cousins have made me more empathetic and compassionate toward the challenges that Indigenous people in Canada face. But I’m also aware that this may have come at a cost. Without personal healing, the negative experiences and feelings I had as a child have the potential to leave me with negative biases, assumptions, or attitudes toward Indigenous people.  

Throughout this piece, I have tried to balance my own privileged position as a white person with the real feelings of loss, insecurity, awkwardness, and pressure that I felt growing up as a child in this setting. In doing this, I don’t mean to equate what I’ve experienced with the real trauma that Indigenous children in the system, including my cousins, have faced. Instead, my hope is that by sharing my story that others who have been involved in this broken system are able to come to terms with how it has affected them.

Recommended Additional Reading: I came across this article in Plough Quarterly (publication of the Bruderhof Community) that looks at adoption through the theological lens of hospitality as compared to the lens of family.

Source:

Enns, Elaine, and Ched Meyers. 2021. Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books.