Fallen Feather Productions

Question: Why do you believe that the government was so interested in aboriginal children?

Dr. Jacqueline Maurice:
“It was both the Federal government and the Provincial government working together, I would definitely say that the Feds as well as the Province saw First Nations communities and families and especially parents as inadequate and unable to parent their own children. Well, I would argue; If you have 100 years of Indian Residential Schools with multiple intergenerational losses and trauma and multiple grief issues, then without a doubt there needed to be an investment of resources to help families to adequately parent their children. But instead I believe the Federal and Provincial governments used that as an excuse to create another policy of assimilation. So then, as we have parents in the 1960’s and 70’s who haven’t been parented themselves and have not grown up with their own family, parents, grandparents and extended family, you have the government coming in to scoop my parents children, myself, and using this created dysfunction as a justification. The Government needs to be the parent. It was definitely the continuation of the policy of assimilation and oppression. We all suffered the loss of culture, language, Identity and our sense of belonging.

Its tragic.. The only reason that I have some knowledge of where I come from is from my own resources. There has been no one that had helped me search out my roots. To know my medical history or next of kin. It takes a lot of inner strength. There has been no Federal or Provincial resource.

My losses are real, what had happened to me, all the abuse over all the foster homes. It feels that I’m left with nothing.

This is why there needs to be an apology and some accountability for the 60’s Scoop, because no child or young adult should have to live without family.”

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