During the past several years, I also started meeting a special group of clients who were encountering barriers in registering for Indian Status because they had been adopted at birth and did not have the proper documentation to support their applications. Individuals who were adopted out of First Nation and Metis communities beginning around the 1960’s are referred to as Sixties Scoop Adoptees. Statistics indicate that at least 20,000 of our children were scooped out of our families and communities and adopted into non-Aboriginal homes.
One aspect of the the experience of Aboriginal Sixties Scoop Adoptees was the legal barriers they were encountering in discovering their original birth families and communities.. Many adoptees are not aware of their birthright legal entitlements as Status Indians under the Indian Act or as Metis citizens. Many obstacles lay in the path of adoptees seeking to find their original birth families and original birth information in order to prove their descendancy from status Indians or Metis for registration purposes. One such client has been interested in sharing his story so that other Sixties Scoop Adoptees on a similar journey can also share their stories and information, in order to help remove the barriers to finding their original legal identities.