The Sixties Scoop refers to a period of a couple decades when the government through social services agencies took thousands of indigenous children from their households and put them into foster care. Many of those children were permanently adopted. As has been the trend lately, every past government action has been retroactively declared to be genocidal and compensation has been demanded. Kids taken in the Sixties Scoop are now referred to as survivors. Those kids are indeed survivors, but not of the government's action. They are survivors thanks to the government's action.The government didn’t randomly snatch children from households. Children were only taken from situations where they were in danger. The problem is that there are and were thousands of households in such dire conditions, that the government had to intervene..LAFRAMBOISE: The persecution of Canada’s ‘other’ Freedom Convoy truckers.Indian reserves are socioeconomic disasters across Canada. Thousands of children live in squalor, neglect, and abuse in the racial enclaves we call reserves. In the sixties as with now, addiction and dysfunction overwhelms thousands of families living on reserves. Children are dying from neglect, abuse, and even house fires as the parents are lost in their addictions. The most inhumane action that could have been taken in the 1960s would have been to leave the children in the circumstances they were in. The government would likely have been blamed for the harm coming to the kids if it hadn’t stepped in.In the spirit of revisionism, the government has been portrayed as some evil institution determined to snatch kids at every opportunity and put them into state care whether they needed it or not. I am far from a fan of the government and its motivations, but let’s not pretend the government was eager to intervene in the catastrophe occurring on Indian reserves across the nation. There were many other priorities they would have preferred to work on rather than immerse themselves in the contentious issue of intervention. They had no choice..Rather than stand up for its actions, the Canadian government has bent and apologized of course. Settlements followed, and demands for more funds will continue for generations.Even worse than the apology, has been the changes to child welfare policies made in response to the issue.Child welfare services have bent over backwards to keep children in indigenous households even when it harms the child. Some of the cases due to this have been horrific. Senator Paula Simons wrote on the tragic case of baby “Serenity” who was a toddler taken from her parents and given to other caregivers in the family. Serenity was abused and died a terrible death under the care of these relations. Would she have been worse off in a foster home outside the reserve?The family has tried to sue Simons for writing about it. Getting more money and covering up the problem tends to be the path activists take rather than seeking solutions. Just as the Siksika Band has tried charging me for trespassing after I exposed the housing squalor on their reserve despite their recently having received $1.2 billion in a settlement..TOKEN LEFTY: The UCP manufactured teacher’s strike.Child welfare services have bent over backwards to keep children in indigenous households even when it harms the child. Some of the cases due to this have been horrific. Senator Paula Simons wrote on the tragic case of baby “Serenity” who was a toddler taken from her parents and given to other caregivers in the family. Serenity was abused and died a terrible death under the care of these relations. Would she have been worse off in a foster home outside the reserve?The family has tried to sue Simons for writing about it. Getting more money and covering up the problem tends to be the path activists take rather than seeking solutions. Just as the Siksika Band has tried charging me for trespassing after I exposed the housing squalor on their reserve despite their recently having received $1.2 billion in a settlement..More recently, Sonya Pasqua and Michael Sinclair had their child taken from them due to abuse. Sadly, they lobbied and had the child returned to them. According to court documents, the couple referred to the child as their “paycheque” before they scalded the toddler to death. They were only sentenced to a few years, likely thanks to Gladue Principles (reduced sentencing for indigenous people). They will be free to breed and murder again soon.Children have died terrible deaths due to an obsession with keeping kids within indigenous families, no matter how unfit the families may be..THOMSON: Canada’s silent war: Losing to terrorists without a fight.There’s a huge blind spot in Canadian policy with indigenous people. It's the utter refusal to admit the reserve system has been a complete catastrophe no matter how much money is thrown at it.In Newfoundland, people were horrified when images of children huffing gasoline and living in terrible conditions were released from Davis Inlet in the 1990s. The town was so run down, the government decided to build an entirely new town down the coast a few miles. Decades later, the new town is in shambles, and children were recently found to have been left alone in a house for days with loaded shotguns and huffing gasoline..Would it be a genocidal scoop to remove the kids from such a situation? Must we wait until more die? With Davis Inlet, the government dodged the underlying issue and, of course got the same outcome. Governments do things wrong all the time. The treatment of indigenous people in Canada is rife with abuse, and race-based laws were terrible. The government has one primary role and that is to care for those who are being harmed by others. The government must step in to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Because of the revisionist pap from the Sixties Scoop, children are dying. We must look to the root of the issue. That’s the utter and complete failure of the reserve system. In the meantime, children at risk must be removed from dangerous households. No matter what race they are..Due to a high level of spam content being posted in our comment section below, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
