My adoptive parents tried to erase my Indigenous identity. They failed. [cbc.ca]

By Kim Wheeler,CBC.CA Radio, The Doc Project, June 18, 2020

My name is Kim Wheeler but some know me as Kim Ziervogel. Others will remember me as Kim Bell, and to a small group of people I will always be Ruby Linda Bruyere. But the name game doesn't stop there.

Why would someone have so many different names? Are they all aliases? Are they hiding from their past? From the law?

In my case, it's none of these. I'm a Sixties Scoop survivor and those names were given to me through birth, adoption and two marriages.

VIDEO
Separating children from parents: The Sixties Scoop in Canada

I've always known I am First Nations. I've also known I am Mohawk. It wasn't until I was 26 — when I first met my maternal birth siblings — that I learned I am also Anishinaabe. I also learned I wasn't a Bruyere, I'm actually a Beaulieu. My birth mother married into the Bruyere family, took her husband's name and that is why I was given the Bruyere name at birth. I have no blood connection to the Bruyere family.

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And we all allowed deliberate and purposeful policies to control a "virus" to double or triple child poverty in North America. Once again, we failed to consider the consequences to children. It will be important to learn the lesions that are so clear from governmental policy towards First Nations children. Such policies of taking children away from parents could happen to children today. In the months to come, it will become clear that more and more families with children have been pushed to the edge by purposeful poverty. We will all need to come together to keep children safe and keep families with children together so that kids do not suffer the horrors that happened to Native Children. No child should be taken from her family because of lack of material resources or to somehow move a family culture toward what some members of society believe should happen. There is too great a potential of abuse if this is ever allowed to occur.

My adoptive parents tried to erase my Indigenous identity. They failed. [cbc.ca]

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