The Sixties Scoop refers to the apprehension of Aboriginal children in Canada between the 1960s and 1980s. These children were taken away from their homes and placed in residential schools, in addition to being adopted out to primarily white middle-class families. Residential schools were Governmental church-run schools with the purpose to assimilate and Christianize Aboriginal children with Western Euro-Canadian culture. Used as a strategy under the Indian Act, this policy ‘forbade the children to speak their own languages or to acknowledge their culture in any way’ (Knopf, 2008). This systematic assimilation has led to the loss of cultural heritage and identity for generations of Aboriginal people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Residential school group photograph, Regina, Saskatchewan 1908. Original photograph by John Woodruff. Retrieved from http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal-heritage/Pages/residential-schools-photo-sets-sk.aspx

 

One of the many grave consequences of the 60’s Scoop is what is now known as ‘Residential School Syndrome’. This refers to the post-traumatic symptoms of the Aboriginal population in Canada who were exposed to the oppressions and violence of residential schools and cultural displacement. Additionally, the concept of ‘historic trauma’ has been coined to refer to the ‘generalized intergenerational condition dating back to the days of colonization’ for Aboriginal people, including those who never attended a residential school (Robertson, 2006). Over the last few decades, survivors of residential schools ‘have come forward and spoken out about physical, spiritual, sexual and psychological abuse they experienced from the staff of these schools’ (Knopf, 2008).

 

Work has also been done to examine and identify links between the residential school system and intergenerational health and social problems. For example, Caroline Tait’s extensive review and analysis of intergenerational links to residential schools identifies how the ‘sexual and physical abuse experienced by children who attended the schools, mass adoption of Aboriginal children in the 1960s and 1970s, and the introduction of alcohol by Europeans into Aboriginal communities’ has led to high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome and alcohol-related birth effects for Aboriginal women (Tait, 2003).

 

The violence and abuse committed within the residential school system is extensive and disturbing:

 

To prevent insubordination by students, many schools adopted disciplinary practices, such as food deprivation, strapping and solitary confinement, as ways to punish children who ‘misbehaved’…Punishment of children was regularly handed out in front of other students as a way to warn them about the consequences of insubordination. Acts deemed to be insubordinate in many of the schools included bed-wetting, communicating with children of the opposite sex, speaking an indigenous language, stealing food, running away, talking back to staff and being outside of school grounds. (Tait, 2003)

 

The abuse and violence committed against those who attended residential schools has undoubtedly led to lasting effects for victims and their subsequent generations.

 

The abuse and violence committed against those who attended residential schools has undoubtedly led to lasting effects for victims and their subsequent generations. For example, residential schools functioned to prepare young girls ‘to become wives and members of nuclear households located in reserve communities’ whilst working to ‘undermine extended family and corporate kinship organizations within Aboriginal communities, as well as the traditional leadership roles of women and, instead, establish self-sufficient, patriarchal, nuclear families, headed by men’ (Tait, 2003). Thus, the residential school system worked to exacerbate the reimagining of the aboriginal woman, transforming her into a docile woman; insubordinate and inferior.

 

It is clear that the legacies of the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop and the residential school system are still living on today and affect how Aboriginal women relate to and access health care. The loss of cultural identity through ways which were traumatic, violent and oppressive, contemporary health practices and social order have caused survivors of the residential school system to feel alienated and marginalized.

 

To learn more about contemporary Aboriginal maternity care in both urban and rural settings in Canada please refer subsequent on ‘Mainstream Urban Services’ and ‘Reclaiming Birth’ written by Eva and Juliette, respectively.

 

 

References

 

Knopf, K. (2008). Aboriginal Canada Revisited. Ottawa, ONT: University of Ottawa Press.

 

Library and Archives Canada. (2015). Residential schools: Photographic collections - Saskatchewan. Retrieved from http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal heritage/Pages/residential-schools-photo-sets-sk.aspx

 

Robertson, L. (2006). The Residential School Experience:  Syndrome or Historic Trauma. Pimatisiwin, 4(1), 1-28.

 

Tait, C. (2003). Fetal Alcohol Syndrome among Aboriginal People in Canada: Review and Analysis of the Intergenerational Links to Residential Schools. Ottawa, ONT: Aboriginal Healing Foundation.