“they go into foster care, and become apart of the foster care economy. “

“the system exists we just don’t call it the sixties scoop anymore.”

“the foster care scoop…non indigenous people are getting a lot of money to take care of our children.”

“they didn’t check backgrounds for the families.”

“I think most people take family , the familial circle, for granted. and I don’t. 
iI’s kind of comperable… [to] being born out at sea and just chaos and… uncertainty.  I’m speaking as an adopted person,  as soon as your adopted into a familial circle it’s like being in this weird port that you’ve never been to before. you’re a stranger in a strange land and the only place you feel safe is back out in the chaotic sea again.” 

“our only job is to look after each other. 
take care of our kids and raise them up to be strong better versions of ourselves. If we can do that for a couple of generations, we can decolonize much faster.”

“the idea was to remove me from the family, put me into a white home, change me name, change my culture, i would lose my indian status, i would become part of, you know, assimilated”

“my biological sister sonya… started writing letters to me.. my parents were just ripping up the letters, they were not allowing us to have anything, they wanted us to have no connection… and then i met sonya, which was awesome. because that bond we had as kids, it never really ended.”

“‘It’s’s just a diaper rash so I’m not going to call youth protection on you.’ that’s a threat. But I can’t react, because then Im a hostile Indian which gives her reason to call youth protection.”

“it’s really systemic racism. to pick up a child and decide that they’re parents aren’t worthy.” 

“the child saving narrative, the great white savior came and rescued our children from us, that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

“his conclusion that it was cultural genocide.”

“Probably about 12 years old i began searching… i felt like i had a home but i didn’t feel like i had a family.  i ended up  out to vancouver where my birth mother lived and.. it was a bitter sweet reunion.. my mum has some issues of her own that she’s still working on and struggling with to this day. but i met her where she is and i don’t expect more from.. her. i’m accepting of what’s she’s capable of and you know what she’s funny she’s great, she’s a great cook, she tries her best to take care of us.”

“because when you put up a barrier to love, it’s really fuckin hard to get it back. and some people don’t ever get it back. it’s like an imposed detachment disorder that’s really what the sixties scoop was about, it imposed this attatchement disorder onto so many of us.” 

“bill c-92 : governments and social work agencies are compelled to support the sovereignty of indigenous families and communities. What this means is that that cannot advocate for our children to be placed in any other family. We have jurisdiction, they cannot take our children. end of story. “

“assert authority, cause we never gave that up.”

“our survival, our recovery isn’t an attempt to revise history. it’s an attempt to live a good life in spite of history. 

“it’s about coming home, it’s about welcoming those who were taken. welcoming those that were lost. it’s about a deep relationship with home. and home is the land. the language. it’s our culture. it’s my grandmothers laugh. it’s about reclaiming that relationship with home.