After five other stops across the province over the past two months, the sharing circle hosted by the Sixties Scoop Indigenous Society of Saskatchewan wrapped up with a final stop in Regina this weekend.
The society hopes these sharing circles will inform the provincial government’s apology to Sixties Scoop victims. For participant Leticia Racine, this was a chance to make sure history is not forgotten.
“I want them to recognize that what happened was wrong. It was illegal. People’s lives were ruined being taken away,” she said.
Racine said her mother struggled with an alcohol addiction, and that she was taken from her mother as an infant. She bounced around to six different foster homes by the time she was six months old, and was placed mostly with non-Indigenous families.
“When I was 13 years old I was put back in the system. A few different abuses that took place made me very angry and I acted out, being raised in an all-white town, being the only First Nation and coloured child,” she said.
The provincial government hopes hearing stories like Racine’s will help them create a meaningful apology, but organizers said many survivors did not get enough notice to attend the sharing circles or could not make it because of the location.
“We would have liked to have gotten to more communities. We got into communities that we thought (had a) high population of Indigenous people and for those that were apprehended during the Sixties Scoop,” said Rod Belanger, a board member for the Sixties Scoop Indigenous Society of Saskatchewan.
The society would like to see the premier make an apology by March 2019.
