#60sScoop Interactive project raises awareness, creates connections and reunites long-lost relatives

From Île-à-la-Crosse to Brighton, England: '60s Scoop survivors map journey of reconnection

By Brett Forester · CBC News ·  Mar 24, 2023

Daniel Frost is Métis and Cree. Born in northern Saskatchewan, he was adopted by British parents in 1968 at just two years old. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

Thinking
about meeting his sister Patsy for the first time seven years ago is
still tough for Sixties Scoop survivor Daniel Frost.

"All I could
do was look at her hands," he recalled, still overwhelmed with emotion
as he remembered how much those hands looked like his.

"I couldn't look at her eyes."

Frost
is Métis and Cree, one of about 22,000 Indigenous kids who were torn
from their homes and placed in foster care or adopted into
non-Indigenous families between 1951 and 1991, a system known today as
the Sixties Scoop.

He came to Ottawa this week to share his story with the interactive mapping project, In Our Own Words.

The In Our Own Words map tracks where Indigenous kids were taken after being torn from their families. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

Born
in Île-à-la-Crosse in northern Saskatchewan, two-year-old Frost was
adopted by British parents in 1968, taken to White Rock, B.C., and then
finally to Brighton, England. He now lives in Spain.

He spoke with
CBC News at downtown Ottawa's Novotel Hotel, where Sixties Scoop
survivors gathered this week from far-flung places all over the world to
share stories and connect.

Frost explained how a federally funded
Saskatchewan-based organization, Adopt Indian Métis (AIM) scooped seven
youngsters from his 13-sibling family. The organization is known for
placing ads in newspapers and aggressive public relations campaigns.

Frost began learning his history by reading legal documents,
including the court files that tell how his mother ran out of the
courtroom when she learned her children were being taken.

"What
they were saying in the 1960s and '70s was, 'We're not going to help
you. We're just going to take your children,'" Frost said.

"I don't know if I'll heal from it, but I think being able to work my way through it is something which is necessary."

He
visited Île-à-la-Crosse in 2016 and met his family, which he said
changed him from a scared outsider to a man deeply proud of his
Indigenous identity, and this trip to Ottawa includes a hop across the
river to Gatineau, Que., to pick up a copy of his first Indian status
card.

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