60's Scoop: Indigenous Children

The Schuyler Sisters from Hamilton said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."  Unfortunately, not all of us share even an ounce of the same common sense that the sisters harbor. From that widely known truth, a question is born, has humanity evolved to the point where all of us won't be seen differently despite our innate differences? Yes, you guessed it right, no. 

Systemic racism has been a fairy godmother to feed the nitwit's entitled opinion about their definition of worth. In our escapades of transcending through time, educating ourselves about one of the first segregation operations through school, Sixties Scoop, would be our first stop.

The rise of colonialism in the 18th century has brought an abundance of pain. We, Indonesians, out of all people, could relate the most since our county's history is also tinted with it. So, what are Sixties Scoop? Does it have something in common with the ice cream scoop? Where does the "scoop" come from?

Sixties Scoop was an operation where indigenous kids got scooped out of their house and got sent into a boarding school managed by the current government. It wouldn't be such a problem if the kids were nurtured and loved, but the problem is that they didn't get that.  Abuse, mentally, physically, even sexually, has happened at those schools after the scooping. Overcrowding, malnourishment, and underfunding were a reoccurrence to those schools. Cultural assimilation and genocide were something the government was aiming for, and they achieved it. Perfectly.

And to top it all off, most of the indigenous children are scooped from stable families. From a loving and warm household. Scooped out by social worker by a school van or Royal Canadian Mounted Police while hiding behind the reason of better child welfare. Oh, such irony.

An added reason why there was so much misdirected scooping, was due to the uneducated social workers. No bread in the house? Cruelty! Mind you, a traditional Aboriginal diet of fish and berries was what they were having.

Some of the remnants of the scooping are still discovered even today. Adding to the mountains of graves of indigenous children of residential schools that are unmarked and undocumented. 

Now, it's all upon us. The privilege of passing on the story about the history. To our daughter, to our son. To our great-granddaughter, to our great-grandson. Words travel fast, but history won't travel unless we took part in it. As Hamilton has said, "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story."