Sixties Scoop survivors feel close connection to heritage at Moose Cree gathering | CBC News

Cree heritage is a part of Andre Begin Sutherland and Ernie Lafontaine’s identity that they had little to no knowledge about in their early years. 

That’s because they were just two of more an estimated 5,000 people in northern Ontario taken from their families by child welfare agencies during the Sixties Scoop.

The Sixties Scoop refers to the government’s legalized trafficking of Canada’s Indigenous, Metis and Inuit children across the country, as well as to the United States and the world. From the late 1950s to the 1980s, these children were adopted into non-Indigenous homes on a permanent basis.   

It wasn’t until 1992 when Sutherland, now living in Penticton B.C., declared his Indian Status. That’s when he connected with Lafontaine, and discovered they were cousins. 

“In doing that, I had to find my family, and we discovered that our mothers were sisters,” Sutherland said. 

“Sutherland! That’s the aboriginal side of us,” Lafontaine, who now lives and works for the Moose Cree First Nation pointed out.

His mother, Jane and Sutherland’s mother, Bella Sutherland, were both indigenous, while their fathers were francophone. 

“It’s been a long road. It’s been 30 years, but I’m here now,” Sutherland told the CBC’s Markus Schwabe at the Moose Cree Gathering of Our People Cree Fest and the 350th anniversary of the Hudson Bay.

“This is like an annual family reunion,” he added. 

Learning about their indigenous identity

“I never knew my family,” Sutherland said.

He said he was too young to remember them, and the few memories he had left weren’t positive. 

At a young age, Sutherland said he was separated from his mother and shipped to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. where he lived in a number of foster homes. 

“I guess my mother was out drinking. They found me wandering the streets at three in the morning. Police picked us up and that was the end. We never saw her again.”

Sutherland recalled his father, a single man, doing shift work and living up the street from his guardian parents’ home.

“Every weekend he would come in for dinner and take us [Sutherland and his sister] out somewhere, that’s how I grew up.”

Discovering the name ‘Sutherland’

He said he was at a gathering in Kapuskasing in 2004, after his father passed away. Out of curiosity, he asked a group of women where the name ‘Sutherland’ was derived from. 

“And no one would say anything.”

He said he then spotted two children with auburn hair, similar to his, walking through the room. 

“I go ‘There! Where did that colour come from?’.” 

He said one of the people finally told him that his great, great grandfather was Andrew Sutherland and worked for The Hudson’s Bay Company. 

“So there, it was out,” he said.   

But then, through school he found out why the women were ashamed to speak of it. 

“Because they were country wives. The Scots, the French, the fur traders would come and they would take the native women as their wives and when they finished work after 10 years, they deserted them and went back to their families in Europe,” said Sutherland

Sutherland said although he knew, growing up, that he was indigenous, he was ashamed of that aspect of his identity due to the prejudices and social climate of those days. 

“I never knew about these treaties and reservations and genocide and smallpox and residential schools and Sixties Scoop.” 

Once Sutherland got his Indian Status, he went to university in Penticton. where he took a two-year First Nation Studies program. 

“It opened my mind, my heart. It’s just from my education that I discovered all this.”