Ideas - How 60s Scoop 'warriors' reclaimed their Indigenous roots

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Leticia Racine calls herself a “Returning Warrior” of the Sixties Scoop. As a child, she was at the centre of a landmark Supreme Court case that paved the way for Indigenous children to be adopted into non-Indigenous homes. Judges ruled that Leticia’s foster parents could adopt her, and suggested her connections to her Indigenous mother and their heritage were likely to “abate” over time." IDEAS producer Dawna Dingwall explores how Leticia —and other adoptees — found their way back to the families, communities and culture — that never really left them.Dawna shares Leticia's story and this precedent court case on the CBC podcast, See You in Court.  Fill out our listener survey here. We appreciate your input! 

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Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. So the first question is pretty easy. I'm just going to ask you to introduce yourself. All right. Anin Bajou, Matakiape. I was Ashko, Benasukwai, Dishnakas. I am Blue Thunderbird Woman from the Thunderbird Clan. I'm in Nishinaabe, Dakota. Originally from Long Plain, First Nation.

I wasn't raised in Long Plain. I was raised in a community called Turtle Mountain in southern Manitoba. Letitia Racine is one of an estimated 20,000 indigenous children who were scooped, taken from their families by child welfare agencies and adopted, often in non-Indigenous homes. I've learned how to introduce myself and my spirit name in Inisinaabe, and I also am learning Lakota, as well, so I kind of mixed the two. And that's something new because, as you said, you weren't raised in your community, right?

Absolutely. I didn't even know what nation I was from until I was in my late teens. So, yeah, that's all come because I've sotted out. While this period of mass removal is called the 60 scoop, it lasted much longer, beginning in the 1950s and continuing into the 1980s. Letitia's story in many ways reflects the struggle those children faced.

I did get a good education, have certain privileges in that extent, but I didn't have a ceremony. I didn't have culture. I didn't have identity. I didn't know who I really was. And yet, what happened to Letitia is different in one very significant way. We are here to talk about Racine and Woods. Can you explain who you are in that case? Yeah, so I was the child at the center of that case. I was who they were fighting over, I guess, if you will. Two women who love the same little girl, five-year-old Letitia. Sandra Racine is white, and Linda Woods, the girl's natural mother, is Indian.

She's my child and I love her. She's mine. She's Indian. And I miss her. We're her family. And that's what she knows and that's what she believes. It is one of the most precedential family law cases that exist. I mean, I had a quick look at our databases to see how many times the case has been cited in Canadian law, and it's over a thousand, and not only in Canada, but also in Australia, in France, in Hong Kong, New Zealand, in the UK, in the United States. The 1983 ruling allowing Letitia's foster family to adopt her is still being cited and criticized today. That a Supreme Court judge would actually say that temporary interim bonding is more important than the bonding with a birth family, is more important than a culture to which a child belongs.

I mean, it's just egregious. Yet, Letitia and thousands of other children who were scooped did not forget who or where they came from. And I would always look to the West like I'm missing something. An elder told me you have blood memory and you remember the land. And you're always going to be a creed girl, no matter what. When I went to Isle Cross and saw the beauty of the place, they had regained and reclaimed their history.

That was something that I wanted to be a part of. There's always a significant place that culture and ceremony will have in an indigenous person's life. And it was a connection that I yearned for that I lacked. Ideas producer Donna Dingwall worked with Letitia Racine to tell her story on the CBC podcast, See You in Court, about the legal cases that shape our lives today. In this episode of Ideas, we'll hear how Letitia and other indigenous adoptees

came back to a culture that neither colonial policies nor courts could deny them. Letitia Racine has spent years of her life trying to understand the impact of the court ruling that determined who would raise her and where she stands on the judge's decision. It's really confusing and overwhelming even, but it's something that I've got to go through, that I've got to work through. I mean, it's brought to me for a reason. and so I'd really like to, at the end of all of this, know my position

and have a clear understanding of what we're seeing versus Wood's impact was or continues to be for our people today. Those difficult questions may be part of the reason she replied to a random email and then took a call from someone who claimed to know her from childhood who was also interested in the case, me. I know it came out of the blur. And so I really do appreciate you even entertaining the idea. Really delighted that you reached out by.

I'm quite sure she doesn't remember me, but we did spend our childhoods in the same small farming community in southwest Manitoba. You know, and just that connection that we have with Delary, and I appreciate that. And yeah, thank you for being interested. More than a year after that first call, we meet in person in Winnipeg during a record-breaking February 9th,000. cold snap. Hi, sorry, my window's frozen. What are you watching? I'll get a large decaf with three almond milk and two honey.

Frozen car windows aside, our destination is the Long Plain Reserve, where her birth mother, Linda Daniels, formerly Woods, lives. So have you ever been out here before? No. Oh, okay. No. I've done stories on different reserves, but I don't think I ever came out here. This is an excerpt from the podcast.

see you in court. You'll also hear the voice of the series host, Phelan Johnson. So walking into Linda's house, the first thing you see is a hand-drawn poster that says, please respect my drug and alcohol-free home. And there's also lots of little inspirational sayings on the walls like smudge, prey, stay humble. Right, it's like the super-tradish indigenous version of Live-Laff Love.

I'm First Nations. I'm Mohawk and Tuscarora from Six Nations. and I've been in a lot of homes that sound just like this one. Yeah, and I have to be honest, Phelan, I was a bit nervous about this interview. I'm white, and I likely don't need to tell you there is this long history of white journalists coming into places like Long Plain, parachuting in to cover stories, usually traumatic ones, and not always respecting or understanding the communities. So Lettish and I had been talking about doing something different. That's why we were there together.

And in the end, Linda is so welcoming. Do you want to shower? These are good. Thank you for these, Mom. I had a sandwich like that in the airport. It cost you $15. Before we start the interview, Letitia offers to do a smudge. Do you want a smudge?

Sure. I just explained him about smudging. So the medicines are just to, you know, cleanse your energy and your aura. It smells amazing. Put you in a good space. This feels like an important ceremony given what we're here to talk about, a time in Linda's life that was a mixture of joy and hardship. Linda was 22. It was 1976.

and she was giving birth to her third baby, Letitia. We were alone in that big hospital. I was by myself. And when they bought her to me, oh, my God, this is a beautiful baby, you know. Real Nishnabay girl. And I said, what am I going to call? You know, then I don't know where I got the name from the tissue.

Oh, that's nobody's got that. knew him, that's a rare name, that's how I'm going to call Letitia, I'm not going to lose her. She'll be, you know, she'll also have a precious name. She was so beautiful. Well, she's still beautiful. But after Linda and Letitia leave the hospital, it's pretty tough going. a house, and it wasn't a very good house. It was cold. I thought this is not fair to my kids, well, to the baby. I was scared her to be sick. So when I asked the child and Pam's service,

can you help me until I find a better house? But the house isn't the only thing Linda needs help with. Her husband, Lloyd Woods, just got out of jail for assaulting her. And he's not happy about the fact that she got pregnant with Letitia while he was locked up. He was very violent towards me because, you know, of having a child someplace else. He was, you know, kind of jealous, I guess. Letitia's heard this story for years that Lloyd was the reason she had to be put in a foster home.

That was the story that I was told because he found out that I wasn't his, right? and he had threatened my life. And so they had to put me in care to keep me safe. Linda tells me both she and her ex-husband went to residential school. In fact, Linda, her parents, most of her 14 brothers and sisters, were forced to attend the schools. Linda went to Sandy Bay, a Catholic-run school. She says what she endured there impacted her ability to be the kind of

parent she wanted to be. Oh, I didn't have very good parenting. When I first had my Jason and Lydia, I used to spank them because I was spanked or hit in a residential school, and I thought, well, this is not right. So I went to two parenting courses before I was comfortable hugging my children, loving them, holding them, singing to them. I had to take those courses because we don't

We didn't have those guns in a residential school. We were hit, ridiculed, shamed, sexual abuse. Linda spent years using alcohol to cope. I didn't want to drink, but I drank with the pain, the pain to go away. So Letitia goes into foster care when she's six weeks old. The idea is Linda will come back. for Letitia when she's more settled. But when Linda tries to get Letitia back,

she's met with resistance at child and family services. She says they convince her to leave Letitia in care for a year with the hope that things will be more stable by then. So that's what she does. It's three days before Christmas in 1976 when Letitia arrives in the Turtle Mountains. Her first foster home is actually with relatives of Alan Racine's. When he and his girlfriend, Sandra, come to visit, she sees baby Letitia for the first time. I was in a car seat in the living room, and she walked in.

And when she seen me, she said she just fell in love with me. She said it was instant. A few weeks later, Later, Sandra starts fostering Letitia. She was 18 when she first got me, and her first foster child, and she hadn't had any children up to that point. And she was told by the doctors that she couldn't have children. Wait, did I hear that right? Sandra was 18 when she became Letitia's foster mom?

Yeah, it's hard to fathom by today's standards. Allen, on the other hand, is 34. He already has three kids, but in those early months, it's Letitia who gets so much of Sandra's love and attention. When she had got me, I had ended up in the hospital at some point, I believe, and I had pneumonia and bronchitis at the same time, and she healed me. And so, you know, we had that strong mother bond right from the get-go. So that bond between Sandra and Letitia, it's growing. And you can imagine what it's like to be the person who witnesses all those firsts in a baby's early life, crawling, walking, talking, and how attached you get. In fact, Sandra had such a hard time saying goodbye.

She asks to visit Letitia at Linda's. And when she and Allen drop in later that month, Linda's struggling. She's adjusting to having all three kids, money's tight, so the Racine's offer to take Letitia home. She said to me, we want to adopt Et Tisha, and I said, no. And she says, I can't have children. And says, you have two other children. You have a handful, and da-da-da, and she kept on talking to me like that. I said, no.

And Phelan, I need to be clear. here, this is based on Linda's memory, as well as what is in court documents. Sandra initially agreed to do an interview for the podcast, but she changed her mind, and she declined to take part. So, again, according to Linda, when the Racine's first asked to take Letitia home, she said no, but then they came back a week later. She was the one that was doing all the talking, getting kind of aggressive at the end there, you know. We want her back, you know, I want her back, and she'll cry and cry and cry.

I just, okay, just get them off my back, get her off my back. So Linda agrees to let the Racine's take Letitia home. Yes, but she and Sandra have very different versions of what they agree to when she makes the decision. When the case goes to court, Sandra will testify that she walked out of that visit believing that Letitia was, quote, hours to keep. But Linda, she says it was always temporary and that Sandra and Alan would have Letitia quote for just a while.

Did you ever talk about whether it would be permanent or? No, never. I would never give her up. I would never sign nothing. Because I knew. I wanted her to be treaty to know where her ancestors were or where he came from. I didn't want to give her up.

That was an excerpt from the CBC podcast, See You in Court. The decision Linda, Letitia Racine's birth mother, made that day, is what leads to the protracted custody dispute that goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Because when Linda goes to the Racine home a few months later to get Letitia, they refused to give her back. Sandra Racine will testify in court. she was upset because Linda was going to leave Letitia with a relative, saying, there's no way I was giving that woman back her little girl to give to her sister.

I was raped by my grandma. And, you know, it's a norm for us to do that. The Racine say they're going to file for adoption of Letitia, but nothing moves forward because Linda disappears for a couple of years. She's struggling with personal issues during this time, but she hasn't forgotten about Letitia. I was trying to educate myself. You know, I want to stop drinking.

I knew it, like I had a daughter out there and I wanted her back. So I had to try and better myself. But getting a lawyer or anyone else to help her with her case proves difficult. Child and family services tell her Letitia's no longer in their care. The police brush her off. Legal aid turns her down twice. When the case finally is heard in her. In May of 1982, it's the first of three trials.

Over the next two years, a series of judges, all of them white, weigh in on what they believe is best for Letitia. When Letitia is five, a provincial court grants the adoption. The judge finds that Linda did abandon her. From the point of view of the child, she may as well not have even had a natural mother. I find the venom of her anti-white feelings disturbing as well. I find it reprehensible a mother would exploit and expose her child to the media attention that Ms. Woods has done. I'm satisfied the racines are a stable family unit, capable of giving the child the support she needs to grow.

After her sixth birthday, the Manitoba Court of Appeal quashes the adoption, but still doesn't give Linda custody of Letitia. The child has a secure and stable home, and I do not think it is in her best interest to disturb it. Mr. and Mrs. Racine cannot ignore that she does have a real mother. Linda may be able in future to obtain an order of access if she can come up with a plan. The Supreme Court delivers the final verdict a few months after Letitia turned seven. Justice Bertha Wilson writes on behalf of the five judges. In my view, when the test to be met is the best interests of the child, the significance of the cultural background and heritage, as opposed to the bonding, abates

over time. The closer the bond that develops with the prospective adoptive parents, the less important the racial element. While the court can feel great compassion for the respondent and respect for her determined efforts to overcome her adversities, it has an obligation to ensure that any order it makes will promote the best interests of the child. This, and this alone is our task. The ruling echoes testimony given by a child welfare expert brought in by the Racines, who told the court removing Letitia would constitute, quote, frank emotional abuse. Dr. Kenneth McCrae, a pediatrician and expert in child protection,

testified that Letitia's bond with the Racine's should take priority, especially given how long she'd been living with them. I think this whole business of racial and Indian and whatever you've, want to call it all, has to do with a parameter of time. It has nothing to do with race, absolutely nothing to do with culture. It has nothing to do with ethnic background. It's two women and a little girl, and one of them doesn't know her. It's as simple as that. All the rest of it is extra and of no consequence, except to the people involved, of course. The ruling barely mentions testimony from witnesses brought in by Linda's side, who offered a different

view. Peter Hudson, the head of social work at the University of Manitoba, acknowledged the difficulty and risk of harm involved in taking Letitia away from the racines. He urged the court to give equal weight to the serious issues she was likely to face later on. He spoke about emerging evidence that adoptions of indigenous children were breaking down. Often the kids will run. They will get in trouble with the law. Dr. Doreen-Marie. A psychiatrist who worked with indigenous adoptees agreed. And she spoke to CBC before one of the trials. They identify with the fringe group in society,

and they will sometimes take overdoses. They'll be feeling so bad about themselves. They'll be trying to maybe control their own aggressiveness a lot, and they get really a lot of anxiety inside of them. Today, her words sound less like a warning, and more like an acutely accurate prediction about Letitia's future. I just want to, before I talk about that, I'd like to go back to the first years of being raised,

you know, in Delorraine and in the Turtle Mountain, because there were... To be fair, things are relatively stable initially. I had a lot of good opportunities growing up, along with the education that I got, so I learned how to cook, I learned how to sew, I learned those basic skills. You know, I was involved in sports.

These are really, they're gifts, right? Because not every kid has the experience, especially indigenous kids. You know, like, let's be honest, right? So kindergarten was good, grade two, great three. It was grade four that I started to recognize that I was different, you know, that I was, I was native. And it was always the national anthem that would just make me cringe, right? Because every time that they would bring up our home and native land, I thought everybody was looking at me. and I felt like ashamed of that.

I hated it. I hated the national anthem because it had that word native in it. And so I was already had that conflict of hating myself, right? Like, and not understanding what it meant to be indigenous, right? Not having any sense of pride. It was rather the opposite. I had a lot of shame. I'm pretty sure it was around this time when I would come home and try and wash my skin off, right?

Like, and try to figure out how I could not be broken. around. As Leticia got older, things got worse. There was all kinds of racial slurs, right? And I remember being hurt by that, but I could never, like, there's no way I would ever show it. Soon enough, all of those feelings, alienation, anxiety about being different, shame about being indigenous, began to manifest in new ways. All that hurt and that pain that was inflicted on me had to come out some way being mean to my brothers and sisters and lying and sneaking out of the house, even at that age. I was getting into a lot of trouble for that, and rightly so, right?

But they didn't deal with the core issue. All of this came to a head when Letitia was 13. The racines were in the midst of a divorce when Letitia had a brush with the law, and the police came to their home. But even before that, threats had been flying. My behavior had gotten so bad, too, that she had always told me that if you don't smarten up, I'm going to put you back in care. And I was like, go for it.

Never, ever thinking that she would. Because she fought so hard for me, I'm adopted. She can't put me back in care. And that is when something happened that the judges, lawyers, and even the child welfare experts, could not have predicted. Because this time, Sandra followed through. I went back in care when I was 13 years old and, you know, after being basically abandoned

and kicked out of the Racine family, you know, like I really was, it really propelled me to seek it out even more my real family. That was Letitia Racine, who calls herself a returning warrior of the 60s scoop. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Chambers Plan employee benefits is not-for-profit, and that's great for your business. Chambers Plan supports businesses with one to 50-plus employees across Canada,

and reinvest surpluses to help keep rates stable. Get flexible coverage for you and your employees with outstanding customer service and unmatched value. Benefit together with Chambers Plan. Learn more at hellochambers.ca. This program is brought to you in part by Specsavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot, squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun,

reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Spec Savers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.cavers.caiates.com. Eye exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexsavers.orgia to learn more. As a child, Letitia was at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case that paved the way for a... indigenous children to be adopted into non-indigenous homes. The judges in that case believed that her connection to her birth mother and their Ojibwe culture

would become less important to her as she integrated into her adopted family. I know that they felt that if she is raised white, then she'll be white. There's no difference between, you know, Indian children and white children. And as long as she's raised white, she'll have everything that she knows. needs. That was their philosophy. In the new CBC podcast, See You in Court, Ideas producer Donna Dingwall looks at how the high court reached that conclusion. In this episode of Ideas, Donna explores the contradiction between the court's thinking and what

actually happened to Letitia Racine and so many other adoptees who found their way back to the culture and communities they never really forgot. I think about Letitia, and like many of us, the mythology of adoption was, well, the children are as if born to you, they were ignorant. They didn't know that we actually had a culture. And so the best advice they could give was ignore it. And the child will just become part of you and everything you'll all live happily ever after in a utopia. Maybe that's a good idea, but what that does to children is it dismisses fundamentally who you are as a human being. Sinclair and I'm from George Gordon First Nation in 34 in Saskatchewan. I am a professor of social work and current dean of social work at Blue Quills. Professor Ravens Sinclair is a leading scholar on the 60s scoop. She's studied the phenomenon of adoptees who are compelled to return to their culture. And she's also taken that journey herself. So I was removed from my family at the age of four and placed for adoption into a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family on my fifth birthday.

And repatriated to my family when I was 27. I moved back to Saskatchewan in 1988. I always thought I was the only one that was adopted. And as a teen, I discovered that I was meeting more and more adoptees. I became curious about what this whole thing was about. And that's really been my life's work is to examine the 60's scoop, to look at the impacts on individuals who were fostered and adopted into non-indigenous families. And to understand that whole era, you know, within the context of Canadian history,

within the context of cultural imperialism, post-colonialism, just analyze it, deconstruct it. What does your research show about the fact that people find themselves going back to their culture? I mean, I think if you've had it your whole life, you may need to reflect upon it to understand its significance. but when you haven't had it, or you had it and then lost it, for many of us, that was the case. Yeah, it's just tremendously significant. I credit my reaculturation with saving my life, and I know endless numbers of survivors who say the same thing, that without it, we were untethered. We didn't have any anchors, and it's been critical to our well-being and our survival.

I had put my focus on trying to find my family, my biological family, because I had no connection with her. I didn't know. I knew that she was from a Long Plain. I knew that my brother's name was Jason Woods. And so when I went to, I was in foster care in Brandon, and I sought him out. And I asked every Indian or indigenous person that I seen, do you know Jason Woods? And eventually I met somebody that did. Jason took me back to Longcline. plane and I met my mom and it was just a happy occasion meeting my kookums and all my aunties and my uncles and and my mom took me to pipe ceremony you know and so welcomed me back in a spiritual way. I wonder what your reaction was when you heard she was returned to the

child welfare system and what you made of that. Yeah, it makes me tear up. I, I really wanted to know how things had unfolded in that case, because I had heard through the grapevine that she had been returned to care, and that made me furious. I just felt so much pain for her. It made me furious because the whole case hinged upon bonding and attachment. So if nothing else, other lawyers need to know that this case wasn't about bonding and attachment,

because how bonded and attached are you to a child that you returned to care? The fact of that. It upends one of the fundamental arguments ever seen in Woods. The court at that time did hear that there seemed to be some evidence that the adoptions were breaking down. And I know that's something that you've looked at. I went back to some of the literature. These are studies from the 70s in the state. Christopher Bagley and Canada did some research as well.

But almost invariably, any statements that were made about children's close attachment. attachment to their alternate caregivers, whether they were foster or adoptive, was based on the statements of those caregivers. It's laughable in a way because there are many instances of people who adopted children because they were pedophiles, because they needed farmhands. They had no intention of bonding or attaching to these children, but the worker would come along and it's like, how are things going, oh, great, we love each other and look at little Johnny and little Susie, they're so happy. Yeah, that's just invalid. And then Christopher Bagley started doing research with indigenous adoptees, and he was astonished, I guess, that there was such a high percentage of breakdown among indigenous transracial adoptees. And he believed it was strongly related to the overall denigration of indigenous culture. And someone actually said, I can't remember it was, but they said that we model ourselves on like the savage Indian. And so then we conduct our

you know, and breaking the law and drug abuse or whatever. And that's why they break down. But Professor Sinclair believes the standard narrative that adoptions break down because of an identity crisis on the part of adoptees is a bit too simplistic. Research she did for her 2007 thesis found it overlooks a major factor in the lives of those children. And what I realized was we were experiencing horrific racism, not only in social context, but in our schools, even amongst friends. Sometimes it was sort of like just out of ignorance. Like I remember being told, you're good looking for an Indian.

How come you're not like all those other Indians, implication being that I was somehow better or that Indians generally were horrible? One survivor I talked to, he was adopted with a twin, and their dad was a cop. And he drove them down to the silver dollar in Toronto one night because they'd been acting up. they were like 10 and the silver daughter was a very popular hangout and people would drink too much and you know be kind of fallen all over the place and and that sort of thing but yeah it was lots of indigenous people there said if you don't behave yourselves you're going to end up like those Indians there in my family my father would you know talk derogatorily about natives my name is

Colleen heel I'm the co-founder of the 60s group network but I'm from satellite craneation in Alberta. And I was taken, at a very young age, I was probably one month old, and later on adopted into a non-indigenous household in Sioux, St. Mary, Ontario. We'd go visit relatives down in Peterborough, and we'd have to go through the reserve. And the houses were falling apart, and he would say, oh, you know, they're bombs and they're drunks. So, and of course, like, that internalized racism started there. Like, those Indians are bad. Do not speak to a native person. If somebody comes up to you that's brown or that's an Indian,

do not talk to them because they're going to steal you. They'll take you back to the reserve and we'll never see you again. Leticia Racine has her own story. At one point during the legal dispute, her birth mother and some women who were supporting her arrived unannounced at her school with the intention of bringing her back to Long Plain. They failed in that quest,

But not surprisingly, it frightened Sandra and Alan Racine, the couple that wanted to adopt her. Because after that, the fear was really put in me. I was petrified of my people, you know, for years. And then looking back now, that was my mom. That was my family. You know, my first interactions with my family were not good either. I met my mom and my aunt, my uncle. They were under the influence of solvents. The road back to family and community is rarely a straight line for survivors.

They have to navigate culture shock, internalized racism, and ongoing intergenerational trauma tied to residential schools, along with their own high expectations for family reunions. At our first meeting, they were, like, sloppily drunk. And I was disgusted. I was embarrassed. I was angry because I was, wanted my mom to take me into her arms and say, I've been looking for you all over the place

and I'm so happy you're here. Like it wasn't the joyous reunion that I thought it would be. You know, this family broke down. I lost this family. So now I'm going to go back to my real family. And everything's going to be better. But it wasn't like that at all. For Letitia, reality set in when she moved in with her birth family. It was such a shock to me. The whole way she lived, like I looked the part, but I was not, I was raised white. I tried to go live with them and it just, I couldn't do it. My mom wasn't healthy. I mean, she's quit drinking, but she's not healthy. She didn't do anything to work on her trauma, so she was still toxic. And I think a lot of, you know, survivors, adoptees are angry at their biological

families. You know, I didn't even know my mother, my biological brother went to residential school because she never talked about it. And I called Blue Quills. on the phone, I said, you know, this is my mom's name. I don't really know her birthday. Could you look up the records and see if she went there? And sure enough, they had my email, they sent me some scans of her yearbook photo. She was there for about four to six years. And then I was like, oh my God, my mom went to residential school. Now things make sense. I had nobody there to say to me, you know, your parents went to residential school, your grandparents went to residential school. and this is why they drink to cope with the pain and the loss.

And, you know, all these awful things were imposed on them. No, there was nobody by my side to guide me through that. If you are a First Nations youth who is formally in care, or you have a First Nations person who was a 60 scoop survivor, there's very little programs reunification programs that are funded at the provincial or federal level to support your reunification back to your family. I'm Cindy Blackstock. I'm a member of the Gittemax First Nation, and I am a professor of social work at the McGill University and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. Cindy Blackstock was the driving force behind a successful human rights complaint against the federal government, which found it discriminated against indigenous children by underfunding child welfare on reserves.

I've never been a utopian thinker that thinks that. no child should be in child welfare care. What I think we need to do is address the factors at the cause that really drive children to unnecessarily be in child welfare care and experience a whole host of other poor outcomes that are beyond the ability of their parents to control. Culture is vital and it's important, but you still need access to equitable services, things like water, all the rest of that. So we need to not allow governments to just say, well, we'll fund a few cultural gatherings and get away with it. We've seen that in child welfare too often, where there's this tokenistic use of culture without addressing it within the broader

spectrum of human rights. The settlement will give $750 million to the children. Now adults who were taken from their families, 50 million is being set aside for a foundation to help with healing. The federal government did reach a settlement in a class action lawsuit with some 60 scoop survivors in 2017, Letitia was front and center in that fight. For me, it's not about the price tag. It's not about the money for me. It's about the fact that if the federal government is taking responsibility, they need to know what they're saying sorry for, right? It's to bring healing to our people so that we can start taking... But not everyone got compensation or had access to programs.

I don't qualify because they think that I had access to culture and traditions. Well, my dad was Leite and I'm Soto, right? So there is no connect there, right? A small group of 60-Soup adoptees are wrapping up a five-day gathering in Ottawa. They came from across North America and even For several years, the 60Scoop Network had gatherings for survivors, but then they lost funding. Here's Colleen Hill Cardinal. It's been hard because like everything I

do now is just kind of on the side. We put a call out on our face look. We're going to have a gathering. People were contacting us saying, can I come? And I'm like, well, we don't have any money. We can't afford to bring you in. But if you get here, we can find a place for you to stay. People showed up to cook. People showed up to help clean up to the setup. They loved it so much they wanted another one. So we did another one. But this time, we had ceremony. So we did an introduction to sweat lodge, drum making. A lot of it was very social where we could sit by the fire together and just talk. And what we did would share our common experiences, right? Like the quirkinesses of growing up in a non-Indigenous family. We talked about the different religions. Our parents were. Some of us talked about the abuse and how we struggled as teenagers and how we all felt like we didn't sit in anywhere.

And that's a been a common theme. So are there any other commonalities between kids who have gone through the 60s scoop? Ken Richard, one of the founders of Toronto Native Child and Family Services, he testified in the 60 Scoop class action lawsuit. He mentioned that in the late 70s, early 80s, he was disturbed by the fact that so many of the vast majority of the kids that he was working with on the street were survivors of foster and adoption.

So coming out of the child welfare system, there's evidence that are a really ridiculously high percentage of incarcerated indigenous. and as inmates come through the child welfare system. Well, you know, I think that that time that I got behind bars, like when we were in there for 18 months during my teenage years, I think, you know, that was another thing that saved my life. Beginning in her teenage years, Letitia served time for a number of offenses, ranging from

armed robbery to assault. And as painful as that was, it was also a kind of salvation. The road that I was on, like, what would have been next? If I was willing to go that far at the age of 15 and that violent, I was clean and sober in there. You know, I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was the first time that someone had asked me what tribe I was from. I think I said Cree, you know, because I didn't even know. It was how incrementally she was introduced to her culture.

I remember being, you know, introduced to the medicine. Very, very, just basic stuff. but I just remembered smudging for the first time. It would take years for Letitia to pull herself out of that cycle of violence, trauma, and addiction. But those teachings she was accumulating were the building blocks that helped her to do that. And some of the people she met were the foundation. That was the first time I had ever spent any quality time with indigenous people who were healthy and strong. And she taught me so much, and she taught me things that I still carry today

and that I still share with others today, you know, about the medicines and about womanhood. After being released from jail, she entered a program run by the late Catherine Morisso-Sinclair and Justice Murray Sinclair, who would go on to head the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And during that program, she had offered us an opportunity to sweat. And it was late Judge Murray Sinclair, who was the lodgeholder. I was able to sweat with Judge Marie Sinclair. And I remember him telling me that he remembers my case. Like he remembered, but I remember him sharing with me that he remembers me.

As a young lawyer, Murray Sinclair, had worked at the law firm that represented Linda, Letitia's birth mother at the Supreme Court. Because he knew who I was, I didn't even know who I was at that time. But because he knew who I was, the prayers that he prayed for me, I think carried me through more than I realized, because I went through a really, really difficult time. For somebody who maybe hasn't gone through what you have is an indigenous, when you said that you were homesick, you were kind of homesick for something that you didn't even know. How do you explain that pull or that feeling of culture?

I fainted at my first palo because I'd never heard the drums before. I remember my heart was just like it felt like it was going to come out of my chest. And that was a blood memory. And it was explained to me that as a child, my blood in my body remember the land. And I remember being outside as a child playing in the wintertime or in the fall. And I would always look to the west, always. And I would feel sick to my stomach like I'm missing something. but I was already home.

So what could I be missing? I didn't understand it. As I started healing, you know, I sobered up and went back to ceremony and reconnected to culture through Sioux College. And it wasn't until then that I knew what was missing from my heart. And I was trying to fill it up with all these other things like drinking and sacks and religion and nothing. Nothing felt.

And it was when I started relearning ceremony and going to ceremony. and learning about what happened to us, where I felt like, oh, my God, what's been missing this whole time? People say, well, weren't you better off that you're raised with upper middle class, white homes with a lot of opportunities?

But behind closed doors, there was a lot of abuse. And I always say, like, even if my parents were alcoholics and struggling and we lived in poverty, I would have at least felt like I belonged. I would have known who I was. I think, you know, Mom, you answered a lot of questions that I had.

I needed to hear that you loved me. And that you fought because you loved me. You know, that bond that they say is so necessary and so important and the reason why, you know, it was the best interest of me to stay there. It didn't, and it wasn't the most important thing. It didn't trump culture. It didn't trump ceremony. It wasn't the most important thing.

Having the chance to talk to her birth mother, Linda, about what happened around the time she was born, has helped Letitia to put the pieces of her life together. And she's slowly reckoning with the Supreme Court decision that changed her life and the lives of other indigenous children. With the knowledge that I've learned from going through this journey, then I'd really like to know how we're seen, versus Woods is impacting decisions that are made today.

Like, is it a good thing? Is it not a good thing? And what can I do to make it better? I was thinking about your question before, about the lasting legacies of Racine Woods. There has been a huge shift in Canadian law into an era of family law where courts are looking to other kinds of expertise in order to ground their decision-making. And in this context, it helps Justice Wilson come to what could be seen through some lenses as a very progressive judgment, where she didn't

say biology is what matters, where she says we create families in all sorts of different ways, families with one parent, with three parents, families that are connected by biology or formed through adoption or other ways of knowing and being queer families. So I think there's that. My name's Jillian Calder, and I'm a professor at the University of Victoria's Faculty of Law. My engagement with Racine Woods has mostly been through teaching family law and the importance of that case. And I was involved in a book project several years ago at the passing of Justice Bertha Wilson

that was looking at the most significant decisions that Justice Wilson had authored, and I wrote about Racine Woods. I would argue she got it wrong in terms of that, the significance of the indigenous family. So sort of right in spirit, but wrong in execution.

Exactly. And then we get this statement that has resonated through the annals of time in Canadian law, that the significance of culture, heritage, as compared to bonding, abates over time. The task just doesn't work when what you're asking is the best interest of the indigenous child.

And if I can just say one more thing about the positive legacy thing, because in the TRCs, the first five calls to action are child welfare. And directly you can read from those what ultimately becomes Bill C92. And I think a lot of what informs those provisions flow from the ways in which a case like Racine and Woods has been held for such a long time in Canadian law. Bill C.92, an act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children and families, passed in 2019. It asserts that indigenous peoples have jurisdiction over their own child welfare, and it specifically speaks about the best interests of indigenous children and the importance of their culture.

I think there's a direct relationship between Linda Woods and Letitia Woods and these really important. important changes that are happening in Canadian law today, this notion that you need to be thinking about what's in the best interest of the indigenous child. That is, I think that flows directly from Racina Woods. And I think that's an extraordinary legacy. It's almost like one is speaking to the other. Yeah. I think it was one of those many footsteps that was laid down that was necessary for us to take that next step and the step after that. This is Cindy Blackstock again. And for that particular family, I just want to, you know, recognize their efforts are valued, that they were part of a bigger story. Although the Supreme Court may not have decided in their favor, that doesn't mean that they lost or that future generations of children lost.

The connection and love that I have. for my youngest son, you know, and the privilege I have to raise him out of all four of my children. He was the only one I was able to raise. And he's a stellar, healthy young boy. He's a leader already at the age of 16. You know, he's cultural and proud of who he is and knows who he is, knows his purpose here.

You know, and I'm just, so proud of him, you know, and that's a reflection of me, right? Like, and so I'm really proud of that. It's changed my life. For other 60-scoop survivors like Colleen Heal, having the opportunity to choose her own family has been part of her reaculturation.

I think people should know that we are the next generation. So we are the up-and-coming. We are the change makers. The 60-Scoop survivors that I know are making change because we have the best of both worlds, because we're educated in the colonial system and we've embraced our culture, we're a force to be reckoned with.

They try to eliminate us and we're still here and we're coming up strong. We will prevail. I'm not sure how that's going to look like, but I know that I'm here to be a part of that. My purpose here is to serve and to show others how to make it out and to connect with the other 60-Soup survivors, the returning warriors, I call them,

because we all chose this life, every single one, of us, they chose to come back and to be that bridge between the two cultures. And I'm not scared, I'm not fearful, I'm not intimidated, walking into a room of non-indigenous people. You know, and now that I'm connected with my culture through ceremony and tradition, I'm welcome back. I'm back in the circle. You know, I know both of these cultures intimately.

A bridge between two cultures, a returning warrior. That's Letitia Racine. If you'd like to hear more about the Supreme Court case, Racine and Woods, find and follow the CBC podcast, see you in court, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Donna Dingwall. Lisa Ayuso is the web producer for ideas. Thanks to Emily Carvezio and Sam McNulty for technical production and the 60 Scoop Network for use of their interviews. Ideas senior producer is Nicola Luxchich.

Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.