’60s Scoop survivors demand action on 10th anniversary of provincial apology

Ten years ago, Premier Greg Sellinger issued an apology in the legislature for Manitoba's role in the Sixties Scoop. But many survivors feel it didn’t go far enough.

Lorraine Sinclair never knew her mother. It was only last year that she saw a photo of her for the first time.

“We have a face that we needed for over 60 years, to say goodnight to.”

She and her sister Cindy Munro are both survivors of the ’60s Scoop. They were taken from their family as children and were in the same foster home for a time before being separated. They found each other again as adults, along with some of their seven other siblings who were taken, but their mother and one of their brothers had passed away before they could reunite.

“We knew her first and her last name, we thought,” Lorraine says of searching for her mother’s grave. “We didn’t know her middle name. We didn’t even know the day she died.”

Even now, at age 61, she grieves for the childhood she lost.

“(Cindy) cried one day, and she said, Lorraine really needed mom. And I did, I really needed mom. And she was gone.”

More than 3000 Indigenous children from Manitoba, and between 10,000 and 30,000 across Canada, are estimated to have been forcibly “scooped” from their families from the ’50s to the ’80s. They were adopted out to mainly white families across Canada and around the world.

Ten years ago, former Manitoba premier Greg Sellinger issued an apology in the legislature for the province’s role in the scoop. But many survivors feel it didn’t go far enough.