'Embrace all the beauty that makes up who you are': Indigenous man and his mom trace roots in Scotland

Cory Generoux was around 10 years old when he started asking questions about who his grandfather was.

"Growing up, I was always aware that my grandfather was a white guy and he wasn't native," said Cory. "So I began asking questions, like, what is grandpa? Is he Irish? Or like, what is he, you know? That's when I learned that he was Scottish."

On a recent trip to Scotland, Cory and his mother Wanda Wilson — who also have Cree, Saulteaux and Nakoda roots — had the opportunity to learn about their Scottish heritage. They planned the trip to visit all the places their ancestors lived.

Cory, who lives in Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask., about 75 kilometres northeast of Regina, said he carried papers proving his ancestry while he and his mother roamed Scotland.

"I'm a big brown guy in Scotland claiming to be Scottish, you know what I mean?" the 46-year-old said with a laugh.

On the trip, he found there were a lot of parallels between the experiences of his Indigenous ancestors and his Scottish ancestors, including his grandfather Bill Wilson, who died six years ago. Bill didn't speak much about growing up in Scotland unless he was asked, Cory said.

"My grandfather never talked about what happened. His livelihood was taken away. His lands were taken away, his culture and his languages being crushed," Cory said.

He said he learned that what happened to his Scottish ancestors and their culture was similar to what happened to Indigenous people here in Canada. They faced poverty, destitution, oppression and attempts to erase their culture.

"Sheep are worth more than what people were and my grandfather was affected by that. He didn't want to be Scottish. He wanted to be Indian," Cory said.

Cory learned that his ancestors' Hebridean Gaelic culture was nature based and they believed that everything has a spirit. They even had medicine people.

"The healers would bring them into what they call a hot house, right? Then in a hot house they bring the rocks and splash into it like a sweat, exactly like our sweats," Cory said.

Cory said his grandmother Vicki (Vitaline) Wilson, née Wasacase, told him that when she was fresh out of Lebret Indian Residential school and with the sewing skills she learned from her time there, she went to work as a seamstress for fashion designers in Vancouver.

She also went to Vancouver to get away from the Prairies, where the government was removing Indigenous children from their homes and placing them in foster homes or putting them up for adoption, a practice known as the Sixties Scoop. His grandmother feared she would be taken away from her family again.

In Vancouver, she met Bill (William) Wilson, who was working as a fisherman. They had four daughters together, including Cory's mother Wanda, and eventually moved back to Saskatchewan.