‘One kind of abuse and trauma to another’: Indigenous person speaks on child welfare system
Global News
An Indigenous person who was raised in the foster care system is telling their story in the hopes of raising awareness of the cycle of trauma Indigenous children are still facing.
An Indigenous person who was raised in the foster care system is telling their story in the hopes of raising awareness of what is still happening to Indigenous children.
They say it’s a cycle of trauma they don’t want happening to others.
“It just went from one kind of abuse and trauma to another,” says Jay Hummingbird, a First Nations Mohawk who was raised in the foster system.
A Grade 9 photo is one of the two-spirit Mohawk’s only childhood mementos from being raised in the foster care system — a system, they say, failed them.
“You take me from my mom, and put me with my aunt, who is worse,” says Hummingbird.
“At what point did they think that was okay?”
Hummingbird was taken from their Indigenous birth mother, herself a victim of intergenerational trauma, and went through seven different foster homes by the age of three, before being taken in by an English aunt for the next decade.
“They were really ashamed of the fact that I’m Mohawk,” they say.