Sixties Scoop survivors want to know why province is sending long-lost brother's mail to childhood home

The siblings of a Métis man who has been missing for decades — ever since he was apprehended as a child during the Sixties Scoop — want to know why the Manitoba government keeps sending him a verification of address request, mailed to the very home the province seized him from more than 45 years ago.

"All these years later, even when my parents are deceased, his [health] card is still coming to the mail," said Sandra Myers. "Somebody knows something."

Her brother, Alex James Sutherland, was just five years old when child welfare officials seized him, along with his six siblings, from their Camperville, Man., home in 1976.

It was part of the notoriously devastating Sixties Scoop — which saw thousands of Indigenous children forcibly removed from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous families as far away as the U.S. and Europe, during a period stretching from 1951 to 1991.

Alex and his siblings, including Myers, were seized under false pretences, they say. Child welfare officials claimed their father drank too much and the children were abused.

"I'm kind of shocked," Myers said. "I don't remember no abuse." 

Their mother, meanwhile, thought the apprehensions were temporary and agreed to sign a document allowing child welfare officials to vaccinate the children.

Instead, she signed away her rights as a parent.

"My mom couldn't read or write, and they gave her a paper and pen," said Sutherland's sister, Marj McGillivray. "She didn't even know she was signing us away."

Three of the siblings, including Myers, were adopted in Louisiana. McGillivray remained in Manitoba, bounced between foster homes until she was reunited with her parents as a teen.

Alex Sutherland, however, was never heard from again. 

"I hear from the other ones, but this one, he's just gone," McGillivray says.

In 2016, the siblings went public with their search, sharing their story with CBC.

Through the years, as the story circulated, so did the tips. A couple of childhood friends reached out with memories of going to school with Alex in Mafeking, Man.