Métis to launch ’60s Scoop website

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This article was published 17/12/2018 (1949 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MÉTIS survivors of the ’60s Scoop will have their voices heard via a new internet platform, as part of a process to advise leaders on what they want from the Canadian government in terms of a settlement.

The Métis National Council and the Manitoba Metis Federation are to unveil the online portal (sixties.scoop.metisportals.ca) at a news conference today in Winnipeg.

“We see this as a massive opportunity, a tool, to really open the door for us to do what we should be doing to represent these people properly,” MMF president David Chartrand said Monday.

Through the online portal, Métis survivors will be able to share their stories, stay up to date on relevant initiatives and connect with others who have shared similar experiences.

“We’re devising this portal for two reasons,” Chartrand said. “One: to collect as many of these stories as we can as we work towards a settlement with Canada. We need to ask them how we should move forward. What does justice feel like to you?”

The second is to create a secure, community-based online platform that can manage accounts for survivors, independent of legal action.

“Right now, the survivors say they have nowhere to go. They have lawyers knocking on their doors, and we all know what they’re after. They want to sign (them) up,” Chartrand said.

“And what we’re watching for on our side is protection of information, privacy — how do we protect it from people getting in there… This way, people can be assured their names and information will be protected and private.”

In October, Chartrand played host to a symposium for Métis Scoop survivors who previously hadn’t been acknowledged among the thousands of Canadian Indigenous children who were removed from their homes and put up for adoption or placement in foster homes with non-Indigenous families from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Some accounts have put the number of Métis displaced at a quarter of all displaced children, as many as 5,000 out of an estimated 22,000 adults seeking redress.

Last year, Métis and non-status Indian survivors were excluded from an $800-million settlement that ended a number of class-action lawsuits against provincial and federal governments. If approved, the settlement is expected to generate payouts in the range of $25,000 to $50,000 per person for status Indians and Inuit Scoop survivors.

However, the settlement ran into trouble with survivors who opposed the $75-million cost for legal fees — something the Métis portal is designed to avoid, advocates said.

Ottawa has indicated it wants a settlement with the Métis survivors — and Chartrand has pledged to work one out before the next federal election in October 2019.

The framework for it is expected to include a strong focus on reconciliation, not just financial compensation payments, but also, for example, school curriculum, as well as tools for Métis families to restore healthy intergenerational dynamics.

“We want to turn it around so it doesn’t carry on to the generation after, to help the children of the ’60s Scoop generation so they have the tools to understand this is not their fault,” Chartrand said.

Many Scoop survivors never made it back home or even to Canada, being placed as far away as Europe.

As adults, many of them reported trauma similar to what happened in residential schools, with accounts of physical, emotional and sexual abuse and the connections they lost to family, culture and language.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca