How I lost my mother, found my family, recovered my identity

Betty Ann Adam was three years old when she was taken from her mother in what is known as the “’60s Scoop,” a period spanning 30 years in which Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their homes to be placed with white families as church-run residential schools were closing. “The government’s stated intention with the residential schools was to ‘remove the Indian from the child,’ by removing them from their parents and having them educated by white Christians.” By extension, the ’60s Scoop was another horrific, government-endorsed attempt at cultural genocide.