Sixties Scoop survivor frustrated with settlement delays

This 1970s adoption advertisement in the Toronto Telegram described Sheldon as “Little Miss Eskimo.” (Image courtesy of T. Sheldon)

Tauni Sheldon was the picture-perfect baby: full cheeks, chubby hands and sporting a frilly white dress.

That image was published in a 1970 issue of the Toronto Telegram, accompanied by a more ominous text: an advertisement for “Little Miss Eskimo” to potential adoptive parents.

Sheldon’s mother had flown from her hometown of Inukjuak to Thunder Bay to have her first baby. The woman was legally blind and flew with a doctor who worked part-time in Nunavik communities. She gave birth to Sheldon in a Thunder Bay hospital on Feb. 7, 1970.

“My mother held me for three hours until I was taken away,” said Sheldon.

“I was supposed to have been traditionally adopted by one of our Inuit relatives.”

Instead, newborn Sheldon was placed in foster care and later adopted by a family in southern Ontario. She wouldn’t learn about or meet her biological Inuit family until she was in her twenties.

During a period between the 1950s and 1980s, the federal government took an estimated 20,000 Indigenous children out of their families for adoption by non-Indigenous families—now infamously known as the Sixties Scoop.

Sheldon is one of tens of thousands of Indigenous people who have applied to be part of the Sixties Scoop class action, which led to a national settlement between the federal government and plaintiffs representing Sixties Scoop survivors.

The settlement was approved in December 2018, including $50 million for a Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation and up to $750 million for individual payments.

Earlier this month, the Federal Court of Canada finally approved an order allowing Collectiva—the firm administrating the class action—to begin issuing interim payments of $21,000 to the 12,500 people already approved in the settlement.

Tauni Sheldon is pictured here with her 15-year-old son, Albie. (Photo courtesy of T. Sheldon)

But Sheldon has yet to hear back about the status of her application, a process that’s been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was a difficult process to navigate from the start, Sheldon added, as there was no major co-ordinated effort to scoop Inuit children over that period, meaning Inuit survivors are not a cohesive group.

It’s not even clear how many Inuit have been approved as eligible claimants; the law firms involved in the settlement do not have a breakdown of claimants by Indigenous group.

Canada’s national Inuit organization, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, declined to comment on the class action, noting it did not have a role in co-ordinating Inuit survivors.

“It’s really disheartening,” Sheldon said. “Inuit have been scooped—not in big numbers, but there are a number of us. And we don’t have an organization representing us.”

“I know I wanted to be part of the class action,” she said. “It’s been a lifetime of being different. But how do you quantify the loss of a culture—a lifetime of disconnect?”

Survivor feels anger, anxiety over delayed settlement response

Sheldon’s adoptive father was a pilot who flew in the 1950s and 1960s with Austin Airways, an airline that serviced northern Ontario and Quebec, as well as Baffin Island.

He loved the North, and he and his wife were thrilled to welcome an Inuit baby into their home in Milton, Ont., in 1970.

Sheldon said she grew up in a loving home. By the time she was just three, however, she wondered why she looked different from her parents.

She said she was bullied through much of elementary and high school.

“I didn’t want anything to do with my Eskimo heritage back then,” she said. “It wasn’t until my early twenties that I decided I wanted to know more.”

Sheldon went to Inuit Tapirisat of Canada [now ITK] for help. The organization was able to find her mother—whose name she’d prefer not to make public—who was then based in Winnipeg.

Sheldon travelled there to meet her for the first time in 1993.

“It was big,” she said. “It was very emotional. It took almost an entire lifetime to figure out what happened.”

Years later, Sheldon also got to meet her birth father in Quaqtaq, though he’s since passed away.

Tauni Sheldon worked as a pilot for Air Inuit during the 1990s and early 2000s, work that allowed her to visit her parents’ home communities in Nunavik. (Photo courtesy of T. Sheldon)

Sheldon went on to forge a unique connection to her home region of Nunavik—following her adoptive father’s lead, she worked for years as a pilot, flying Twin Otters for Air Inuit. That work allowed her to visit Inukjuak and connect with other relatives.

“I’m still learning culture,” she said. “It’s taken me a long time.”

Sheldon has a 15-year-old son named Albie. She was able to bring him to Inukjuak to introduce him to his Nunavik family and they are both now registered Inuit beneficiaries of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.

The feeling of being in the North is both “home” and “strange,” Sheldon said. It’s taken time for Nunavimmiut to accept her as one of their own, she added.

Sheldon’s mother, now 76, remains a close part of her life. After a medical procedure in Montreal last year, she came to stay with Sheldon at her home near Guelph, Ont., for several months.

But while Sheldon is happy to now embrace her Inuit family and culture, the class action has dredged up feelings of loss and anxiety, intensified by the delay in the response.

“I’m angry that I haven’t heard if I qualify,” she said.

For its part, Collectiva continues to review, assess and approve applications, but the firm doesn’t have a timeline for when all applications will be processed.

“We recognize the huge emotional toll this process and delay has had on applicants,” said Doug Lennox of Klein Lawyers, one of the four law firms that helped to negotiate the settlement, in a June 1 news release.

“Under these circumstances, the fair and necessary thing to do was to make sure no one’s application is denied while we’re still in this period of uncertainty.”

Sixties Scoop survivors can find more information on the settlement here.