Creating hope for new generations of Indigenous families | Stories

Bernadette Iahtail grew up in chaos.

Born on the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, Iahtail was apprehended from her family in 1960 and placed in an orphanage at the St. Anne’s Indian Residential School. She was later adopted away as part of the Sixties Scoop, the large-scale government apprehension of Indigenous children from their home communities between the 1960s and 1980s.

She’s heard multiple explanations of how she was taken. According to her file, her mom was jailed for shoplifting. Another note—in parentheses, as it wasn’t believed—said that her mother was in the hospital with a heart condition. Decades later, when Iahtail met family, they said she’d been living with their grandparents.

What was clearer was how Iahtail felt growing up. Fearful. Ashamed of her murky past. Unwanted and out of place. Ridiculed and rejected because of her skin.

“All of those stories that are in my file … was I thrown away? Did my parents not love me?” Iahtail says. “One thing I do know is that the separation caused a lot of issues for me.”

A smiling Indigenous woman holds up a copy of a zine as she sits at a picnic table in a park.

Bernadette Iahtail sits in central Edmonton’s Giovanni Caboto Park with a copy of Zine and Heard, a monthly publication that amplifies the voices of youth who’ve experienced the child welfare system. The September 2024 edition of the zine features an article on Iahtail and the Creating Hope Society.

The long road to healing

As a teen, Iahtail struggled with her identity. When people said she looked like Yoko Ono or Donna Summer, she played along.

She turned to drinking and drugs. Had she not developed an addiction, Iahtail now says, the continuous experiences of trauma, racism and abuse would have killed her.

“Part of me wanted to change,” Iahtail says. “Life and me didn’t get along, I didn’t see where I fit anywhere.”

When she was 21, she started to find her way out. It took five treatment centres, multiple support groups, and meetings with counselors and healers to feel like she was starting to heal. Later on, she worked in treatment centres to help others. And then it seemed natural to become a social worker.

Recognizing that stories like hers weren’t unique, she was part of a small group that established an Edmonton-based organization. In March 2006, they held their first conference. More than 200 people from across Canada gathered and told their stories, including social workers who worked in child welfare during the Sixties Scoop.That conference was integral in developing the vision of the Creating Hope Society, which advocates for Indigenous Peoples fostered or adopted into non-Indigenous homes.

A home for every child

Creating Hope has evolved and changed, but the central goal of the Edmonton non-profit organization has been consistent for the past 18 years: an Indigenous home for every Indigenous child in care.

Programs support this vision in different ways. There are housing supports and programs for language, literacy and culture. Household management training for families. Classes for grandparents who become primary caregivers. And a program to provide supports for sex trade workers living at heightened risk of exploitation and violence.

Creating Hope receives funding from multiple sources, one of which is the City of Edmonton’s Operating Grant for Indigenous-led Organizations. Recipients can receive up to a quarter of their operating expenses, which helps them focus on programs with a significant impact.

Being taken away as a child was not only traumatic, Iahtail says it also meant not having a model for parenting. It is not difficult to draw a line from the residential schools—which operated between the 1830s and 1990s—to the Sixties Scoop, group homes and foster care. As a mother and now a grandmother, Iahtail knows that those lessons can’t be learned alone.

She witnesses signs of hope in Creating Hope’s programs and services. On powwow nights, and Kokum Tea and Bannock sessions, she sees individuals connecting to their families, to elders and ceremonial traditions. She loves watching children learning to dance, drum or make their own regalia.

She sees it as the beginning of another healing journey.

Beyond blame to a better future

Over the past three decades, Indigenous people have shared many stories as part of formal inquiries and commissions developed in recognition of disastrous government policies.

Iahtail counts 764 recommendations across official reports and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. One of these recommendations was the creation of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, developed to help all Canadians come to terms with this difficult past.

Iahtail understands the impulse of many Canadians, who would rather not hear stories like hers. It’s not about assigning blame, she says, pitting one generation against another.

It’s a way to build a better future for all nations, to build a story of survival and flourishing despite a difficult past.

“It’s about what can we do differently,” Iahtail says. “That’s why we must continue doing the work.”