By Robbie Madsen

Robbie Madsen is a Two-Spirit Cree originally from northern Alberta. Adopted into a non-Indigeneous, military family in Ontario at the age of four, he grew up to be a studious kid and did well at college. After time spent in Ottawa and Toronto, he moved to Montreal at 32-years-old.

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​For the past ten years, he has been writing a book called Insanity & Lies – Goodbye, Sixties Scoop – starting the narrative when he was 24-years-old, an age when he left home and walked away from my Sixties Scoop influence and colonization to return to his First Nations community. He needed to heal. However, it was not until 2019 that he realized what he really needed to heal was to start his story at very beginning and go back to when he was born. For, it was around this time, he had a first look at the Sixties Scoop Federal Compensation Package and realized he could not fill out the forms without lying – because his adoption records with reference to his place of birth, genealogy and heritage were all totally untrue. 

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The following extract is taken from one of the book's chapters, Lying, Falsifying & Withholding Information:

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In news article Sixties Scoop survivors say birth records mysteriously lost or destroyed published by CBC News on September 29th, 2016, we read how when four survivors went to search for their birth records, they were all told their files burned in a fire. And when a fifth survivor went searching for his records, he was told there were none to begin with – in fact, he received a letter from Statistics Canada telling him that he did not even exist! There were no records of their adoptions, no records of the adoption agencies they went through, and the supposed fires that destroyed their files could not be confirmed.

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Now, if one survivor says they were told this it could be an anomaly. If two say they were told this, it could be a coincidence. But when five survivors say they went searching for their records and were told the exact same thing by officials, obviously, something underhand and crooked is going on. We know these people are lying. When someone owes taxes to the government, doesn’t the government find that person, no matter where they are, and get them to pay? When someone asks for their education records, isn’t the information readily available? If the police stop someone in the street to card them, and this person has a criminal record, won't their record show up in the computer?

 

Some things are never lost by our government.

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But, somehow, they managed to lose the foster care and adoption records of Sixties Scoop survivors. And conveniently, they start losing them when they have several multi-billion-dollar, class-action lawsuits pending against them! Bullshit. And if the records of these survivors were, in fact, destroyed, it is more likely that the foster-care and adoption agents, themselves, destroyed them. And don’t put it passed them because it wouldn’t be the first time that they’ve done it to us. The true number of Indian residential school student deaths may never be known.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada writes how the Canadian federal Government undertook a document destruction effort from 1930-1944 that saw over 200 000 Indian Affairs files disappear. And so, really, what else is new?

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I hope anyone who reads this segment learns something from it and takes enough interest away with them that they would purchase the full memoir when it comes, hopefully before the end of 2020, and if not, at the beginning of 2021. Other excerpts should follow, in the meantime. Stay tuned.

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About the author:  Robbie Madsen is a writer, singer/songwriter, and Two-Spirit Cree originally from northern Alberta. The past few years has seen him explore and learn about his Two-Spirit side, about its rich and interesting heritage, and his various roles in the community and what is expected of him. He was recently featured in a Hip-Hop song, Come Home.