SHARON GIROUX AND THE LONG ROAD TO RECONCILIATION By Michelle Despault

SHARON GIROUX AND THE LONG ROAD TO RECONCILIATION

By Michelle Despault

“Reconciliation is not only about the past; it is about the future that all Canadians will forge together.” National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

With the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada complete, there is a prevalent belief that an ugly part of Canadian history is in the past. That the atrocities committed against our Indigenous peoples have ended, and that we are now on the long and difficult road to healing and recovery.

But for Sharon Giroux, the Indigenous representative on the OECTA Diversity Advisory Board, reconciliation is “a bit of putting the cart before the horse.” As Giroux explains, “We can’t move forward with reconciliation until the truth is fully realized and acknowledged, and the truth is that the cultural genocide of Canada’s Indigenous peoples is still taking place.”

Sharon is referring to what has been dubbed the Millennium Scoop – the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes or adoption, cutting them off from their families, culture, and heritage.

Today, Indigenous youth are dramatically over-represented in the foster care system across Canada. According to Statistics Canada, in 2016 (the most recent year for which data are available) Indigenous children under the age of 14 accounted for more than half of children in foster care, despite the fact that First Nations, Métis, and Inuit youth account for just eight per cent of that age group nationally. In Ontario, 30 per cent of youth in foster care are Indigenous. In British Columbia, it is 63 per cent. In Manitoba, it is a shocking 91 per cent.

A 2018 CBC News article on the Millennium Scoop asked whether the care system is broken, or whether it might in fact be working exactly as designed, to wipe out Indigeneity. “The child welfare system today is a form of cultural genocide for Indigenous children, just like the Residential School System, as well as the Sixties Scoop,” said Reina Foster, an Indigenous youth who spent time in Canada’s care system. Jayne Simpson, another Indigenous youth who also spent time in Canada’s care system, said, “I believe this system, which continues today, was designed for our destruction. The apprehensions continue, with little support given to biological or community based families to provide culturally safe child rearing.”

The Millennium Scoop is considered an epilogue to, or continuation of, the Sixties Scoop, which spanned from the 1950s through the 1990s, and saw an estimated 22,000 Indigenous children stolen from their families and fostered or adopted out to primarily white, middle-class families. Sharon Giroux was one of those children. Her parents found her in a catalogue and adopted her when she was six years old. Born in Toronto, she was raised French Catholic along with an adopted brother in Chatham-Kent. She and her brother were the only visibly Indigenous kids in the community, and she notes there were only two other ethnic minorities.

Sharon knows firsthand what it means to be cut off from your heritage, to grow up not knowing or understanding who you are, and to have a poor self-image as a result. Much of her adult life has been dedicated to learning about her culture and heritage, and educating others. At the age of 17, as she was preparing to go college, she started on her journey of learning more about where she came from. It was in her first year of college that she heard of Residential Schools – the system that her biological mother, as well as many aunts and uncles, went through. She also learned about the Sixties Scoop and started to question whether she was part of that practice. And so began Sharon’s own journey toward truth and understanding of who she is – recognizing that she is both Franco-Ontarian and Indigenous.

Sharon’s journey has led her to train to run Reconciliation Circles with her mother in Chatham, which bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to talk and come to a mutual understanding of what reconciliation should be. She also was accepted to be on the Legacy Foundation Committee in Ottawa for curriculum writing on reconciliation. And she has gone back to school at Western University for a degree in Indigenous Studies, which she does while teaching part time.

What drives Sharon these days is spreading knowledge and consciousness of the plight of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, both past and present. Her sharing is part of her healing.

It is shocking to Sharon how little students know of what has happened and what is currently going on in regard to Indigenous peoples. She is working to ensure that the history of Residential Schools in Canada becomes as common knowledge as slavery. She believes teachers will play a key role in helping move the bar forward on our collective knowledge and understanding. Sharon encourages other teachers to educate themselves and ask questions; check in with their First Nations, Métis, and Inuit resource person, and invite Indigenous people to come into the classroom to speak to their firsthand experience.

While some progress has been made, Sharon acknowledges there is still a long way to go.

“Formal inquiries into these policies and practices have concluded that the residential school system and the Sixties Scoop constituted forms of cultural genocide against Indigenous families and communities.” Ontario Human Rights Commission