Some of Marcia Brown Martel’s earliest memories are of swimming, playing and spending time with her family in Temagami First Nation near Kirkland Lake, Ont.
But by her fifth birthday, those fond recollections stopped. Brown Martel was one of thousands of indigenous children in Ontario who were taken from their families placed in non-aboriginal homes from 1965 to 1984 as part of a federal-provincial agreement, now called the ‘60s Scoop.
“I had a number of memories of my time there and how I felt there. And I was safe, I was secure, I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t cold,” Brown Martel told CTV’s Peter Akman. “So when someone would say, ‘We took you because they couldn’t feed you,’ I’m thinking, I don’t remember being hungry. I wasn’t neglected.”
Now 53 years old, Brown Martel was the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the government that alleged that thousands of on-reserve children suffered harm when they were taken from their homes. On Tuesday, an Ontario judge ruled in the plaintiffs favour -- a decision that means the government will have to pay damages to about 16,000 indigenous children in Ontario.
The lawsuit sought $1.3 billion. An assessment of damages is expected to determine the exact penalty.
For Brown Martel, the ruling is complicated. She says she’s happy by the result, but it doesn’t change what happened to her and so many others.
“Look what happened in our history. How could we ever allow that to happen to the most vulnerable people within our care?” said Brown Martel, who learned later in her life that the Canadian government had declared her birth identity dead.
“You can’t go back in time. But one can look up and go, you know what … this Canada can learn and change its ways.”
Brown Martel said she grew up with little knowledge of her identity. Her understanding of indigenous culture was limited to history and social studies classes, and all she knew of her background was where she was born.
She says her childhood was spent largely bouncing from one foster home to the next. All the while, she said, she wondered why “nobody came to rescue me.”
“I ended up being with a number of families in foster care with the very sense that every time I was taken to the next one, those people didn’t want me … even my own family and community didn’t want me. So I grew up with that,” she said.
Tuesday marked the judge’s long-awaited decision on the case, first launched eight years ago. Brown Martel said she doesn’t “begrudge” the process and insisted that sometimes, it can take years to “get it right.”
Similar legal actions in other provinces are pending, and none have yet been certified to take place. In those cases, the proposed action relates to children being apprehended rather than protection of indigenous identities.
Brown Martel suggested that there are more stories like hers waiting to be heard.
“It isn’t just Ontario that this happened in. This happened across this country,” she said.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett welcomed the ruling and said the government would “absolutely not” take steps to appeal it. In terms of compensation, Bennett said the government intends to “get to the table as quickly as possible.”
With files from the Canadian Press
