Plaintiff in Sixties Scoop action wants day in court

His dream of a “hub” or healing centre for Aboriginal people impacted by the infamous Sixties Scoop is Robert Commanda’s driving force.

Commanda, along with Marcia Brown Martel, chief of Beaverhouse First Nation in Ontario, are representative plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit. They are claiming that loss of cultural identity was suffered by Aboriginal children fostered or adopted to non-Aboriginal homes during the Sixties Scoop.

The term refers to the period between the 1960s and 1980s when child welfare agencies took thousands of Aboriginal children from their families and placed them in non-Aboriginal homes. Estimates of the number of children taken range between 16,000 and 20,000.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified the case in Toronto on July 16, ruling that the class-action lawsuit against the federal government can proceed to court.

An earlier attempt in 2009 to put the case forward met with resistance from the federal government, which successfully appealed certification. After years of legal wrangling, a new hearing was ordered.

Commanda recalls when the judge told his group ‘I am going to certify you today,’ the federal government lawyer jumped out of his chair and announced his intention to appeal.

“Basically, the government tried to stomp us to the ground—again,” said Commanda. “But we won and we’re allowed to sue the federal government. That’s all it is, certification to sue them.” The judge will provide the written reasons for his decision in September.

Commanda believes the Sixties Scoop was based on the same genocidal policies that ruled the residential school era, to ‘Kill the Indian in the Child.’

“That’s why I’m fighting,” he said.

When he was apprehended by the Children’s Aid Society in northern Ontario along with his three brothers, Commanda was two-and-a-half years old. He was placed along with two brothers with a Jewish foster family where he was immersed in a completely different culture.

In a biography written 10 years ago for one of his courses at Trent University, Commanda said, “we experienced a move towards the Jewish faith,” and he was forced to undergo circumcision, an experience that did not prove painless as his foster parents had assured him.

He was also made to memorize and recite the Torah. Any infractions deemed not compatible with Jewish teachings, he said, were dealt with by the belt. A bed-wetting problem that ensued from fear of making mistakes was cause for humiliating treatment from his guardians and eventually resulted in the three brothers being moved to another foster home.

His next foster home, where he remained for eight years, created further cultural confusion. The new foster family was Catholic. Not only were prayers four or five times a day a part of the boys’ daily routine, but so was severe physical and verbal abuse.

“We were treated as the scum of the earth,” Commanda said in his biography. “We were dirty little Indians and they let us know every time and on every occasion.”

The brothers were isolated, he said, and were neither invited to eat with the foster family or given the same food. Friendships were not permitted and their walks to and from school were vigorously monitored and timed.

If one brother was late returning from school for any reason, all were beaten.

The verbal abuse was more damaging and demeaning for Commanda. They were constantly reminded they “were nothing but dirty little Indians who had to be continually watched because Indians stole belongings that wasn’t theirs, always had a dirty neck, couldn’t be trusted with money…”

After one of the brothers managed to send a letter to the Children’s Aid, they were moved quietly and quickly.

His experiences in the system and his subsequent years of substance abuse and living on the Toronto streets make him determined to create a place that will serve two functions.
The first is healing for those who went through the same experience in the system, a place where they can give voice to their stories.

“We have to take those teachings from those atrocities that happened to us and find solutions so we don’t go down that path again,” he said.

The second is to provide an alternative to the existing system.
“We want them out of the system,” he said, “we want our own system. I want to see our children being raised properly and being shown the right direction, directed into different avenues so they can heal.”

It’s important for children to have a voice, he said, to express their own opinion and to have a say in their daily routine. Commanda is now working on a plan for this “hub” and says it’s what keeps him going.

He’s gotten a sense of wholeness and belonging through the culture, attending ceremonies and receiving his Native name.
“I feel more at ease with myself,” he said. This is what he wants for all our children.

He also wants his day in court.

“I would like a few of our stories to go out there,” he said, “and I want people to hear them and why and how this happened. That way the public will know the abuses we went through.”