Appropriating filius nullius: Joshua Whitehead, ‘Adapting the Indian in the Child: The Settler Colonial Politics of Adopting Native American Children’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 04/04/16 | settler colonial studies blog

Appropriating filius nullius: Joshua Whitehead, ‘Adapting the Indian in the Child: The Settler Colonial Politics of Adopting Native American Children’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 04/04/16

06Apr16

Excerpt: In June of 2015, Manitoba became the first province to apologize to survivors of Canada’s Sixties Scoop. For those unfamiliar, the Sixties Scoop refers to the removal of Indigenous children from their families, “scooping” them up, and placing them into foster homes with non-Indigenous families and/or residential/day schools. I also deploy the term Sixties Scoop with an awareness of its expansive and evolutionary nature, in that it branches beyond the sixties and moves well into the eighties; moreover, its remnants can be seen in Canada’s contemporary Child and Family Services (CFS). In light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Manitoba’s apology was a first step towards reconciling with survivors. As the child of a Sixties Scoop survivor, I am interested in how adoption functions within the larger framework of North American settler colonial practices.

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