Coming Home

This week, we learn how history, culture and science can all play a role in bringing people home. For decades, policies like the Sixties Scoop saw thousands of children fostered or adopted out to non-Indigenous families. Now, thanks to DNA detectives, resilience research and mapping projects Indigenous adoptees are finding their way home.

You might remember Dean Lerat from last season. He’s an RCMP officer by day and DNA Detective by night. Dean helps people in his community find the families they were separated from by using their DNA. We catch up with Dean at Cowessess First Nation pow wow where he is still busy reuniting families.

That's where Rachael Lerat comes in. No relation to Dean but thanks to his detective work she has found her way here. Rachael came to Cowessess First Nation to reconnect with her mom’s side of the family, but also to seek out new connections to her biological father. That journey brought her somewhere completely unexpected! Listen to find out why.

Colleen Hele-Cardinal hopes to lead Sixties Scoop adoptees back to their families, communities and themselves by literally drawing a map. As the co-founder of the Sixties Scoop Network, she created an online interactive map so adoptees can upload and share their stories. And she has her own story to tell: Colleen and her two sisters were taken 2000 kilometers away from Edmonton, Alberta to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario as part of the Sixties Scoop. Since reconnecting with her biological family, she now knows she is from Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta.

Amy Bombay researches the impacts of residential school and how trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. She was a guest on Unreserved eight years ago. She’s back to tell us what her research reveals about something else passed from generation to generation: resilience.