When Colleen Cardinal was a little girl growing up in an adoptive, non-Indigenous family with her two blood sisters, she had no idea who Indigenous people were, and no idea she was one. Cardinal, now 46, ended up fleeing on a Greyhound bus when she was 16, and headed to Edmonton to be with one of them. Ten years later, Cardinal left Edmonton to escape an abusive relationship and came to Ottawa, where she hit rock bottom. Gradually, Cardinal met more and more Sixties Scoop adoptees like her, and they eventually decided to have a gathering in 2014. Survivors need a place to gather, survivors need to be able to tell their stories," she says.

Source: CBC News March 25, 2019 16:07 UTC