DO NOT READ: How My Truth is a Threat to Canadian History

            I started this research project centering my Scoop survivor friends because they gave me permission to write about their case files.[1] Bill Groat and Corri Daniels went through Research Ethics Board (REB) processes at York University with me even though the forms seemed silly and out of touch with relationship and reciprocity. I feel like an asshole for completing this work outside of the university system. Bill moved on to the spirit world before I could finish the research. I am grateful to Cody Groat for staying in contact with me as a friend, colleague, and advocate. When I started this work, I did not expect to find my own mother. Over the course of my studies, I came to understand how racialized Indigenous mothers experience The Scoop as well as my own child welfare timeline. I came to accept I have to write about myself as Cecilia and take back my connection to paper evidence. Indigenous research methods are a way of living rather than a checklist waiting for publication. I believe in the power of words. I worked on this historiography for six years which was enough time to lose more than one mentor.  In June 2025 I am afraid I wasted my money because my PhD committee demoralized me for so long I am forced into loan repayment. This Scoop story is bigger than me. This story is about our mothers too. Sarah Jean Groat, William “Bill” Groat, Mary Leona Daniels, Corri Daniels, Cecilia Thanh Gullickson and Meranda Gullickson are systematically erased. Our mothers never met and will never cross paths, but they interacted with the state of Canada through the child welfare system, so we are connected as Scoop survivors. I understand our case files as paper evidence of how our Native mothers interacted with paid state agents rather than an accurate retelling of the past. All three of our mothers are written out of the historical narrative from small details like date of birth to large scale erasure from studies of the development of the welfare state in Canada. Our case files refer to newborn babies and our parents. It is not possible for paperwork made by the state to accurately depict who our mothers were, who we were as children, or who we will become. Our case files are tools of surveillance deployed against racialized women and children funded by the state of Canada through child welfare services.

            I have three reasons for writing this historiography. I was forced into this work to complete my studies. To pass my doctoral exams, I was forced to read every detail of how my people were abused as children for one hundred years by the state of Canada. I am personally affected by the books included in this review. Each book took a piece of my heart which I will never get back. This is something my non-Indigenous colleagues may never understand but racialized Natives inherently feel. To corrupt my love of reading with trauma experienced and written by my people to pass an exam is the epitome of colonialism by university. I call my primary reason for writing this historiography malicious compliance. I am not proud of my ability to provide citations for the sake of an exam in a system that was designed to oppress my people. This paper serves as the best example of how I am colonized through education in 2025. This review is the result of a decade of pain and hurt in the mainstream education system caused by non-Indigenous academics who said out loud to me: Indians do not write books about Canadian history. I am here because non-Indigenous academics tell me to be grateful for the never-ending job of fixing a broken system. I fell for university propaganda which promised me a high paying job that will wipe out my debt. A book summary has no format for you to understand how long it took me to find and read these books on my own or how many times I cried over the material. I was forced to withdraw from the PhD program at York due to a negligent supervisor who worked hard to slow me to a halt. All three members of my former committee are detrimental to my well-being including but not limited to identity fraud and ambush meetings disguised as support. I do not know what a positive graduate student experience looks like. I did much of this work in my living room during COVID lockdowns. After years of slogging away in my living room, I no longer believe York University has my best interests in mind even when I pay tuition. I struggled writing this paper with stilted language and vague references that conform to REB. I struggle reading this paper as a shallow reflection of who I am and what I want to say. If I had it my way, I would write with more heart and truth than what is required by the PhD process. Indigenous research methods conform to a higher standard of ethics than the process in place at western institutions.

This list of books is important to demonstrate the key role Indigenous people play in the development of the Canadian welfare state. Indigenous people are perpetual advocates for child welfare and education despite the atrocities committed against our people by the state of Canada. Due to Treaty obligations and The Indian Act, state surveillance was sanctioned on Indigenous people long before the same methods were implemented against non-Indigenous Canadian citizens experiencing poverty. My final reason for writing this reflection is to explain how I came to know. My experience is at the center of this research as a non-status, racialized, Scoop survivor. I will outline Indigenous research methods followed by a historiography which connects histories of social work, education, and child welfare as experienced by Indigenous people living in so-called Canada. This essay provides context for the primary research in what was formerly known as my dissertation. I considered separating my Indigenous research methods section from the Canadian welfare state literature review, but I think it is important to make a point here: studies of the Canadian welfare state must include Indigenous people as central to development rather than peripheral special cases. The most important lesson I had to learn as a Scoop survivor is that I am not unique. The processes which tried to erase our families left document traces. This historiography centers my perspective as a racialized Scoop survivor.

Part One Locate Self

I locate myself as Métis as described by Maria Campbell in the1970s. I read Halfbreed for the first time during my undergrad at the University of Waterloo when I was twenty-one. Halfbreed is the best required reading purchase I ever made with my Ontario student loan money. I was gifted the 2019 edition not long after it was released. Maria Campbell’s original print in 1973 was censored by non-Indigenous, male editors “without informing her.”[2] In the 1970s, it was important to protect settlers from the truth of child rapists who are paid to use sexual violence against racialized women as members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). I always mention page 101 as the redacted page and a half when I am teaching because the truth written by my people is a perpetual target of erasure by non-Indigenous gatekeepers. The 2019 version includes a fabulous introduction by Doctor Kim Anderson plus a foreword by Campbell. Not only is Campbell’s story important to contemporary audiences but how she was censored exemplifies change over time in Canadian publishing. I will have a difficult time getting hired or published for the rest of my life. I am better prepared for when censorship happens to me. Maria Campbell’s work is as essential to the development of Canada as it is to young, racialized people. I use Halfbreed as my first example to counter the oft repeated but incorrect assumption that racialized Indigenous people do not read or write books therefore it is our own fault we are erased from Canadian history.[3] I connect to the 1970s conception of halfbreed as it relates to gender, poverty, and interactions with the state. I am a halfbreed because my unnamed biological father was Vietnamese. He was 38 years old when he got my 15-year-old mother pregnant for the third time. I am racialized in a way that is so ambiguous that halfbreed fits best. There are no Vietnamese people wondering where I went. However, when I talked to my grandmother for the first time in January 2025 she said “how did you get to Ontario” like she was waiting for my call for thirty-two years. Maria Campbell wrote about colonialism as it feels on a personal level with direct reference to social policy in the 1970s.[4] Some examples include Family Allowance[5], relief, surveillance, documents, and permanent foster homes by the court.[6] I agree with Maria Campbell’s assessment that “the welfare state destroys our spirits” with surveillance and shame. Campbell’s book is how I understand what my family lost through child welfare displacement. I lost connections to my family and elders. I gained hatred like what Campbell describes. Elder care for Indigenous youth stands out to me, particularly references to Cheechum which make me miss what I will never know about my kin.[7] Like Maria Campbell, my mother was told she was unfit to care for children. As a Scoop survivor, “I can only hate the system that does this to people.”[8] This sentiment is shared by Doctor Emma LaRocque. LaRocque cites Maria Campbell and Howard Adams which also helps me counter outdated opinions that Indians do not write books.[9] Excessive reading is how I knew meeting my mother in 2023 was a necessary part of my journey. Healing is a process with ups and downs because the Scoop experience is ongoing. According to Doctor LaRocque “this process is excruciating and disorienting because it makes us hate what and who we love” and we feel shame twice over. Thanks to Campbell and LaRocque, I understand kinship as identity. LaRocque’s definition of Métis is another way I locate myself as a descendant of people who “went on to develop as a distinct peoples with a distinct culture by marrying within their own group over generations” to become a  unique ethnicity.[10] Not all of my family members are formally married but they had children with other racialized people which gives our kin a unique history centered around relationships and stories. For example, my brother is a single father to each of his co-parent’s four children. The youngest two are related to me. My brother is a fabulous father which is recognized by his peers, his ex-partner, and social services. I am proud and “always happy to get back to the noise and disorder of my own people” when I visit my family in Orillia, Ontario.[11] I wrote this essay over many years so I can make enough money to get back to my kin. My goal is to be a consistent breadwinner for my brother’s family while also remaining present in their lives.

            I am not unique because Doctor Emma LaRocque also used graduate work to explore policy because of personal experience. I aspire to what LaRocque calls resistance writing. I want to gain the confidence to say cool things like “I am no militant patriot and I will not couch my language.”[12] Resistance writing is using our narratives and footnotes to “dismantle stereotypes, upset conventions, and invent new genres.”[13] I locate myself and my method in a colonial environment which erases me. This method is often employed in Indigenous resistance writing because “to be Native and to read White literature is to walk a long journey of alienation.”[14] I want the HIST 6030 Canadian History syllabus to be included here. I want to remember that I was forced to read and listen to a revolving door of white Canadian academics who apologized for erasing my people then continue to do so because the Research Ethics Board says an apology is enough.

University stole my love of reading and replaced it with six years of ‘reading against the grain’ which does not serve me. Devil’s Advocate and ‘read against the grain’ are not effective tools of analysis, especially following an apology for erasure. Professor Keith D. Smith’s research supports my experience in Canadian history. Smith understands the “national mythology” central to Euro-Canadians centers on a British colony on empty land which became an independent nation. This incorrect myth “has been indoctrinated into generations of students of Canadian history” by ignoring class, gender, or race.[15] Erasure is used as an indicator of low importance rather than a concerted strategy funded by the state of Canada and perpetuated by paid agents. I include the York University HIST 6030 syllabus here so we can see that during my time in the program, Indigenous people are only included twice, once before and once after Confederation. I have never had a racialized Indigenous professor who looks like me. I learned the settler version of Indigenous history. For example, take a look at the second title on Indians titled “Colonizing Native People.” This class sticks in my mind years later because a white settler man came into the classroom to fight me about oral history. This professor, an expert on colonizing Natives, told me that oral history does not meet legal standards because “what if its wrong.” He assigned his own book and indicated that he has no ongoing relationship with Indigenous people in Toronto considering his book concerns east coast Natives. Settlers write incorrect ideas all the time, this argument is insufficient. I also faced resistance in the form of a failing grade from the Canadian environmental historians. I failed my HIST 6030 review paper on my first try because I included Indigenous research methods deemed unacceptable. I was forced to rewrite my assignment on The New Economy. I practiced malicious compliance in this assignment. I regret subordinating my heart work for PhD grades. I was not empowered enough to advocate for myself which is another way I experience colonialism daily.  I include the syllabus here because one day I will look back at this work and know that I healed from this nonsense education. LaRocque wrote in 2010 that healing is a central feature of Indigenous literature.[16]

            Another publication based on graduate work is Colonized Classrooms: Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education by Professor Sheila Cote-Meek (Anishinaabe). This book is important because social workers are central to my research in theory and in real life. I looked up to the social workers who came to move me between foster placements. Many of my closest friends are Indigenous social workers as adults. Like many of the books in this review, Cote-Meek’s book includes interviews with students, professors, and elders involved in education.  Her research questions ask fifteen participants to reflect on their experiences with colonial violence in the classroom. There is a link between colonization, education, and intergenerational trauma.[17] On page nine, Professor Cote-Meek defines colonization using sources dating back to Frantz Fanon in 1963 and Sherene Razack in 1998. Colonial violence is “understood as the acts perpetuated upon a people, and trauma is the result of that colonial violence.”[18] She goes on to cite Doctor Emma LaRocque to reinforce the truth that “the classroom perpetuates racial hierarchies that are inherent in colonialism” based on native informants like me.[19] Residential school or any education paid for by the state of Canada is a tool of colonialism.[20]  Resistance is the key to “transformational pedagogy.”[21] The results of Cote-Meek’s interviews align with volume three of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, 1996 which identified that our people “experience higher rates of violence in their lives, have higher rates of significant illnesses” which impacts all aspects of our lives.[22] I go to this book when I want to give words to the lack of safety I experience at school. There is a connection between child welfare and the public education system that goes beyond the move from assimilation to integration.  I have been institutionalized by a colonial system my entire life: first through the child welfare system and again through education.

            As a result, I work hard to connect with who I am, where displacement brought me, and where I came from in this lifetime. In terms of books, I find comfort in Chantal Fiola’s Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality. I struggle with the fact that my spirit name is in Anishinaabemowin but the family I found in 2024 identifies as English-speaking Metis from northern Saskatchewan. It is difficult to exist as racialized Métis in Ontario. Métis history is erased. Shame around my displacement comes from people who lie about their identity for education and career. Unfortunately, I am surrounded by white-coded grifters who lie for money and take space away from displaced, racialized Natives like me. I wasted a lot of time taking bad advice from white passing identity frauds. I thought I was a Pretendian because I did not have documents to support my experiences. Once I found my mother, I became outspoken to the point of being bullied online.[23] I must be specific about who I am and where I come from in terms of spirit and ethics. Before I looked my mom in the eyes, identity fraud could be an accident. Once I could see my brother and I reflected in an another adult, identity fraud became obvious. I cannot lie about my birth or where I come from. I do not know how people take up space without knowing who they are. This writing is an example of the work I put into figuring out who I am and what I stand for. I worked hard to make my life as big as possible in the pursuit of truth. Now that I am closer to truth, I feel comfortable making my life smaller and smaller as I narrow in on the work I am called to do. At time of writing, I believe that I have First Nations ancestors but the four alive generations identify as non-status Indian, Indigenous, or English-speaking Métis from Saskatchewan. I am frustrated when identity frauds only talk about ancestors from two hundred years ago and refuse to name their parents or grandparents or siblings. I am annoyed because I am Native, my brother is Native, my mom is Native, my grandparents are Native and my grandparents’ parents are Native. I have always known I am an Indian because an Indian stares back at me in the mirror. Coming Home: Raven Sinclair and the Sixties Scoop is the first time I read about the racialized Scoop experience. When I was a child, my adoption placement guardians told me to stop braiding my hair because it makes me “look TOO Indian” which implies my features are undesirable. Situating self is central to my wellbeing. I identify based on personal experience and what I know about my mother’s family. I have always known I am mixed race Vietnamese and Metis. There are no Vietnamese people looking for me. My great aunts on my mother’s side gave me proper information about our family over a series of phone calls in 2024. I found my family tree past the parents of my maternal great-great-grandmother who were born in Manitoba in the 1850s and 1860s. Elizabeth Fidler’s parents Alexander (Sandy) Fidler and Isabelle Harcus Arcus got married in 1880 in the Cumberland House District of the North West Territories. Elizabeth Fidler was born at Fort-A-La Corne, Saskatchewan in 1884. Elizabeth Fidler married Roderick D. Cook in Prince Albert in 1908. Roderick Cook Senior was born in the Red River Settlement in the 1840s. Elizabeth Cook and Roderick Junior were both born in the land that became Saskatchewan, which brings us to the 1880s. They raised a large family and eventually moved south to Saskatoon. Roderick and Elizabeth had seven children together. Elizabeth went on to outlive her husband by thirteen years. My grandmother’s dad, Horace was the middle child: he had three older and three younger siblings. Horace Cook was a veteran of World War II.[24] My great aunts told me stories about their parents, Horace and Mildred Cook. Horace was born in Kinistino, Saskatchewan. He married Mildred Eutreen Halcro, daughter of John Hugh Halcro and Maud Helen Duffy Cairns Goehring. Mildred was born in the Halcro District, Red Deer Hill, Saskatchewan in 1914.[25] Mildred’s father, John Hugh Halcro was born in Halcro, Prince Albert in 1894. Henry Halcro left a paper trail related to scrip in the 1850s. Alexander Fidler and Henry Halcro were young men in their twenties during the Riel Resistance. I feel most connected to Horace and Mildred Cook through the stories my great aunts told me and the paper evidence I can find online. My brother thinks our family tree is a dream come true.

I am frustrated when liars confuse us about identity and documents from the 1800s. Identity fraud forces me into a space where I must use my experience, primary, and secondary documents to justify my existence. Horace Cook’s obituary is an example of the accessibility of official documents. One small obituary is evidence of my connection to Elizabeth Fidler. My mother’s mom is Kay Cook, the second youngest daughter of Horace and Mildred. You can see I have many matriarchs and they all identify as Native. This kind of family description is inspired by Professor Chantal Fiola who described this introduction as a way for “readers to form their own opinions of me and my motivations.”[26] Anyone can search online for obituaries of my family members. I do not understand identity fraud because my family is racialized. Regardless of self-identification, my family is under surveillance in obvious and subtle ways. A similar self-identification is provided by Professor Allyson D. Stevenson in Intimate Integration.[27]

Racialized Indigenous people are subject to more surveillance and more paperwork than white passing, non-Indigenous people, regardless of status. I do not relate to how difficult it is to be questioned by white people for being white-coded Indigenous.[28] I am sorted into the “not white” category regardless of context. Silence is not an option. White-coded Indigenous people will never know the racism and belonging that comes with ethnic ambiguity. In the conversation on identity fraud, white-coded Indigenous people need to identify their privilege for what it is: power to disrupt.[29] White coded Indigenous people need to hold other white coded people accountable when they take up too much space talking about traumas they did not personally experience. I am not required to be the spokesperson for racialized people in the face of identity fraud.

I feel called to do some kind of work in this field but I cannot see the finish line. I know many Scoop survivors through research and relationship. I did not propose to write a defense of Scoop survivors in the face of identity fraud and Pretendians but this is the political climate of 2025. I do this work because decolonization is not a metaphor. Professors Eve Tuck and Wanye Yang wrote a list of reasons why settlers move to innocence. Settler Moves to Innocence is how I analyze identity frauds who use Scoop language to obfuscate the truth.[30] I justify my work in relation to the university and institutional reliance on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC identifies child welfare as an extension of residential schools and vice versa, especially from 1940 onwards.[31] Residential schools were “more a child-welfare system than an educational one.” There are Scoop survivors who also survived Residential/Day School. For example, legendary activist Arthur Manuel and his siblings “were faced with going either into foster care or to residential school” when alternate forms of childcare were not available to his parents.[32] I connect my research to the TRC through the Calls to Action, particularly 62-65. I understand the need for education in the form of research material through the TRC from Solemn Words and Foundational Documents: An Annotated Discussion of Indigenous-Crown Treaties in Canada, 1972-1923 by Professor Jean-Pierre Morin. I appreciate the format of Morin’s discussion questions as well as his positioning as an ally who is doing work that needs to be done without race shifting to take up space. I understand my role as an academic and educator through research and discussion rather than formal essays with colonial citations. I want to end my self location with my current land acknowledgement. My experience leans heavily towards Anishinaabe ways of knowing.[33] Many of my friends and mentors are Anishinaabe and/or Haudenosaunee. Doctor Susan Hill’s Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River is how I understand competing understandings of where I live now. The first half of Doctor Hill’s book discusses cultural history and relationship to land while the second half details history from Iroquoia to the Grand River to center the land over people.[34] I relate to the land I live on now as a racialized Indigenous person who has also faced “a long history of interference by the Canadian state” like the Haudenosaunee who reside on the Haldimand Tract, six miles either side of the Grand River.[35]

Part Two Methodology

My frustration with mainstream research by non-Indigenous people is the on-going nature of our real-life experiences. I am weary of the finality of an essay as my former training as a professional historian and as an Indigenous person who understands the world in a circular way. Indigenous research methods are a way of living rather than a checklist that can be completed on a grant schedule. I am frustrated that I am forced to cite my experiences to convince non-Indigenous people I am telling the truth. This paper does not make truth, but the process helped develop my ethics and morality. Every methods historiography must begin with Linda Tuhiwai Smith Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples first published in 1999. Smith’s work is now in the third edition. This book is internationally renowned. Many social work and Indigenous studies academics structure their research around interviews and theory like Smith. For example, Smith interviewed twenty-five people about their projects which are centered in the second half. Smith is responsible for elevating “the significance of Indigenous perspectives on research” especially in the context of colonization and injustice.[36] I like that Smith makes space for my experience as a valid research strategy, even if meticulous citation is not part of the process. This work is my survival.[37] Thanks to Smith, I have always lived in a world where Indigenous research methods are internationally recognized as valid forms of inquiry. When someone gives me a hard time about incorporating what I know to be true into Canadian history, I cite Professor Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods for two reasons. Firstly, my Indigenous social work friends read this book in their classes, so I know it is relevant to the current field. Secondly, I believe research as ceremony is “the knowing and respectful reinforcement that all things are related and connected.”[38] I use this citation to mean that everything that is going on around my writing and research is more important than the colonial product. For example, my struggle to articulate a position through citations is directly related to meeting my mother. Many non-Indigenous people take up space by separating colonial exercises like this from spirit. The truth is, this paper took me years to write because the conditions in my day-to-day life must reflect the words I put into the world. This concept is the center of my worldview. Some artists take this theory too far to say I am not allowed to make art when I am upset. I do not have the luxury of waiting until the tears stop. I have permission to be more angry about the things that were stolen from me.

Therefore, I must incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing into every moment of my day to protect my spirit. Wilson provides excellent citations for students to begin to develop theories into practice. The most important practice is to locate self as the story-teller.[39] The chapter on relationality is important to my research because it is “through this method of discovering relations, one comes to know if the other person is Indigenous – by who they are related to but also by how they think and respond to the questions.”[40] I also appreciate that Professor Wilson outlines a circular way of thinking which lays a foundation for me to express myself through “cumulative analysis” based on a system of logic that is not necessarily linear.[41]

I have the right to tell my stories according to Professor Margaret Kovach and her book Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. The lessons I take from Doctor Kovach’s book changes as I age. All I had were my stories at the beginning of my research journey so this book is evidence that our modes of thinking are feasible especially for urban people living away from their home territory.[42] I appreciate that Kovach’s book transcends discipline and can be applied to social work and Canadian history because “in my mind, identity and education always intersect.”[43] Kovach’s methodology should be applied to Canadian history because Indigenous academics in all fields feel pressured to use their work to correct the record that settlers broke. Racialized Indigenous social workers are best equipped to counter the problems of Canadian myth making. For example, Kovach takes “a brief historical detour” to interrogates western ways of knowing such as Charles Darwin.[44] Going forward means looking back is how I understand white privilege in the academy.[45] In terms of story-telling, Doctor Margaret Kovach is central to how I understand my right to use personal narrative which also locates self.[46] I am writing racialized Indigenous people into the historical record rather than changing the face of a discipline. It is not a Scoop survivor’s responsibility to fix the child welfare system. It is not my responsibility to convince the public that our lived experience is real. A “primary relationship between researcher and research participant” is central to my work as I am both. Rather than solicit case files of strangers as approved by the Research Ethics Board, three case files came to me. My relationships with spirits living a human experience are motivation, worldview, and methodology. I am writing about us. In other words, I believe in friendship first, research second. Relationships are central to research. Relationships and reciprocity cannot be rushed to fit a university timeline. Relationships reflect the level of support a researcher has from their community. I structured my primary researcharound the lives of Bill Groat, Corri Daniels, and Cecilia Gullickson. I hope that work gets to see the light of day in my lifetime.

As a displaced prairie person, I appreciate The Buffalo Hunt as Plains Cree methodology especially in regard to respect, ceremony, protocol, and epistemological teaching.[47] However, this way of thinking indicates the road ahead and the work I have to do in the future. As a displaced person, I landed in Waterloo, Ontario where I ran into Professor Kathleen Absolon at Laurier during my Master of Arts degree in Canadian history. I am fully prepared for Professor Absolon to read this so I want to make sure I get this story right. I read Kaandossiwin: How We Come to Know Indigenous re-Search Methodologies when I started working at the Laurier Indigenous Student Centre in 2019. To my surprise, Doctor Absolon ran various ceremonies at the Centre therefore one of my jobs was to prepare and assist. The first ceremony I attended was a garden awakening. I was coached through the procedures by Professor Absolon and other racialized youth. I got to be starstruck by my research hero almost immediately after reading the first edition of Kaandossiwin which is best case scenario for a Scoop survivor looking for connection in the city. I am grateful for Kathy Absolon as a rockstar in the academic research space and as a friendly face in any context. Before I left Laurier to start my PhD studies at York, Kathy taught me how to use a serger sewing machine to make a ribbon skirt which I know as the true Absolon method. Each of my ribbon skirts represents a different relationship and context in my life that changes as I make new memories in each piece of clothing. My Kathy ribbon skirt is important because I feel seen, valued, and protected.

As an aspiring historian, my first question for Doctor Absolon was her opinion on how research changed over the course of a decade. I am excited to have a second edition of How We Come to Know to answer my questions. I am drawn to the flower as framework for wholism however I do not specifically follow this outline or posit my own epistemological diagrams like chapters five to seven. However, I agree that we learn best when we ask uncomfortable questions. In the late stages of my doctoral work, chapter three on colonial research trauma is salient. When in doubt, I return to the Seven Grandfather Teachings: trust, bravery, courage, truth, love, humility, and wisdom.[48]  When I am feeling low, I remember that “the power of accurate and truthful knowledge in decolonizing trauma is radically important.”[49] Positioning self is central to research because who I am matters and my people have always resisted colonization. It is my right and privilege to search the literature for scholarship and examples that “inspire and astonish” to break my isolation and silence.[50] Kaandossiwin is central to Indigenous research methods through meticulous citation and references as well as a real-life example. I am blessed to cross paths with Professor Absolon because her examples make abstract concepts accessible. I am grateful to have this citation when non-Indigenous people give me a hard time about my worldview and methods. Not only is Kathy Absolon a fabulous artist, her references in Kaandossiwin are the most comprehensive in the field. 

            In terms of Canadian history methods, my inspiration is Professor Franca Iacovetta’s book Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada. My research may be of interest to settlers who feel the impacts of immigration policies Iacovetta addresses. Gatekeepers defines helping professions in historical terms in mainstream Canadian history. This book is helps me understand the role immigrant ancestors play in Canadian colonialism. Settlers experiencing poverty are also surveilled by the state of Canada as a matter of bureaucracy. I contextualize my experience through labour studies and the development of the welfare state in Canada even though my people are erased from the narrative. My people know where we stand. As a result, Doctor Iacovetta’s illustrations of gatekeepers are central to my analysis regarding Canadian social workers and welfare administrators.[51] Gatekeepers discusses citizenship experiments and “White Canada” policy.[52] Most importantly, this is a trustworthy academic who does research in a good way with citations settlers prefer.

            To the best of my ability, my language and citation methods conform to Gregory Younging’s second edition of Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples published in 2025. This book is essential reference for settlers and Indigenous people working in the field. The second edition was published by Warren Cariou, Deanna Reder, Lorena Sekwan Fontaine and Jordan Abel in a way that makes change over time simple to follow.[53] The seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual cites Elements of Indigenous Style.[54] Principle three is important to this essay. My sources are independent sources of knowledge and “not a subgroup of any national canon such as Canadian Literature” because my experiences are framed in reality.[55] This essay is an example of my traditional knowledge which I earned through experience. I reserve the right to innovate. In my writing, I refer to myself as Indian, Native, Metis (without an accent on the e), queer, femme, non-binary, and Two Spirit (2S). These are my choices. I choose to call myself an Indian because it is true and because white-coded identity frauds are less likely to use the word. Many non-Indigenous students refuse to say the word Indian out loud which is another reason I use the word to define myself. White fragility is not my concern. I find my people with my eyes and through my ears when I hear words used to describe lived Indigenous experiences. I use the word Native to describe myself the most. I use the word Indigenous loosely, but there should be a move away from flimsy pan-Indian terms to be more specific. I am a racialized non status Native Indian. I am a halfbreed. I am a Metis person writing in English.

 My understanding of the state of Canada comes from The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians written by Harold Cardinal. In 1969 Cardinal wrote “most Canadians, tend to plead ignorance as a defense for the inexcusable treatment of the native people of this country” which echoes my own experience in the academy to this day.[56] I understand my position as educated, urban Native thanks to Cardinal’s support of youth. I also understand my identity as the descendant of family who chose scrip, “a legal piece of paper proclaiming the victim’s citizenship,” land, and a sum of money in order to fully participate in capitalism.[57] As a result my family lost the right to claim title to Indian according to The Indian Act. Harold Cardinal made space on the prairies for non-status Native people like me. My displacement as a child to Ontario is the reason for my delayed understanding of non-status identity. To this day, Indigenous youth are central to critiques of the state.[58] Studies of the Canadian welfare state must include The Unjust Society not as a special case but central to our understanding of Canada. There is no need for settlers to read against the grain because Harold Cardinal is not going to couch his language: “we invite our white brothers to realize and acknowledge that the Indian has played a significant role in Canadian history.”[59] Another example is Prison of Grass: Canada from the native point of view by Howard Adams. As Native men, Cardinal and Adams represent how resistance writing can influence policy and education. I return to Adams when I need to recenter myself. Adams uses sources from the 1950s to describe the rise of western imperialism, the fur trade, “indentured or semi-slave labour,” and Christianity.[60] He even discusses white supremacy, and privileges reserved for “halfbreeds who look white” while people who look like me “are doomed to stay at the bottom of society.”[61] I refute incorrect assumptions about Native ability to write and cite with Prison of Grass. A rich body of literature written by Indigenous people connects the fur trade, treaty making and the development of the welfare state. Howard Adams wrote for settler Canadians in the 1970s warning us all, “colonialization and racism not only harm native civilization but they harden the humanity of the entire Canadian society.”[62] Proper Canadian histories were written by Harold Cardinal and Howard Adams in the 1970s which is evidence that ignorance by settler Canadians is a choice. Canadian historical amnesia of the contributions of Indians to state development is a choice to uphold white supremacy. To be proud of my identity, vocal about my experience, and thorough in citation is to resist genocide. I understand that racism, colonialism, and capitalism “will always hold us captive in misery, violence and exploitation” which is related to my education.[63]

I need gender balance for my analysis to understand the ways in which Cardinal and Adams fall short. As a non-binary, queer, femme, I can only relate to a straight, male experience to a point. Lee Maracle is the best and most exciting citation in this review. I struggled for years to find the right citation to prove that I can tell the history of Canada by citing racialized Indigenous people rather than the usual western thinkers. At every step of my education I was forced to read and cite Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Antonio Gramsci as reasons why my Native perspective is allowed in academic institutions. As an undergraduate student, I did not have the vocabulary to articulate why none of these French or Italian texts translated into English had anything to do with me. My time as a student is a never-ending lesson in colonialism. The external reviewer of my master’s thesis criticized my lack of feminist analysis, so I went on a mission to fill a gap in my knowledge during my PhD. Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel is how I understand layers of gendered violence which is still used against me. Lee Maracle wrote Bobbi Lee in the 1970s but censorship by publishers delayed wide publication until the 1990s. Even now, Bobbi Lee is one of the most difficult of Lee Maracle’s books to access because the truth is still suppressed by mainstream publishers. The second edition of Elements of Indigenous Style goes into detail about Lee Maracle’s impact on publishing.[64] On the one hand, Bobbi Lee is difficult for me to read because I feel intergenerational trauma in my day-to-day life and my family members face similar challenges. On the other hand, this book is about empowerment. Struggles with bureaucratic definitions of Indian as experienced on a day-to-day level are important for all Canadians to understand.[65] Lee Maracle unpacks how Indigenous ways of knowing are worlds apart from settler criticisms of capitalism. On multiple occasions, Maracle mentions Frantz Fanon because she was also expected to read non-Indigenous men and participate in politics through international writing like Mao Tse-tung, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Thankfully Lee Maracle published so I can cite her instead of these men who do not know the experience of Indigenous women in Canada. Non-Indigenous academics try to convince me to regurgitate western academics as foundational. I feel as if these non-Indigenous men could be right “and could follow some of his logic, but there were still many things that I was confused about.” Like Maracle, my position as urban Indigenous makes western modes of thinking “seem way out.”[66] I benefit from ideas disseminated twenty years before I was born. Bobbi Lee is an essential contribution to studies of the welfare state in Canada. In her own words, Lee Maracle describes her understanding of leftist politics:

You see, it took me a very long time to learn that the racism and national chauvinism of white leftists I knew gave them a very distorted view of Marx – actually prevented them from understanding Marx and Lenin, from seeing capitalism is an international system, that revolutions against capitalism were going on in the Third World and not in Canada and not in other rich capitalist countries.

My dilemma is that I am still expected to cite non-Indigenous men to validate my thoughts in mainstream Canadian history.[67] I understand Foucault’s French words translated into English stand as the typical citation in studies of the state in Canada. I understand that my life represents subjugated knowledge which performs an important function of criticism.[68] However, I hope my experience is destined for more than formal scientific discourse in publications my people cannot read.[69] This nonsensical academic language is difficult for me to relate to and impossible for my brother or mother to read. My mother is illiterate. My brother does not have time to sit down and read this work. No one in my family cares that I read books and cited them to justify my writing. My brother wants me to speak my mind, which I cannot do in this limited setting. These citations are examples of how I am colonized. My understanding of labour begins with Lee Maracle who wrote that work must be a sane, rational, and productive thing.[70] In the context of the fur trade, residential schools, and the child welfare system, Indigenous labour “has never been appreciated,” so we feel we don’t deserve to be paid.[71] Canadian labour and welfare state historians must recognize and elevate the contributions of racialized Indigenous women like Maria Campbell and Lee Maracle. Indigenous ways of knowing are the primary method of truth telling in Canadian history.

Part Three Treaties to Welfare State

Even though Indigenous people are erased from the history of nation building, state development occurs on Native land in all aspects of our social lives including economy, labour, education, and social work. The authority on interactions with the state are our Indigenous elders. In this context, I use the term elder to refer to folks who are recognized as pillars of cultural integrity and authentic sources of information.[72] My favorite publishing method used by Indigenous people is a title that refuses to be shortened or compromised. After decades of censorship, self-published books with long titles are the norm for our people. For example, Harold Cardinal and Walter Hildebrant published their book in 2000 with an apt name that reflects my experience with elder care. This book centers me when I stray from the point and sets the stage for my analysis. There is no better way to describe my foundational guide, Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our dream is that our peoples will one day be clearly recognized as nations. This is the book I wish I had in my undergraduate studies to counter the erasure of my people in Canadian history. I listen to my elders when they tell me that my experience echoes decades of Canadian historians who begin “with the arrival of the Europeans to North American in general and to Canada in particular.”[73] Our people and treaties are located in a historical continuum going back to the beginning of time itself. Interviews with elders from Saskatchewan serve as the best evidence for our fundamental contributions to nation building and ongoing responsibilities. Each chapter speaks to a different element of treaty making from spirit and ceremony to “Making a Living.”[74] Elders from many nations, languages, and regions interviewed for this project because they are anxious to “counteract the negative and damaging stereotypes of the lazy Indian”[75] perpetuated by white supremacy. Our Elders have always known that unemployment or the “inability to work (atoskêwin) is a source of continuing deep anxiety” which could be prevented by treaty.[76] Treaties are economic and social needs to be addressed in the same manner as kinship bonds between Indians and the state of Canada. Revenue and resources from the land were meant to enable us to participate in changing economic environments.[77] For example, oxen and ploughs indicate interest in participating in the agricultural economy supported by the state. Another area of development is education in relation to skill development to increase participation in the economy. Indians are responsible for introducing treaty provisions to account for “schools and agricultural aid” in addition to state offered reserves and annuities.[78] The development of the welfare state requires connection to treaty making because “detailed promises” outlining agriculture support amounted to a “general commitment to provide whatever assistance was necessary” from the state to help, if we wanted.[79] Elders involved with treaty making are clear when they say our people made agreements for the state to assume greater responsibility for “health, education, and welfare.”[80] A final element of treaty making central to the study of Canada is the concept of tâpwêwin which is the Cree word for speaking truth with precision.[81] To speak the truth is to recognize that Canadian history is nothing more than a short blip in time compared to our connection to the land since time immemorial.

            In this essay I emphasize the contributions of racialized Native people. Settler academics take up limited space here. However, in this portion of my literature review I chose to connect my narrative to ideas and theories I was taught about Canada during my doctoral studies. These non-Indigenous academics are safe allies who do research in a good way by naming difficult truths. For example, Jean-Pierre Morin outlines his responsibility to “challenge and change my own narrow perspective on the history of treaties, and consequently to influence the perspectives of my colleagues” which alleviates the burden on racialized Indigenous people in the academy.[82]

Treaty making serves as a hopeful moment in time that was quickly extinguished by The Indian Act, 1876 with major amendments throughout the 1900s and as recently as 2014. For better or worse, Indian Act amendments are important because oppressive policies are how our people are forced to tell time: which amendment took away or gave status to your family? How was your family surveilled by the state? The Indian Act is the only piece of legislation on the planet that gives a state bureaucratic imperative to track and surveil humans based on blood quantum to quantify fiscal responsibility.[83] Status cards, the reserve system, Indian Agents, the Pass system, police, forced enfranchisement, veteran neglect, out marriage, residential schools, and assimilation policies aimed at our children established by The Indian Act continue to define economic and labour priorities of federal and provincial governments in Canada. Indians are central to the development of the welfare state through forced attendance in state-funded ‘schools’ which are more accurately described as work camps for children. Education-related treaty provisions developed in the early 1890s include attendance (truancy), and regulation although people on the ground did not necessarily understand how to enforce the Act.[84] For sixty years, enrollment increased until the child welfare system became the primary method of our assimilation in the post-World War II era and schools were forced to close due to popular resistance.[85] The Indian Act gave “considerable power to the Indian agents, who represented the Department of Indian Affairs” (DIA) as part of the reservation system.[86] The pass system was in effect by 1885 with or without legislation. The North West Mounted Police (NWMP) was created to physically subjugate my Indian and Métis ancestors “to encourage economic development” for settlers.[87] The precursor of the Royal North West Mounted Police (RNCMP) played a crucial role “in implementing the Canadian colonial project.”[88] The Dominion Police and RNWMP amalgamated in 1920 to create the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which is a direct link between modern urban Indigenous people on the prairies and the NWMP. The NWMP and “its successors” established paid state labour and the military as primary methods of enforcing “legislation both on and off the reserves.”[89] By 1900, state surveillance of my people was well established in legislation, financial expenditures, and labour. To this day, I am personally affected when I read these histories spelled out in dates, acronyms, and financial charts. As a Scoop survivor, my experience tells me “Liberalism is selective about upon whom it bestows its benefits” to imbalance and homogenize power dynamics in Canada.[90] Professor Keith D. Smith wrote about European-based imperialism and colonial expansion in western Canada with two case studies based in Alberta and British Columbia. He described colonialism as “a dialectic encounter in which all involved were altered by the experience.”[91] I do not always understand the citations or translated English of the sources Smith uses but I appreciate how he connects liberalism to colonialism. Paid state agents developed “intelligence-gathering modes” to justify constant monitoring and discriminatory treatment against my people in day-to-day life.[92] Canadian history is more accurate and dynamic when we understand history of the land as “a set of relations that were constantly being challenged and realigned” since the first moment of contact.[93]

            From my Canadian history comprehensive exams, I cite Professors Doug Owram, Timothy Wineguard, Linda Gordon, David Quiring, J.L. Granatstein, Jennifer Stephen, Reg Whitaker and Gary Marcuse. Comprehensive exams centered around non-Indigenous people is how I came to know. To this day, I do not understand why my former supervisor took me on as a graduate student. I was forced to explain my experience as a critique of the state by the time I wrote my comprehensive exams in 2020. Since then, I understand my position as a racialized non-status person in this field is a threat. Ideas that influenced my teachers are what led me to this point: this section of my work is what York wants me to regurgitate. The Government Generation by Doctor Doug Owram is representative of the narrative I was taught in school about Canada. My people are the targets of “moral reformism, the social gospel, social uplift” and other imported labels like middle class expectations, industrialization, and urbanization.[94] After two strikes and a leave of absence followed by the suspension of enrollment to eighteen programs at York University including Indigenous Studies. I understand Owram’s monograph differently than when I wrote my comprehensive exams. Owram wrote about reform movements before the First World War in a way that seems ominous now.[95] Criticism of academics materializes in university program restructure because social scientists are accused of failing to meet the needs of students or society “with programs that often seemed distant from the commercial orientation of modern industrial life.”[96] Professional associations are an extension of colonialism. Professionalization created structures which uphold mainstream ideals as outlined in The Government Generation. This book highlights the contradictions I feel trying to fit into this field. I understand the culture I am displaced into because of this book. I was taught to quantify Canadian history in economic terms. While the residential school and pass system oppressed our people, settlers experienced “the effect of the Canadian boom” in the period between 1898-1912. Ever since, Canadians import “European reform movements for appropriate responses borrowed or altered” from other counties.[97] These ideas are central to Canada’s unique brand of colonization. Settlers experiencing poverty were surveilled using techniques developed through professionalization. Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare is another apt title by American historian Linda Gordon. Gordon was my first introduction to the welfare state which is often taught in a comparative context. Pitied But Not Entitled is how I remember that the concept of welfare changed over time from positive and hopeful to shame and surveillance.[98] There is a connection between welfare and citizenship. Sometimes I have more in common with settlers experiencing poverty like single mothers than I do with those with intergenerational wealth like parents and secure housing. Settlers did not treat other settlers well on Native land even in the 1930s. Gordon wrote that “the elderly did not appear more deserving than did lone mothers,” a judgement that was “often decided by politics.”[99]

            Canadian historians agree war is a catalyst for national mythmaking. In studies of war, Indians are venerated as special cases and national heroes especially as snipers and scouts. However, racism affected every aspect of military life including more common menial job assignments such as general labourers and non-combat positions.[100] According to Doctor Timothy Wineguard “most status Indians were not recorded as such upon enlistment” because race was not recorded on attestation papers. For example, Wineguard mentions Grey Owl as an example of identity fraud supported by state narratives.[101] True participation is difficult to quantify using state records.[102] Canadian nationalism is projected onto Indians because our self-identification is not recorded. Wineguard acknowledges my ancestors have a long history of military participation and treaty responsibility related to “the Crown.” Our inclusion in the First World War was a continuation of official and unofficial policies.[103] The imperial project relies on manpower. The manpower requirements of WWI elevated “Indian participation” and is central to our fight for equal rights.[104] The most important contribution of this book is evidence that Duncan Campbell Scott “disregarded the actual motivations of Indian enlistment and allegiance” in favor of ongoing assimilation efforts.[105] These assimilation efforts forced “Indian veterans and their families off reserve in order to gain the benefits of post-war programs.”[106] Status Indian veterans were caught in bureaucratic nonsense at the federal level. As a result, entitlements according to The Soldier Settlement Act, 1917 (SSA) was held up by individual Indian Agents.[107]

A well-researched history of Indian Agents was written by Professor Robin Jarvis Brownlie in 2003. Two case studies of male Indian Agents in Ontario illuminate early bureaucratic labour required to administer vague and racist policies.[108] Brownlie describes provisions in The Indian Act developed in Ontario as “significant in economic” and political terms from property ownership and band funds to education, liquor and “justice.”[109] Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) documents are examples of work product created by paid state agents, just like child welfare case files. Instead of reading against the grain, I suggest we read state documents for they say about settler culture. Documents created by the state indicate how labour makes us complicit in colonialism. Dollars Are More Important Than Lives is a relevant analysis by Professor David M. Quiring. This monograph counters common Canadian mythmaking centered around the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Colonization through centralized bureaucratic administration was a CCF priority. Northern Saskatchewan was colonized by southern socialists who designed and controlled health and education policies.[110] “The CCF failed to meet practically all of its objectives” for the north other than assimilation.[111] I am othered by this author. This book is difficult to read because I do not appreciate the word Aborignals in the Canadian context which is a clear indicator of othering. According to Quiring, the CCF partially met its goal of assimilating Aboriginals, since Indians, and Metis adopted many Euro-Canadian ways. Yet twenty year of applying assimilative pressures helped create a people who could not function as whites or Aboriginals, and dependency on the state increased.[112] I would not present this idea in these words. Did dependency on the state increase or did surveillance? I do not agree with the language used in this book but I appreciate this history counters hero worship of the CCF in Canadian history.

As a youth my primary experience of military colonialism was through the Royal Canadian Air Cadet program in Wingham, Ontario. From the day I turned 12 to the day I turned 19 I was an active member of 543 Wingham Air Cadets. I learned Canadian colonial military history as a matter of fact for many years including the Avro Arrow and myths about Vimy Ridge. I spent many weekends at Branch 180 of the Royal Canadian Legion in my cadet uniform serving food and cleaning dishes to the most interesting people in town. After years of volunteer work, promotions, and summer camp I was chosen to represent Canada in the International Air Cade Exchange in Australia. The point of the exchange was to see military history from the Australian point of view. I visited military museums and tourist sites in the Gold Coast, Sydney and we flew in a C-130 Hercules cargo plane to Canberra. This is how I came to understand comparative studies of the past. My childhood experience in military summer camp and weekly training in nationalism, principles of flight, leadership, and sport are responsible for my interest in alternate histories. The cadet program is another way my childhood was institutionalized and colonized. Veterans are important to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Veterans are important to me. I recognize and understand the colonial implications of military service. However, cadet camp was a safer place for me than my guardian placement. I had more freedom at military camp than I did at home. Air Cadets came with yearly manuals that I could follow to achievement. My adoption placement was chaos and fear. I could rely on weekly headquarters training at the high school, F.E. Madill. As a child I felt safer institutionalized in school and cadets than I did in care. My first mentor was the Captain of my squadron and Chief of the Wingham Police, which no longer exist. My squadron CO was my guiding light for most of my teens and I know he means the same to my brother.  This was the first war veteran I had the privilege to learn from. Influence and reference letters from air cadets enabled me to win a paid trip to Australia thanks to the Department of National Defense (DND). I received a training bonus of $17 a day for two and a half weeks which I spent on the Sydney Harbour Bridge Walk on our free day in the city with my friends.

I came to understand my race and gender through the cadet system. As a youth, I used the male cadet standards for physical fitness because I was offended by the binary system. I leaned into the queer, tomboy labels I was given at home when I competed. Only one cadet per squadron was allowed to attend the six-week Athletic Instructor (AI) course. I knew my only competition was boys so it made sense to train on their standard. I earned my place in my flight when I got to the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) campus in Kingston which is converted to Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship Ontario (HMCS) for hundreds of sea cadets every summer. The second and third fastest girls in my flight always partnered with each other because they were roommates. As a result, I partnered with the fastest boy and we were annoying about our dominance in every sport together. I spent two summers at RMC. When I was in the program, air cadet Athletic Instructors trained at HMCS Ontario because the RMC faculties are incredible. Some of my fondest childhood memories are running back and forth from the mess hall to the field house. For six weeks we learned how to teach, coach, and referee basketball, soccer, badminton, volleyball, and we trained for a 10km race. We also got to play water polo and learned a 40-minute synchronized calisthenics routine with the whole set of eight flights (200 people). Much of what I know now comes from trying to find my own people. Cadet camp was the first time I automatically belonged to clubs based on my race that do not exist in Wingham, Ontario. My experience in the air cadet system is how I know veterans are important. Much of my work here is to undo the erasure of my people in the narratives cadets take for granted.

I understand World War II through studies of Canadian labour, gender, and the welfare state. Professors at York forced me to read and study European concepts of labour that do not apply to me unless I am surrounded by white settlers. Every connection I make between my experience and Canadian labour was forced on me. The way this paper is written reflects a system that does not include me which is why this essay lacks heart. We talked about this essay for seven years but I have no evidence any member of my committee read my writing in that time. Pick One Intelligent Girl is a historical study of programs and policies to recruit women to fill labour shortages during WWII. This monograph describes labour, capitalism, gender, and the welfare state using correspondence, and reports. Female Canadian war workers were documented, sorted, and surveilled during WWII like my ancestors. Non-Indigenous women who wanted to work entered pre-employment vocational training “deemed suitable” based on gender as a binary concept.[113] This history counters the narrative that war was a transformative time when in fact racist and gendered policies continued regardless of war status. I understand these processes through Professor Stephen who told me to use education as armor. Education as armor is why I forced myself to learn the history of family allowance, entitlement, and citizenship according to the Canadian welfare state. As a non-status Metis person in 2025, I am an example of successful assimilation policies which integrated my people into provincial welfare systems. This connection is repeated throughout my dissertation. Doctor Stephen cited welfare state historian James Struthers which is how I came to know family allowance built “new social rights of citizenship into the heart of the Canadian welfare state.”[114] My copy of this essay is in a compilation edited by historians J.L. Granatstein and Peter Neary. The Veteran’s Charter and Post-World War II Canada is where my understanding of mainstream Canadian history comes from. According to historian Peter Neary, the “return of the Canadian armed forces from overseas was a messy operation” since 1918. I relate to the fact that veterans are “unpredictable and sometimes alarming element in Canadian society.”[115] The same has been said about Indians. Veterans are central to the development of the welfare state. Pensions, benefits, allowances, and land grants increased the size of bureaucracy and influences ideas about who and who is not worthy of assistance.[116] The Veterans Charter was “planned primarily with men in mind” excluding Natives and women; however, “the gains made by women under the Veterans Charter should not be underestimated.”[117] Veteran spending “had distinct advantages over many other forms of expenditure” because there was no political opposition at the time.[118] Getting It Right the Second Time Around discusses benefit programs for World War II veterans. Doctor Jeff Keshen, the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Regina described examples of how veteran compensation could be denied for programs like the Soldier Settlement scheme.[119] All veterans experienced “disenchantment” in the 1920s as a result the Veterans Charter was planned throughout the second World War. Even more bureaucracy was added and non-Indigenous academics continued to influence policies like point systems and preferential treatment based on the labour market.[120] Canadian historians agree that the status quo was most desirable following both world wars.[121]

I do not see myself reflected in war history. I was forced to study war and military history. I stood honour guard in my cadet uniform outside on war memorials every November 11th during Remembrance Day celebrations. I only did that because we were fed really well by the veterans afterward and we got to miss a day of school. However, I learned blind deference to veterans at a very young age. However, my brother and I were also treated like domestic labourers in our adoption placements which aligns with Professor Mary Jane Logan McCallum’s history of Indigenous Women, Work, and History which relates her experience as a Girl Guide on page two. War accelerated bureaucracy and surveillance on my people as generations of our youth battled residential schools. The ideals forced on settler Canadians experiencing poverty were already applied to several generations of captive Indian children. McCallum is clear that labour is colonial apparatus meant extinguish our “title and status.”[122] In her own words, her history is of “public women, or women in the public” who suffered the worst regulation, surveillance, and Canadian racism. My people are written out histories of the state “to disassociate Canadian history from its colonial past.”[123] Settler Canadian labour histories do not include my people.[124]As a result, McCallum uses case studies to describe Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) and National Health and Welfare (DMHW) structures of state power. The stories begin in federal Indian schools then demonstrates the function Indian Affairs played not only training, and “recruitment, contracting, disciplining, and regulation of Native labour.”[125] Principals, Indian Agents, and teachers shape access to post-secondary education. As an Indigenous academic I appreciate the conclusion chapter The Wages of Whiteness and the Indigenous Historian. My experience in graduate studies supports McCallum’s position that our people confront suspicion concerning our ability to “know and fairly teach history” as Indians.[126] However, Indigenous women are equipped with knowledge through experience long before we come to vocational training or labour contexts. I understand my experience under surveillance by the state as a Scoop survivor. This kind of surveillance expanded in the post-World War II era in response to the Cold War. Political scientist Reg Whitaker and freelance writer Gary Marcuse wrote a comprehensive study of the impact of the Cold War on Canadian society. In particular, chapter four discusses how civil service, police, and legislation expanded surveillance by the state.[127] The case studies of repression illuminate centralization of state power. The evidence includes government documents, reports, and memoirs. Chapter seventeen discusses the Korean War in Second Thoughts About American Leadership.[128] Canadian complicit participation in this conflict is described as bullying by The United States of America (US) to prolong the war. Canada cannot be trusted to be a “mediatory middle-power role” due to the inability to constrain Americans.[129] Indigenous people have always known this.

I see myself reflected in the history of social work. Professor Allyson D. Stevenson is also a Métis adoptee. She wrote the comprehensive history of the Sixties Scoop. I understand my gender and race experience through this book. Amendments to the Indian Act in 1951 further colonized Indigenous kinship.[130] Professor Stevenson cites Philip Hepworth and Patrick Johnson because “privacy legislation in Saskatchewan prevents researchers from undertaking qualitative or quantitative research on adoption files.”[131] Naming social work as settler colonialism is essential because “adoption seldom provided a winning solution to the twin problems of illegitimacy and unmarried motherhood.”[132] This analysis captures a broad understanding for the reasons for apprehensions connected to gender and race. For example, the enfranchisement section of the Indian Act was expanded so “Indian women who married out” and their children had status removed because the male line was deemed more important.[133] Enfranchisement meant mothers and children were no longer entitled to live on reserve, property forfeit, Indian status revoked. “Colonizing kinship itself was recognized as fundamental to remaking Indigenous peoples” and defines Canada.[134] Prolific historian, Margaret D. Jacobs cites the The White Paper in 1969 as an example of a unilateral appeal of the Indian Act and Indian Affairs bureaucracy.[135] Indigenous people are united against the White Paper but “the underlying sentiment” behind integration received broad support among Canadian settler citizens.[136] As a result, Indigenous women organized to “reveal that tension and conflict existed between Indigenous men and women” due to The Indian Act.[137] Indigenous women worked to abolish various forms of gender discrimination such as the Adopt Indian Metis (AIM) program which became Resources for Adoption of Children (REACH).[138] Both historians Professors Jacobs and Stevenson highlight the role gender and race changed over time in relation to child welfare in the post-World War II era. I am directly affected by these policies. This historiography discusses a long history of surveillance which involves “close monitoring, observation, record keeping, and categorization”[139] as a matter of bureaucratic labour. I am shaped by my experiences which is a valid method of analysis by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.[140] Criminalization of poverty affects all Canadians.[141]

            My story is not unique because I belong to a rich tradition of Scoop survivors writing their experiences in essays. The first book of essays I found is called Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education published in 2001. When I was learning to read, Lee Maracle wrote “racism is an essential byproduct of colonialism” in Black Robes. For as long as I’ve been alive, Scoop survivors acknowledge Native Children and the Child Welfare System in 1983 by Patrick Johnston.[142] We write out stories in all forms of prose including poetry.[143] Children of the Dragonfly feels like spirit advice as well as a citation to counter incorrect assumptions about our people. More spirit advice comes from Doctor Raven Sinclair and Colleen Cardinal in Ohpikiihaakan-Ohpihemh Raised Somewhere Else a 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home. This book was difficult to read for many reasons. The first reason is that I look up to Raven Sinclair and she is my boss. Raven is a witness to my Scoop journey in Saskatoon. She is a key member of my support system. The picture below is my foster mom, Raven Sinclair and her sister on the day I met my mother.

Raven Sinclair and Colleen Cardinal makes space for Scoop survivors to tell their stories. I am not unique because “tens of thousands” of people like us were apprehended by the state. I have the right to tell my stories in any format I want thanks to the many Scoop survivors who paved the way for me. I procrastinated for years to avoid reading these books because they are so close to home. I had to wait until I was in a safe position to read these stories. Typing these words is difficult because I have to relive this trauma to pass my exams. After I read Cardinal’s book I tried to run away from home. The urge to run is a common Scoop experience. I turned that feeling around and proposed to my partner. I realized I want security, and I need to ask. Another common feeling is the desire for a welcome home ceremony.[144] Raven Sinclair gave me a welcome home as you can see by the picture.  I am grateful to have such good examples in print and real life. Another prolific Scoop writer is Christine Miskonoodikwe Smith. Smith published in 2021 and 2022. These Are the Stories and Silence to Strength are well named. Seventeen Scoop survivors give me hope that writing is healing.[145] Both books are essential reading because voice is central so context is important. I learn something new each time. The most recent Scoop survivor publication is my favourite. Anne Mahon’s table of contents is simple and to the point listing the names of women who grew up in the child welfare system. Beautiful photos and prose full of spirit fill the pages. Each woman is given space to tell their story in a wholistic way.[146] All four books have beautiful and thoughtful cover art. These books are the true basis of my education armour. Indigenous research methods mean taking care of my body and spirit. While I do research work, I make sure all elements of my environment are taken care of. I sleep well, I try to eat on a regular schedule. I take breaks. I walk my dog. I go to the gym. In the winter I like to ski. I write as much of my experience down as possible. I filled many research notebooks in seven years. I could not do this work if I did not have a safe place to live. I am in a safe place now which is how this work came to be. To me, healing work looks like a peaceful sleep. I make sure that this dissertation work is the smallest part of my life. Indigenous research methods are a way of living rather than a checklist or a timeline. Body and spirit mean different things to different people.

            This historiography is the most colonial exercise of my doctoral studies aside from comprehensive exams. I am expected to write a paper that does not reflect my reality. Each of these books hurt me to read, hurt me write about, and will continue to hurt as I am questioned on methodology and timeline for the sake of a career. I stand on the shoulders of Indigenous and settler academics and non academics. I am not the first person to connect my personal experience to policy development in Canada. It is not a compliment to tell me this is the first time you read this information. It is not my calling to decolonize university or make colonial spaces safe for racialized people. I deserved to feel safe during my time at University of Waterloo, Laurier and York University but I was exposed, alone, and scared throughout my time here. I will not continue to put myself in unsafe situations for the sake of a salary. When I started my PhD studies, feedback was very encouraging. I was told this work needs to be done, there is an audience for these ideas, and it is worth my time to devote a decade of my life to these methods. As I near the end of my dissertation, feedback changed from supportive to dismissive bordering on rude. As I get closer to the end of this colonial exercise, folks tell me not to worry because done is better than perfect. Even worse, my peers, colleagues, and mentors tell me no one is going to read my work: they are not proud of their graduate writing, what makes me so special? I did not ask for a calling or a spirit name. I did not ask for gifts. I did not come here to read books that erase my people or engage in conversations where my existence is denied to my face but this is my experience. This essay is one step in my ongoing effort to pull myself out of poverty, both in terms of money and spirit. The deeper I research, the more kin I find which increases my understanding of spirit. When my spirit is strong, physical safety will follow. In this essay I located my self at the center of research. I cited racialized Indigenous people who discuss policy and experience. I also cited settlers who do research in a good way that does not include devil’s advocate or reading against the grain. I do not recommend Scoop survivors use education to heal because mainstream classrooms traumatize us in new and creative ways. I look forward to letting go of long held colonial attitudes that I am not yet aware of. I regret that I spent so much time on these words instead of spending time on the land with my family.

[1] Gregory Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, ed. Warren Cariou, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: Brush Education Inc., 2025), 21.

[2] Younging, 147.

[3] Emma LaRocque, When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990 (Winnipeg: University of Winnipeg Press, 2010), 64.

[4] Maria Campbell, Halfbreed, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2019), 127.

[5] Maria Campbell, Halfbreed, 1st edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), 71.

[6] Campbell, Halfbreed, 2019, 107.

[7] Campbell, 148.

[8] Campbell, 145.

[9] LaRocque, When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990, 121.

[10] LaRocque, 7.

[11] Campbell, Halfbreed, 1973, 27.

[12] LaRocque, When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990, 13.

[13] LaRocque, 161.

[14] LaRocque, 161.

[15] Keith D. Smith, Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927 (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2009), 21.

[16] LaRocque, When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990, 168.

[17] Sheila Cote-Meek, Colonized Classrooms: Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2014), 10.

[18] Cote-Meek, 10.

[19] Cote-Meek, 13.

[20] Cote-Meek, 49.

[21] Cote-Meek, 16.

[22] Cote-Meek, 121.

[23] Cecilia Elizabeth Best, “How to Find Parents and Lose Friends: An Urban Indigenous Story About Bullies,” Cecilia Elizabeth Best (blog), November 2024, https://www.celizabethbest.com/bloglibrary/2024-update.

[24] “Obituary,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, August 18, 2000, sec. Obituary, https://www.newspapers.com/article/star-phoenix-obituary-for-cook-horace-1/44231091/?locale=en-CA.

[25] “Obituary,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, October 22, 2013, https://thestarphoenix.remembering.ca/obituary/mildred-cook-1065307622.

[26] Chantal Fiola, Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015), 7.

[27] Allyson Stevenson, Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship (Toronto, 2021), 236.

[28] Fiola, Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality, 31.

[29] Fiola, 32.

[30] Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indignity, Education & Society 1 (2012): 4.

[31] Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson, and Wilton Littlechild, Final Report of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission of Canada: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future (Winnipeg: James Lorimer & Company Ltd, 2015), 137.

[32] Arthur Manuel, Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015), 22.

[33] Fiola, Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality, 81.

[34] Susan Hill, Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017), 3.

[35] Hill, 240.

[36] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Twelfth Impression (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008), 4.

[37] Tuhiwai Smith, 111.

[38] Shawn Wilson, Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 61.

[39] Wilson, 32.

[40] Wilson, 84.

[41] Wilson, 98.

[42] Margaret Elizabeth Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 38.

[43] Kovach, 5.

[44] Kovach, 76.

[45] Kovach, 79.

[46] Kovach, 110.

[47] Kovach, 65.

[48] Kathleen D. Absolon, Kaandossiwin: How We Come to Know: Indigenous Re-Search Methodologies (Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2022), 77.

[49] Absolon, 83.

[50] Absolon, 88.

[51] Franca Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006), 17.

[52] Iacovetta, 31.

[53] Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, 14.

[54] “The Chicago Manuel of Style,” The Chicago Manuel of Style, accessed March 27, 2025, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.

[55] Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, 18.

[56] Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society (Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig Ltd., 1969), 7.

[57] Cardinal, 19.

[58] Cardinal, 13.

[59] Cardinal, 13.

[60] Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1989), 6.

[61] Adams, 10.

[62] Adams, 42.

[63] Adams, 216.

[64] Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, 199.

[65] Lee Maracle, Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, 2nd ed. (Vancouver: Women’s Press, 1990), 63.

[66] Maracle, 151.

[67] Maracle, 162.

[68] Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter MIller, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality With Two Lectures and an Interview with Michel Foucault (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991), 81.

[69] Burchell, Gordon, and MIller, 84.

[70] Maracle, Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, 185.

[71] Maracle, 185.

[72] Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, 20.

[73] Harold Cardinal and Walter Hildebrandt, Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our Dream Is That out Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000), 3.

[74] Cardinal and Hildebrandt, 43.

[75] Cardinal and Hildebrandt, 70.

[76] Cardinal and Hildebrandt, 66.

[77] Cardinal and Hildebrandt, 67.

[78] Richard T. Price, ed., The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties, Third (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 1999), 15.

[79] Price, 97.

[80] Price, 100.

[81] Cardinal and Hildebrandt, Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our Dream Is That out Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations, 48.

[82] Jean-Pierre Morin, Solemn Words and Foundational Documents: An Annotated Discussion of Indigenous-Crown Treaties in Canada, 1972-1923 (Toronto: University of Toronto  Press, 2018), 3.

[83] Sinclair, Wilson, and Littlechild, Final Report of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission of Canada: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 53.

[84] Sinclair, Wilson, and Littlechild, 62.

[85] Sinclair, Wilson, and Littlechild, 63.

[86] Elizabeth Comack, Racialized Policing: Aboriginal People’s Encounters with the Police (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2012), 71.

[87] Comack, 74.

[88] Comack, 77.

[89] Smith, Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927, 59.

[90] Smith, 12.

[91] Smith, 7.

[92] Smith, 16.

[93] Smith, 22.

[94] Doug Owram, The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), xiii.

[95] Owram, 62.

[96] Owram, 63.

[97] Owram, 79.

[98] Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 1.

[99] Gordon, 289.

[100] Timothy Wineguard, For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 10.

[101] Wineguard, 104.

[102] Wineguard, 6.

[103] Wineguard, 168.

[104] Wineguard, 11.

[105] Wineguard, 109.

[106] Wineguard, 154.

[107] Wineguard, 151.

[108] Robin Jarvis Brownlie, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939 (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2003), xi.

[109] Brownlie, 34.

[110] David M. Quiring, CCF Colonialism in Northern Saskatchewan: Battling Parish Priests, Bootleggers, and Fur Sharks (Toronto: UBC Press, 2004), 219.

[111] Quiring, 252.

[112] Quiring, 254.

[113] Jennifer Stephen A., Pick One Intelligent GIrl: Employability, Domesticity, and the Gendering of Canada’s Welfare State, 1939-1947 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 8.

[114] James Struthers, “Family Allowances, Old Age Security, and the Construction of Entitlement in the Canadian Welfare State, 1943-1951,” in The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada, ed. Peter Neary and J.L. Granatstein (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 180.

[115] Peter Neary, “Introduction,” in The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada, ed. Peter Neary and J.L. Granatstein (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 4.

[116] Neary, 9.

[117] Neary, 10.

[118] Neary, 11.

[119] Jeff Keshen, “Getting It Right the Second Time Around: The Reintegration of Canadian Veterans of World War II,” in The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada, ed. Peter Neary and J.L. Granatstein (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 63.

[120] Keshen, 71.

[121] Keshen, 78.

[122] Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Indigenous Women, Work, and History 1940-1980 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014), 7.

[123] Logan McCallum, 10.

[124] Logan McCallum, 39.

[125] Logan McCallum, 13.

[126] Logan McCallum, 238.

[127] Reg Whitaker and Gary Marcuse, Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945-1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 161.

[128] Whitaker and Marcuse, 387.

[129] Whitaker and Marcuse, 391.

[130] Stevenson, Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship, 42.

[131] Stevenson, 43.

[132] Stevenson, 44.

[133] Stevenson, 116.

[134] Stevenson, 39.

[135] Margaret Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 175, http://site.ebrary.com.libproxy.wlu.ca/lib/oculwlu/reader.action?docID=10891871.

[136] Jacobs, 176.

[137] Jacobs, 186.

[138] Jacobs, 191.

[139] Krys Maki, Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2021), 10.

[140] Maki, 16.

[141] Maki, 36.

[142] Robert Benson, ed., Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, n.d.), 11.

[143] Mary Tallmountain, “Five Poems,” in Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education, ed. Robert Benson (Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, n.d.), 126.

[144] Colleen Cardinal, Ohpikiihaakan-Ohpihmeh Raised Somewhere Else: A 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2018), 191.

[145] Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith, Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the Sixties Scoop. (Nova Scotia: Kegedonce Press, 2022), 1.

[146] Anne Mahon, Overcome: Stories of Women Who Grew Up in the Child Welfare System (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2022), 50.

Bibliography

Absolon, Kathleen D. Kaandossiwin: How We Come to Know: Indigenous Re-Search Methodologies. Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2022.

Adams, Howard. Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View. Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1989.

Benson, Robert, ed. Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education. Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, n.d.

Best, Cecilia Elizabeth. “How to Find Parents and Lose Friends: An Urban Indigenous Story About Bullies.” Cecilia Elizabeth Best (blog), November 2024. https://www.celizabethbest.com/bloglibrary/2024-update.

Brownlie, Robin Jarvis. A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter MIller. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality With Two Lectures and an Interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991.

Campbell, Maria. Halfbreed. 1st edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.

Campbell, Maria. Halfbreed. 2nd ed. Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2019.

Cardinal, Colleen. Ohpikiihaakan-Ohpihmeh Raised Somewhere Else: A 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2018.

Cardinal, Harold. The Unjust Society. Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig Ltd., 1969.

Cardinal, Harold, and Walter Hildebrandt. Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our Dream Is That out Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000.

Comack, Elizabeth. Racialized Policing: Aboriginal People’s Encounters with the Police. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2012.

Cote-Meek, Sheila. Colonized Classrooms: Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2014.

Fiola, Chantal. Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015.

Gordon, Linda. Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Hill, Susan. Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017.

Iacovetta, Franca. Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006.

Jacobs, Margaret. A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. http://site.ebrary.com.libproxy.wlu.ca/lib/oculwlu/reader.action?docID=10891871.

Keshen, Jeff. “Getting It Right the Second Time Around: The Reintegration of Canadian Veterans of World War II.” In The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada, edited by Peter Neary and J.L. Granatstein. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998.

Kovach, Margaret Elizabeth. Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

LaRocque, Emma. When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990. Winnipeg: University of Winnipeg Press, 2010.

Logan McCallum, Mary Jane. Indigenous Women, Work, and History 1940-1980. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014.

Mahon, Anne. Overcome: Stories of Women Who Grew Up in the Child Welfare System. Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2022.

Maki, Krys. Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance. Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2021.

Manuel, Arthur. Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015.

Maracle, Lee. Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel. 2nd ed. Vancouver: Women’s Press, 1990.

Morin, Jean-Pierre. Solemn Words and Foundational Documents: An Annotated Discussion of Indigenous-Crown Treaties in Canada, 1972-1923. Toronto: University of Toronto  Press, 2018.

Neary, Peter. “Introduction.” In The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada, edited by Peter Neary and J.L. Granatstein, 3–14. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998.

Owram, Doug. The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State 1900-1945. Toronto: University of Toronto  Press, 1986.

Price, Richard T., ed. The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties. Third. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 1999.

Quiring, David M. CCF Colonialism in Northern Saskatchewan: Battling Parish Priests, Bootleggers, and Fur Sharks. Toronto: UBC Press, 2004.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix. “Obituary.” August 18, 2000, sec. Obituary. https://www.newspapers.com/article/star-phoenix-obituary-for-cook-horace-1/44231091/?locale=en-CA.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix. “Obituary.” October 22, 2013. https://thestarphoenix.remembering.ca/obituary/mildred-cook-1065307622.

Sinclair, Murray, Marie Wilson, and Wilton Littlechild. Final Report of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission of Canada: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. Winnipeg: James Lorimer & Company Ltd, 2015.

Smith, Christine Miskonoodinkwe. Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the Sixties Scoop. Nova Scotia: Kegedonce Press, 2022.

Smith, Keith D. Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2009.

Stephen, Jennifer, A. Pick One Intelligent GIrl: Employability, Domesticity, and the Gendering of Canada’s Welfare State, 1939-1947. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Stevenson, Allyson. Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship. Toronto, 2021.

Struthers, James. “Family Allowances, Old Age Security, and the Construction of Entitlement in the Canadian Welfare State, 1943-1951.” In The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada, edited by Peter Neary and J.L. Granatstein. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998.

Tallmountain, Mary. “Five Poems.” In Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education, edited by Robert Benson. Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, n.d.

The Chicago Manuel of Style. “The Chicago Manuel of Style.” Accessed March 27, 2025. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.

Tuck, Eve, and Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indignity, Education & Society 1 (2012): 1–40.

Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Twelfth Impression. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008.

Whitaker, Reg, and Gary Marcuse. Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945-1957. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.

Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008.

Wineguard, Timothy. For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Younging, Gregory. Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples. Edited by Warren Cariou. 2nd ed. Ottawa: Brush Education Inc., 2025.