A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World

Part 3

part three The Indian Child Welfare Crisis in a Global Context 165 tracking down the doucette family I traveled to Saskatoon and Winnipeg to spend several weeks in the Saskatchewan Archives Board and the Archives of Manitoba in the fall of 2012. On my last day in Saskatoon I found an intriguing newspaper article that referred to a case in which authorities removed three Métis children from the Doucette family in Prince Albert. I longed to know more, so in my last few hours in the archives, I combed through the archival finding guide for provincial social service agencies and ministers of the mid-1970s. There I identified numerous files related to the Doucette case. But these files were restricted. I had to obtain permission from the originator of the files, a retired social services minister named Herman Rolfes, who still lives in Saskatoon. I wrote to him shortly after I returned home, but I didn’t expect to hear back from him. I thought I would try anyway. A good detective follows every lead. Soon Mr. Rolfes emailed me, however, and told me that I could view the records. But privacy laws in Canada require that an archivist carefully go through each file to make sure no confidential information is included, so I still could not access them. I applied for permission to the archives, imagining that I probably would not be able to view the records after all. I was pleasantly surprised when an email showed up in my inbox in early 2013 to tell me that the Saskatchewan Archives Board had approved a batch of records for me to view. I eagerly paid for the copies, and a few weeks later a thick package arrived. I only had time to skim the documents before leaving the next day for a research trip to New Zealand and Australia for a month. But I was excited, and appalled, by what I saw. When I returned from the southern hemisphere and read the documents more thoroughly, I was overwhelmed by the Doucettes’ story. The files ended abruptly in 1977, and I wondered what happened to the Doucette family 166 after the bureaucracy filed their case away. I contacted Indigenous friends in Saskatchewan, asking them if they knew any members of the Doucette family. Allyson Stevenson, at the time a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan, told me she had interviewed Robert Doucette, one of the family’s older foster children, and now the president of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan. She gave me his contact information. I called him at his office, but he was sick that day. He didn’t return my phone call. I emailed him with a request to interview him, but he didn’t reply. I didn’t know if I should persist. Perhaps he was just busy and I should keep trying. On the other hand, many Indigenous people don’t want a non-Indigenous scholar snooping around into their past or writing about them. Why should they trust me with their stories? So many anthropologists and historians have misrepresented them. Too often scholars have compounded rather than exposed the injustices suffered by Indigenous people. Still, I longed to know what happened to the Doucettes. I returned to Saskatoon in June 2013 for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference. I decided I would make one last effort to meet Robert Doucette. His secretary set up an interview for me. On the second morning of the conference I was to meet him at 9:00 at the restaurant in the Parkside Hotel, not far from where I was staying. It was a rainy morning, but between downpours I walked to the hotel and sat in the lobby. It reached 9:15 and he still hadn’t shown up. Having gotten this close, I decided to email his secretary. She eventually tracked him down, and he showed up at about 10:00. He apologized for keeping me waiting, but I truly didn’t mind. I was grateful to have the opportunity to meet him finally. Given what I knew about his family and the situation of Indigenous people in Canada, I thought Robert Doucette would be bitter and angry. Instead he was warm and affable. He greeted me and the waitresses in the restaurant as “sister.” Over many cups of coffee and tea...