An Indigenous person who was raised in the foster care system is telling their story in the hopes of raising awareness of what is still happening to Indigenous children.
They say it’s a cycle of trauma they don’t want happening to others.
“It just went from one kind of abuse and trauma to another,” says Jay Hummingbird, a First Nations Mohawk who was raised in the foster system.
A Grade 9 photo is one of the two-spirit Mohawk’s only childhood mementos from being raised in the foster care system — a system, they say, failed them.
“You take me from my mom, and put me with my aunt, who is worse,” says Hummingbird.
“At what point did they think that was okay?”
Hummingbird was taken from their Indigenous birth mother, herself a victim of intergenerational trauma, and went through seven different foster homes by the age of three, before being taken in by an English aunt for the next decade.
“They were really ashamed of the fact that I’m Mohawk,” they say.
“So, they really tried hard to, like, have us tell other people we were Chinese, or from anywhere basically other than being Mohawk or Indigenous.”
Hummingbird recounts verbal and physical abuse at the hands of the aunt — who regularly showed discontent for their Mohawk roots.
Aspects of Hummingbird’s upbringing left them with PTSD and addiction struggles.
“I think they need to start learning that they need to leave children with their parents, regardless of what’s going on, and get them the help that they need,” they say.
“So that they can break the cycle.”
Experts like Melissa Hamonic with Native Child and Family Services of Toronto (NCFST) agree.
“What we do know, is that children and families do best when they’re together,” says Hamonic.
“Resources should be focused on keeping families together.”
Through work with NCFST, Hummingbird is now sober and learning about Mohawk heritage.
“We’re learning little bits at a time,” they say.
“We’re learning about our food, and we’re learning our stories.”
Hummingbird’s next journey will be across Canada.
The adventurer is training and raising funds to climb to the highest point of every province in the country, to plant an ‘Every Child Matters’ flag.
Jay’s message is this: you can accomplish anything, no matter what life throws your way.
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