Shaylene Lakey, a Blackfoot woman from Siksika Nation in Alberta, lost her mother at the age of five and spent her early years moving from place to place with her father and younger brother (Lakey, 2023). Food, clothing, shelter, and school were inconsistent for Shaylene during these years, leading to her placement in the foster care system. In foster care, her basic needs were met and she was able to regularly attend school. While she has loving memories of times with her dad, she recalls feeling a sense of relief when she was placed in foster care as it provided her with greater stability. However, these feelings of relief were accompanied by shame, as it meant no longer living with her father.
[Quarter at bottom left for scale]
[Playing with shadows]
Shaylene’s foster mother was Dutch and raised Shaylene for the remainder of her childhood in Vernon, B.C., removed from her culture, family, and home territory (Lakey, 2023). As such, Shaylene is considered part of the Millennium Scoop. The Millennium Scoop took place between 1992 and 2019 and is considered a continuation of the Sixties Scoop, with the same goals of cultural erasure and assimilation into white settler society through practices that disproportionately apprehend and place Indigenous children in non-Indigenous families (Beaucage, 2011; McKenzie et al., 2016; Pon et al., 2011).
Child Protective Services has historically been used as a tool by white colonizers to fulfill goals of a larger project of colonization and unsettling (Schmid & Morgenshtern, 2022). Rather than provide support for Indigenous families, the Canadian government has stolen land and resources from Indigenous communities, then claims good intent whilst displacing children from their homes due to poor living conditions or unstable environments, conditions that were strategically orchestrated by the government itself (McKenzie et al., 2016).
This theme of unsettling occurs within a larger historical context, one which takes us back to Canada in the 1800s, when the first treaties were formed between Indigenous communities and white colonizers (Schuurman, 2025, Week 5). While treaties were believed by Indigenous peoples to be based on trust, self-governance, and reciprocity, a way for them to share their land while retaining rights to those lands, treaty terms were repeatedly violated by white colonizers, with ongoing fights for land rights occuring well into the present.
An “ontology of forgetting” has occurred both within Canada as a whole and within the child welfare system (Pon et al., 2011, p. 388). This ontology has seeped into Western society, creating an unforgiveable silence when it comes to anti-Indigenous racism. White supremacy has historically been justified through a belief system of manifest destiny, which allowed white colonizers to perceive settlement, expansion, and the exploitation of resources for profit to be predestined by God (Schuurman, 2025, Week 2).
To further their goals of mass settlement and expansion, the Dominion Land Survey was created, which separated the land into 160 acre squares all across the West of Canada (Schuurman, 2025, Week 5). This method was a means of ensuring ownership and control by the Canadian government.
My art piece uses a wire grid hovering above Alberta and parts of British Columbia to portray the theft and division of land through the Dominion Land Survey. A girl, Shaylene, is perched on a steel pipe, separated from the land by the grid.
I chose wire and silver paint for the tubes in the frame to represent the industrialization and stark practicalities that characterized colonization. This is in contrast to the natural world below, where the land is a lush green and the rivers and ocean sparkle. The wire is ugly, harsh, confrontational, and cage-like.
Shaylene’s foster mother made harmful comments about Shaylene’s culture as she was growing up (Lakey, 2023). While Shaylene’s basic needs were met and she felt a sense of appreciation for the Church community, Shaylene lacked true belonging. Without cultural connections and with a foster parent who dissuaded her from forming these connections, she began to feel resentment, grief, and loss.
I explore the concept of liminal space in my art piece by placing Shaylene far above the land rather than in one specific geographical place on the map. The space above the grid is liminal because it is a transitional state where she is pushed due to lack of stability with her biological dad and cultural shame imposed by her foster mother, both of which are symptoms of a larger system of racism and colonization (Lakey, 2023). Above the grid she is essentially in empty space, but this space is also a place in one’s mind that someone can be driven due to shame, fear, or confusion about where they belong.
Two strings are connected to Shaylene’s heart: one is red and the other is turquoise.
The turquoise string represents physical needs and stability, which she found with her foster mother in Vernon. This string leads from Shaylene to Vernon on the map. [Above].
Shaylene felt a sense of loss and grief for not having been raised in Siksika Nation, Alberta (Lakey, 2023). The red string represents her blood, her family, her home territory. This string leads to Siksika Nation, 95 km east of Calgary on the map. [Above]. Shaylene is in neither place physically, but has ties to both.
The two strings take convoluted routes to reach their destinations, blocked by the grid, symbolizing confusion and the ways in which racism can keep people locked out from experiencing belonging.
Eventually she cut ties with her foster mother and had a child of her own (Lakey, 2023). Her daughter created a shift in her from shame to acceptance, alongside a desire to know more about her Blackfoot culture. This shift demonstrates resilience and a determination to resist not only her foster mother’s racism, but the cumulative effects of years of systemic oppression that led to this point in time: her story, as one of thousands of apprehended children in a broken system that has failed to protect the very children it is meant to.
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References
Beaucage, J. (2011). Children First: The Aboriginal Advisor’s report on the status of Aboriginal child welfare in Ontario. Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services. https://ncnw.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Children-First-2011-John-Beaucage.pdf
Lakey, S. (2023, January 4). B.C. Woman shares journey to reclaim indigenous heritage after losing connection in foster care: Office of the representative for children and youth. RCYBC. https://rcybc.ca/stories/b-c-woman-shares-journey-to-reclaim-indigenous-heritage-after-losing-connection-in-foster-care/
McKenzie, H. A., Varcoe, C., Browne, A. J., & Day, L. (2016). Disrupting the continuities among residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and child welfare: An analysis of colonial and neocolonial discourses. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2016.7.2.4
Okanagan College Library. (2025, November 6). Indigenous studies: Sixties Scoop & Millennium Scoop. https://libguides.okanagan.bc.ca/IndigenousStudies/SixtiesScoop
Pon, G., Gosine, K., & Phillips, D. (2011). Immediate response: Addressing anti-Native and anti-Black racism in child welfare. International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies, 2(3), 385–409. https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs23/420117763
Schmid, J., & Morgenshtern, M. (2022). In history’s Shadow: Child welfare discourses regarding indigenous communities in the Canadian Social Work Journal. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 13(1), 145–168. https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs131202220662
Schuurman, N. (2025, September 10). Week 2: Key themes [Video]. Canvas.
Schuurman, N. (2025, October 1). Week 5: Colonization in the west [Video]. Canvas.
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