IndigenousFinding Cleo

CBC podcast solves decades-old mystery of Saskatchewan girl lost in Sixties Scoop

A patchwork of information suggested Cleo Semaganis Nicotine had been killed decades ago while trying to make her way back to Saskatchewan from her adoptive family in the U.S., but no one knew for sure what happened until CBC News began looking into the case.

Siblings separated in Sixties Scoop had been searching for sister for decades when they turned to CBC for help

Connie Walker, Heather Evans, Marnie Luke, Jennifer Fowler CBC News Posted: Mar 07, 2018 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: October 21, 2018

An undated photo of Cleopatra Semaganis Nicotine, known as Cleo, who was adopted out of Saskatchewan in 1974 during the so-called Sixties Scoop. Her five siblings, who were also adopted out in that time, lost track of her in the decades since and were told she had been killed while trying to hitchhike back to the province. (Submitted by Semaganis family)

CBCNews is launching Season 2 of the podcastMissing and Murderedwith host Connie Walker. Listen tothe first three episodes of Finding Cleo below and read about a family'ssearch for CleoSemaganisNicotine, who was adopted out of her Saskatchewan First Nationscommunityand sent to live in the U.S. 44 years ago during what became know as the Sixties Scoop.

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Look for new episodes every Wednesday

Christine Cameron and her siblings had been searching for their sister Cleo for decades.

The last time any of them saw her was in 1974 in rural Saskatchewanwhen Cleo was allowed to say goodbye to one of her brothers before she was taken to her new adoptive family.

Cleo's spirit is very much alive. She stares at me across time, asking to come home.- Christine Cameron

She was nineyears old, and she was one of thousands of Indigenous children caught up in what is now known as the Sixties Scoop.

Cameron's brothers and sisters had heard from other relatives that Cleo had been sent to a foster family in Arkansas and had been killed while trying to hitchhike back toLittle Pine First Nation, where she was originally from.

But no one hadbeen able to say for sure whether that was true.If she was dead, Cleo's family said,theywantedto know whether her death was ever investigatedand where she was buried so they could bring her body back home to Saskatchewan.

CBCNews set out to help the family find out what happened to Cleo andin the course of creating the podcastMissing & Murdered: Finding Cleo uncovered the tragic truth about her fate.

LISTEN to the first three episodes ofMissing & Murdered: Finding Cleo
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"I dream of her and try something new to find her grave," Cameron said at the start of the process. "It may even be unmarked. It's such a mystery, such an impossible task to find her and bring her home but still, I have hope."

Cameron had made a plea for helplocating her oldest sister in an articleshe shared with CBC News.

"Cleo's spirit is very much alive. She stares at me across time, asking to come home," she wrote in the piece.

The family's search for Cleo has been marked byfrustration and heartbreak.

"In a silver frame, in an oval on my piano, is a picture of my sister, very small, maybe an inch and a half tall, and that is all that remains. CleoSemaganisNicotine, my oldest sister."

LISTEN to Episode 1 below: The search for Cleo begins:

Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo33:48S2 Episode 1: Stolen. Murdered. Missing.

Connie responds to Christines plea for help finding her eldest sister, Cleo. The only proof of Cleos existence though is a tiny, undated school photo. A clue soon emerges which will take Christines search in unexpected directions.For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/missing-murdered-season-2-finding-cleo-transcripts-listen-1.6733352

The Sixties Scoop

Cameron is the youngest of six children. The other siblings are Johnny, Mark, April, Annette and Cleo, also known as Cleopatra. Their last name at birth wasSemaganis.

Cameron and her siblings belong to a Cree family from Saskatchewan but were made wards of the province in North Battleford, Sask., in 1972.They were all separated, except for two of the sisters, and adopted to families scattered across Canada and the United States.

LISTEN to Episode 2: Connie finds a clue in the adoption records of Cleo's sister April:

Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo40:43S2 Episode 2: Eyes that haunted me

Christine gets a tip that helps geographically narrow the search for Cleo, and Connie visits another sister, April, to see what she may remember. Scouring old photos and documents, they stumble on a key reference to Cleo in Aprils adoption records.For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/missing-murdered-season-2-finding-cleo-transcripts-listen-1.6733352

Between about 1960 and themid-1980s, federal and provincialchild welfare authorities in Canada removed thousands of Indigenous children from their biological families and communities and placed them in foster care or up for adoption, mostlyin non-Indigenous families.

Christine Cameron, shown with a portrait of how she imagines her sister Cleo would look today, reached out to CBC News for help finding her older sister. (Jennifer Fowler/CBC)

Some of the children were forcibly removed by police. Others were voluntarily given up.

Estimates suggest more than 20,000 children were separated from their families during the Sixties Scoop, though even the federal government says it doesn't know exactly how many.

The reasons behind the Sixties Scoop are complicated and controversial, ranging from a belief that Indigenous children would be better off safer, healthier, with better opportunities to a dismissal of the value of Indigenous culture, language and communities.

Many Indigenous adoptees suffered physical or sexual abuseas well as the loss of family and their sense of identity, leaving them with lasting psychological harmthat has led toproblems with substance abuseand violence and, in manycases, suicide.

Last October, the federal government reached an $800-million settlement with some Sixties Scoop adoptees following an Ontario Superior Court rulingin favour of survivors. That agreement in principle still has to be approved by the courts, and hearings on that are scheduled for thisspring.

Looking for clues

Johnny Semaganis, the eldest Semaganis child,was the last of the siblings to see Cleo. He made her a promise that he says has haunted him ever since.

"I told her I'd find her eventually," he said. "What would you tell a nine-year-old, you know? You lie to her."

For Semaganis, who often looked after his younger brothers and sisters when they lived in Saskatchewan, the search for Cleo hadbeenespecially heartbreaking.

"Because I've found everybody else, but this is the only one I haven't found," he said.

LISTEN to Episode 3: Cleo's brother Johnny talks about the last day he saw her alive:

Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo53:45S2 Episode 3: A little lie

Connie meets Cleos older brother, Johnny, in Pennsylvania, where he was adopted. Hes haunted by the memory of saying goodbye to Cleo and longs to fulfill a promise to find her. A late night internet search reveals he may be close.For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/missing-murdered-season-2-finding-cleo-transcripts-listen-1.6733352

Semaganis and Cameron made repeated requests to the Saskatchewan government for information about Cleo but didn't get very far. They were told they had to get information from the U.S. state in which she was adopted, but they didn't know where she ended up.

"I do not know her birth date.I do not know her full name," said Cameron, who was raised in Saskatchewan in a non-Indigenous family and now has four children of her own. "I do not know her adopted name."

'I told her I'd find her eventually,' says Johnny Semaganis of his parting words to his sister Cleo in 1974. (Marnie Luke/CBC)

The National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (NISCW), established in 2014, is one of the places people go for help findingfamily members or details about their own file.

Director and co-founder Elaine Kicknosway, who was adopted into a non-Indigenous family when she was four years old, said there is no standardizedprocess fornavigatingwhat is sometimes called "repatriation" biological relatives reuniting or discovering their home community.

Read the other features in the Finding Cleo series:

The main sources of information are often the agencies that apprehended the children in the first place, whose records can be incomplete or inaccurate.

"There's no proof of how many were taken, where they sent us, no proof of how far we were sent," she said.

Raven Sinclair was taken from her mother at age four, along with her siblings, during the Sixties Scoop. The University of Regina associate professor is trying to create a national database of adoptees. (University of Regina)

Kicknosway said it can be particularly challenging to get information on children who were made Crown wards and adopted outside Canada, as some of the Semaganischildren were. There are reports of Indigenous children from Canada living in the United Kingdom, other parts of Europe, New Zealand and Australia. The oldest adoptees would now be in their late 60s.

The Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs says it has no accurate data on thenumber of children apprehended; how many were moved out of Canada; andhow manyhave been reunited with their families.

National database for adoptees

As the proposed Sixties Scoop settlement awaitscourt approval, families are still dealing with the personal fallout.

Eleanore Sunchild, a Cree lawyer who specializes in Aboriginal law and has represented Sixties Scoop adoptees, says, "alot of times, they were so young they don't remember their family, they don't know what community they come from or even what tribe they belong to."

Cleo was originally from Little Pine First Nation in rural Saskatchewan, above. (Marnie Luke/CBC News)

Sunchild says that loss of Indigenous identity coupled with separation from family is often devastating.

"The whole loss of being raised in a different home and not exactly knowing why, why they were removed there's something wrong with them? Or was there something wrong with their family? And in a lot of instances it was just because of the policy that was in place at the time," she said.

Kicknosway says some people don't necessarily want to return to their communities.

She says they "only want to know they belong somewhere" and "have validation that they were alive" and that maybe someone missed them when they were taken away.

Author and Sixties Scoop survivor Raven Sinclair, an associate professor of social work at the University of Regina, has written extensively on the subject. She is in the midst of a five-year study with the aim of creating a national database of adoptees.

Her goal is to createa network that can provide practical, long-term supportsimilar to what is available to some of the people affected by the residential school system.

Cree lawyer Eleanore Sunchild, who represents survivors of the Sixties Scoop, says it's hard for adoptees to track down their biological families because many of them were so young when they were taken that they don't remember any details about their relatives or their community. (Connie Walker/CBC News)

"An adoptee you know here in town could call up a therapist who's been approved by us ... and get some help," she said. "For some, it's been a lifetime of abuse, so it's going to take a long time for them to recover."

NISCW has set up a toll-free number to help adoptees searching for family connections and to provide peer support.