My baby's first kick reminds me of all the Indigenous babies stripped from their families

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

This First Person piece is by Carol Rose GoldenEagle, a Cree and Dene artist who lives in Regina Beach, Sask. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I remember the first time I felt my baby kick.

My sweet Jackson, whom I've always called my baby bear, will be 27 this year. I prayed for his safety and my pregnancy each day as he grew inside of me. I loved him even before he was born and made his entrance into this world.

Some may say that the world is cruel, but I don't believe it. There is a saying that our vibe attracts our tribe. In my life, that tribe has been filled with light, love and acceptance. I am not sure how it happened, but I send gratitude to the Creator for this, especially since my own beginnings did not foresee this wealth of all that is good.

It's also why I begin on this day, Sept. 30, by remembering all of those beautiful Indigenous children who never made it home from residential school or survived the Sixties Scoop or anything else related to child welfare and apprehension.

I also remember their mothers and the first time they too felt that first kick.

I was one of those Sixty Scoop babies. My mother, Maggie Morin from Sandy Bay, Sask., was a registered nurse and a capable person. But she was an unmarried Cree woman from Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, so the province deemed her unfit to be a mother and took me away from her on the very day I was born. From the stories I am told, she never recovered from my abduction.

I expect she, too, remembered my first kick. 

I never met her because as a Sixties Scoop kid, I was cast into the child welfare system.

The province didn't open the adoption records for Sixties Scoop children until I was in my 30s. That's when I requested my file and learned Maggie had died in a car crash when I would have been in my teens.

But I still feel her presence. That first kick had magic. We are connected and always will be. I can't even begin to describe the sorrow of never knowing her.

I could easily be one of those people who vilifies the system of child apprehensions and Canada's dark history when it comes to Indigenous peoples. But I believe there's no point in doing that; you cannot change the past.

I felt my Jackson's first kick and I raised a beautiful baby boy, along with his twin brother and sister, Daniel and Nahanni, who both came along two years later.