New initiative helps Indigenous people reconnect with community, culture

Two B.C. Indigenous leaders, who were themselves taken from their families and placed in foster care, are now looking to help others who were separated while fostering healing.

Warning: Some of the details in this story may be disturbing to some readers. Discretion is advised.

A new initiative designed to help Indigenous people who have been disconnected from their communities return home is being launched on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast.

It was co-created by Charlene SanJenko, who was adopted at an early age. Her non-Indigenous foster parents made the decision not to tell her she’s First Nations. SanJenko believes they made the best decision they knew to make at the time.

“It wasn’t until my 50’s that I started digging into my heritage,” SanJenko told Global News.

Her research began after a fundraiser in Gibsons, B.C. in 2015. At the event in the community’s public market, she was gifted a wooden paddle featuring Indigenous designs and says the moment she first held it, she had a visceral reaction that pushed her to explore the questions she carried with her, her whole life.

“I felt this amazing wave of emotion come over me. I think it was my ancestors calling out to me through that paddle. That was the night I sought out to prove what I think I intuitively knew, so I started the journey of paperwork and proving my status,” she said.

A three-year process that began with her adoption certificate which she says shows her mother’s name, age at the time (16) and the word “Indian” underneath.

“I remember reading that and I actually just remember relief being the feeling that came, like, ‘I know,'” SanJenko said.