Beyond My Control

In 1967, when Lee Hamelin was just four years old, he and several of his siblings were forcibly removed from their Aboriginal family’s home in northern Alberta, Canada, never to return again. With the authorities labelling his mother as “morally depraved and of no benefit to society,” Lee and his siblings became wards of the government. Little did they realize it at the time, but they had just become part of the Sixties Scoop, the mass removal of Aboriginal children from their families into Canada’s child welfare system from the mid 1950s to the 1980s. While the Sixties Scoop exposed thousands of Aboriginal children to the horrors of the residential school system, Lee and his brother avoided that fate. Instead, they were placed with loving foster parents who raised the two boys as if they were their own. Lee is immensely thankful for the situation where he and his brother ended up. However, growing up in a white home as a visible minority in his community, completely cut off from his Aboriginal roots, still created many complications that he has had to cope with throughout his life, including racism, prejudice, and questions about his identity. In this gripping and honest memoir, Lee seeks to contextualize his experience within the trauma that so many other such forced abductions created and the broader colonial context within which they took place. Despite the darkness of these years, through it all comes a positive message of love, hope, and reconciliation for all.