Taken from her Indigenous family and culture as a baby, Denice Muscat-Joseph is using her life of internal pain and past vices to help anyone she can as she deals with the continuing tragedies inflicted upon Indigneous people.
Muscat-Joseph was behind the creation of the shoe memorial at the Spirit Catcher which honours the 215 Indigenous children whose bodies were found last week on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
She was part of the Sixties Scoop, where social services would go into hospitals and take children away.
In Muscat-Joseph’s case, like many others, it was done with underhanded tactics, she tells BarrieToday.
“They made my mom put me up for temporary ward of the state because at the time she didn’t have her own residence, so they said she couldn’t take me home," Muscat-Joseph says. "I was left in the infant's home and she had to come back and forth to see me everyday until one day I wasn’t there.”
Muscat-Joseph says her birth mother later found out that someone forged her signature, which allowed Muscat-Joseph to be put up for adoption.
“I was taken from Labrador to a foster home in Gander, NL, for a few weeks and then my adoptive parents got a call there was a baby available in Gander if they wanted to come and get me,” Muscat-Joseph says.
The Sixties Scoop refers to the large-scale removal — or “scooping” — of Indigenous children from their communities and families through the 1960s, and their subsequent adoption into predominantly non-Indigenous, middle-class families across the United States and Canada.
She was taken from Newfoundland and raised more than 2,500 kilometres away in Georgetown, Ont., by Vic and Vilma Muscat.
Muscat-Joseph considers herself lucky because she was loved and cared for, despite knowing she didn’t belong as much as the other family members.
“My adoptive parents were very good to me and showed me a lot of love. I obviously always knew I was adopted and had one grandmother who introduced me as the adopted granddaughter,” she says. “I always knew I didn’t belong and Georgetown is a predominantly white community, so that made me stick out even more.”
While she had a lot of great friends growing up, Muscat-Joseph says she struggled knowing she had parents out there somewhere who she believed didn’t want her. This led to a great deal of emotional pain.
“That played a big part of me growing up and filling the void with my addiction to drugs and alcohol, and there was a lot of theft and that kind of behaviour,” says Muscat-Joseph. “I really believe it was from the trauma of being adopted. Even though I had fantastic parents and a fantastic childhood, the pain was still there.”
She knew very little about her past. Her original birth certificate said she was from North West River, Labrador and that her birth name was Mary Jane P. The 'P' stood for Penunsi.
In 1992, Muscat-Joseph was reunited with her birth parents, Germaine and Patrick Rich, who had been searching for her since the day she was taken.
“All they did was look for me. Every time they heard a young girl died in Newfoundland, they always wondered if it was me and tried to find out,” Muscat-Joseph says.
After connecting with the Gander foster person who had care of Muscat-Joseph briefly, Germaine and Patrick were able to find out the last name of Muscat and that Georgetown was likely where their biological daughter had been taken.
She says her biological father was "frantically" calling 411 and one day ended up calling her uncle’s house. He had just moved to Georgetown.
At the time, Muscat-Joseph’s addictions were taking control of her and she was living in a shelter in Toronto. A roommate of hers saw an article where her birth parents had told their story, so she was also connected that way.
“My adoptive dad is very funny and he called the adoption place in Toronto and asked if they had found his daughter. They said sorry, not yet. He said, 'Well, guess what? I did',” says Muscat-Joseph.
From there, it was then off to Newfoundland to meet her extended family.
“I remember getting off the plane at some little rural airport and seeing all these Indigenous people waiting. It was so scary, so different. I just wanted to get back on the plane,” says Muscat-Joseph. “Going up to them, everybody was clapping, laughing and crying and my mom was just crying.”
Muscat-Joseph says found out she had an older sister who had also been taken by social services as a baby, but her parents were able to get her back when she was three years old because she had not left Newfoundland.
Muscat-Joseph joined her mom, dad, four brothers and four sisters in Newfoundland for the next four years. After being raised by a white family in a mainly white community, the blending back into her Indigenous culture was not easy.
“I had a lot of friends back there who were Sixties Scoopers who had a really hard time coming back to the culture. One friend drank himself to death trying to cope,” she says.
“You don’t belong to the white family that raised you and then you go back and don’t belong to the Indigenous family you were taken from. I was called an ‘apple,' because you’re red on the outside, white on the inside.”
It wasn’t until Muscat-Joseph came to Barrie to attend Georgian College and started to attend the Barrie Native Friendship Centre (BNFC) that she started to learn more about her culture.
“I just felt a sense of home going to the native centre and I still go there today and try to help whoever I can,” says Muscat-Joseph. “I just want people to know the real story, because many don’t. My adoptive dad had no idea about the Sixties Scoop. He and my mom were never aware that I was taken from my birth family by lies.”
Both of Muscat-Joseph’s mothers have since passed away, but her adoptive and birth fathers are still alive.
Muscat-Joseph, who is also a mother of four children, has become very active at the BNFC and as an employee of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Simcoe County.
At the end of June, she will celebrate eight years clean and sober.
“I think I have taken on a role that helps people — youth and women — because of my background and my past addictions and how I lived,” says Muscat-Joseph. “I’m able to listen and give advice.”
Muscat-Joseph initiated the creation of the recent memorial at the Spirit Catcher for the found bodies of 215 children at a former Kamloops residential school after feeling something had to be done for them.
The memorial aimed to have 215 children’s shoes to commemorate the grim discovery and it is now over that target.
An emotional Muscat-Joseph told BarrieToday she's still having a hard time handling the news.
“I still cry,” says Muscat-Joseph. “Those poor children were taken away, hurt and thrown away like garbage. They needed to be honoured. They didn't deserve that, nobody does.”
While she says education of the past experiences of Indigenous people is important, understanding is even more crucial.
“I want people to know what happened to many of us. I want them to know it happened and it's real,” says Muscat-Joseph. “Even now, things happen. Me and my kids can’t walk around a dollar store without being followed like we’re going to steal something.
"We’re people, too. We have had a lot of bad things happen to us and it's time everyone knows what they were, really knows what they were," she says.
Muscat-Joseph also says children’s aid societies are still taking Indigenous kids and putting them with non-Indigenous families.
"They don’t have to do that. They didn’t have to do it to me,” she says. “They could have helped my mother find somewhere to live and not rip from my entire life.”
