Fragments of broken pottery and glass lie scattered along the remote beaches of the Smith and Seymour Inlets on the B.C. Coast, the only remains of the once-lively villages that belonged to the Gwa'sala and 'Nakwaxda'xw Peoples.

Already ravaged by colonial diseases, the residential school system, and the overindustrialization of fishing and logging on their traditional territories, the federal government gave both nations the choice to relocate to a reserve on Vancouver Island where they were told they would receive homes, jobs and healthcare.

In 1964, hundreds of members of both nations moved to the Tsulquate Reserve – nearly at the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island near Port Hardy – where they were met with only three unfinished homes, no running water, racist townspeople and nowhere to moor their boats. Some attempted to go back to their villages, but they had been torched by the government.

As a result of years of trauma and oppressive paternalism, in the decades that followed the reserve was devastated by poverty and drug and alcohol abuse, which resulted in hundreds of children being taken into government custody. In the 1970s and '80s, upwards of 70 per cent of their children were apprehended.

Salla Sukow, executive director of the Galgapothla Family Services Society, the organization that handles child welfare jurisdiction for the Nations, recalled her and her siblings being taken by the government at a young age.

"[My dad] was a logger, so he was away off in camp most of the time. He came home from camp and all three of his daughters were gone and he had no idea where they were. He had no idea who to ask. There was no card, no social worker, no note, no nothing," she said, adding that both of her sisters were adopted out, with one ending up in Mississippi, while Sukow lived in multiple foster home placements for the first eight years of her life.

She described struggling with her identity and her connection to her culture throughout her life, as she spent her formative years living with white families before being returned to her parents and the reserve on a "last chance order" through the courts.

"I feel like I will never, ever feel like I'm 100 per cent Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw because my identity is gone, and I don't know how to get it back," she said. "Every one of us carries around a weight of trauma and a weight of pain and a weight of neglect. It's there. It's embedded in our history. And it's going to take decades to come back from this."

Though she was returned to her family and community, and managed to graduate school and build a career, many other Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw members did not get the chance. 

"You go downtown [in Port Hardy] and you'll see so many people that are homeless. A lot of them are from Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw and a lot of them have aged out of care. And just like me, they've lost their sense of identity," she said.

A rural divide

Known for the sprawling rainforests, pristine coastlines and remote fishing and logging towns, north Vancouver Island also has had some of the highest rates of children in "care" in the province. As of March 2024, 1,140 Vancouver Island kids were considered "children and youth in care," with almost 70 per cent of them being Indigenous, many of which come from Kwakwakaʼwakw tribes along the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, and Nuu-chah-nulth tribes to the west.

Though the ministry has changed how they collect data, as of 2019, the former Port Alberni service area, which included Tofino and Ucluelet, had the second-highest rate in the province with 173 children in "care." The highest rate of children in "care" in B.C. was in Port Hardy, which includes Tsulquate, where 32 for every 1,000 children were in government custody.

Jennifer Charlesworth, the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth, explained how rural communities can have higher rates of children in "care" due to a lack of resources and government support.

"Many of our small communities that were very resource-based like in the north Island, there's very high poverty and lack of attachment to the labour force. So, you've got these complicating situations, then what ends up happening is the family isn't able to get what they need for the well being of their child, things escalate, then protection services become involved," she explained.

In a report from July 2024, Charlesworth's office made a recommendation to the ministry to "support jurisdiction," and to support Nations who are pursuing resumption of jurisdiction in an effort to keep children within their communities.

Support and prevention

Just a 45-minute ferry ride from Port McNeill, Cormorant Island sits within the sprawling Broughton Archipelago. Dotted with vibrantly-coloured houses and remote coastlines, the picturesque island is home to Namgis’ First Nation.

At 45 Atli St., on the north-end of the Island, sits a small wooden building belonging to the K'wak'walat'si Child and Family Services, the organization that handles the Nation's child welfare system by supporting families and children with legal services, family visitations, parenting, budgeting and conflict and family wellness.

Kelly Speck, a Namgis' council member and chair of the Namgis' Health Board, the internal oversight body for the family services agency, explained that the Nation has a delegated agreement with the Ministry of Children and Family Development where they take a "support and prevention" side of child and family services.

"The [ministry] retained all the child protection, adoption, all those other things that some other First Nations are working towards taking on. We did not. Our focus was to ensure that children were never taken into the system," Speck explained.

If the ministry is made aware of concerns around the well-being of children, Speck says the agency is notified. They then make contact with the family and they put a welfare plan together with the family to show the ministry. 

As the Nation is a tightly connected community, with only about 570 Namgis' members living on their territory, she says it's normally not hard to find a temporary home within the community for children who do need to be removed from their home.

"What we've done with our prevention focus is we've developed awareness and relationships with, say, family groupings and individuals who in the broader system might be foster parents, and oftentimes they're part of a larger extended family," she said. "the whole purpose is to not remove the children from their network of other family supports and their parents, so that there's a supported, supervised plan for all of that."

She said they have had the system in place for around 20 years, and at one point, they went around 10 to 12 years without a single child being apprehended from the reserve.

Alex Taylor-McCallum, who hails from a few Kwakwaka'wakw tribes along North Vancouver Island and B.C.'s West Coast, and his family are gearing up for an official adoption ceremony for his new little brother, who is being formally adopted by his aunt.

"He's going to be brought up and really upheld and acknowledged amongst everyone who comes to witness in the big house that day at Kingcome [Village].

Over the ceremony, which will take place during a two-day potlatch in May, the young man will be witnessed by both his biological family and the family of his new guardian as he is "blanketed" with a blanket with family symbols, and given a new Kwakwaka'wakw name that has been chosen in consultation with family members and elders.

Taylor-McCallum said the child joining his family and staying within the Kwakwaka'wakw culture is one of the "best possible scenarios," as he has also been a witness to the generational trauma within his family, friends and elders that was caused by the Sixties Scoop.

"It's really a serious undertaking that my auntie specifically is willing to take on, but, something like this makes it really official that it's not just my auntie stepping up to take care of the child. It's everybody, everybody in our [family] are now really acknowledging [the boy] to be a part of the family," he said. "This is just a beautiful alternative to the ministry and foster care system that holds such a dark history amongst the many Indigenous nations along the West coast and beyond."

Rebuilding what we've lost

In September 2024, Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw Chief Leslie Walkus, along with B.C. Minister of Children and Family Development Grace Lore and federal Minister of Indigenous Services Patty Hajdu, signed a coordination agreement to affirm and restore jurisdiction over their children and families, the fourth agreement of its kind to be signed in B.C.

In a news release from the time, Walkus said his number one priority was for the Nations to "reduce the number of children in the provincial system of care, and reclaiming the 'lost ones.'"

After receiving their necessary funding, starting in January 2025, the Galgapothla Family Services Society was able to start working on implementing their programs as the beginning of the Nations assuming their rights over their children.

Sukow explained that the Nations will also be using a prevention approach to their child welfare by hiring cultural wellness workers, culturally informed caseworkers, mental-health counsellors and a board comprised of hereditary chiefs and matriarchs. Similar to Namgis', they will create individual plans for each family in an effort to keep children within their community.

"Every time I talk about this, I get so excited and passionate. I think it's my passion that has allowed me to stay as long as I did in the negotiation process and so when I talk to other Nations who aren't feeling as hopeful, I just want to give them hope," she said, adding that change won't happen overnight, but it is a start.

"I feel confident in our ability to draw from our hereditary chiefs and our matriarchs to start rebuilding what we've lost."

This story was produced as part of – a collaborative journalism project. .