Review of “Raised Somewhere Else”

Review- Ohpikiihaakan- Ohpihmeh- Raised Somewhere Else

Reviewed by Christine Miskonoodinkwe-Smith

Cardinal’s book “Raised Somewhere Else” brings awareness to an assimilationist policy that the Canadian government practiced between the 1960s to the early 1980s of removing First Nations children from their biological families and being raised somewhere else (outside their own culture) and striving to essentially come back home. With a foreword written by renowned scholar and a Sixties Scoop survivor herself-Dr. Raven Sinclair, the book breaks important ground.

In Raised Somewhere Else, Cardinal speaks of hardship, abuse and trauma. She writes about the experiences she endured growing up outside her culture as a result of the Sixties Scoop but also gives a voice to an unrelenting resiliency within herself to overcome the hardships she has experienced as an Indigenous woman trying to heal and come to terms with her past.

Recalling the abuses imparted on her and the various traumas that had a lasting effect on Cardinal and her family is triggering at times, especially if you as the reader can relate very closely to the experiences Cardinal speaks of in her book. Overall, this book is a must read for those who don’t understand the impacts of what Canadian assimilationist policies have had on Indigenous peoples as a whole.