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Advertising ‘Happy’ Children: The Settler Family, Happiness and the Indigenous Child Removal System
Author(s) -
Bendo Daniella,
Hepburn Taryn,
Spencer Dale C.,
Sinclair Raven
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1111/chso.12335
Subject(s) - indigenous , happiness , ethnic group , colonialism , sociology , psychology , gender studies , social psychology , political science , law , anthropology , ecology , biology
We analyse 4300 advertisements of children featured in the Today's Child column, a daily written by Helen Allen in The Toronto Telegram and The Toronto Star from 1964 to 1982, to understand how the Canadian public became accepting of the adoption of Indigenous children. While children of all ethnic backgrounds were featured, the Indigenous children who were displayed were part of a larger system of child removal, known as the ‘Sixties Scoop’. We demonstrate the ways Indigenous children are described with a specific form of happiness that is conjoined with colonial conceptions of the family and nation.