Gil Cardinal [footprints] | Windspeaker - AMMSA: Indigenous news, issues and culture.

5.1.16

Gil Cardinal [footprints] | Windspeaker - AMMSA: Indigenous news, issues and culture.: The 1987 internationally-acclaimed self-portrait records his heartrending journey to find his Aboriginal roots and birth family.

After 35 years of living in the white world, raised in a non-Aboriginal foster family, Cardinal is finally wondering about his childhood; why he’s so detached and so guarded as an adult. He knows nothing of his early life, and chafes while a child welfare worker thumbs through a two-inch file, unwilling to give him details beyond his mother’s name and the fact she had problems with alcohol.

“Please do not protect me,” he tells her when she hesitates to divulge more, worried she will reveal information that will upset him. Adhering to government policy, she deprives him of important life details “to protect other people involved.”