Bonita Lawrence: I am the daughter of a Mi’kmaw and Acadian single mother who fought for years not to lose her five children to social services. I entered university when I was 31 and ended up working as a professor in Indigenous Studies   for 25 years before retiring this year. I focused for many years on Native identity struggles which have their roots in an intergenerational  attack on Native motherhood, involving the historical and continuing theft of hundreds of thousands of Native children to the Child welfare system in Canada—as well as the residential school system which preceded it. These attacks on Native motherhood have always been genocidal, to destroy Native families and to ensure that their children’s Native identities are erased. At present, courts continue to assume “the best interests of the child” to be based on the supposed inferiority of Native mothers, now based on their impoverishment with its roots in the theft of Native land. The result is the continued adoption of Indigenous children into white families and the loss of their Native identities. My talk will address some of the resistances of mothers to these ongoing processes.