08/25/2026
When David came in for an interview for our training program, we had to take a moment.
“Not to be rude, but your last name’s Penner and you look very… white. You know this is a program for Indigenous people, right?”
David laughed–something he does a lot– and said he knew, then proceeded to tell us his story.
All David knew for most of his life was that he was born in St. Boniface Hospital in January, 1989, and that he was adopted right after birth by a family that lived in Altona. His adoptive mom told him he was probably Metis, but didn’t have any more information for him.
When he was in jail in 2019, a lot of the people there were filing Sixties Scoop claims, and encouraged him to see if he qualified. He reached out to the firm handling the claims, they sent him a package that outlined the information he needed. He reached out to his mom and she sent the information she had to him.
“That’s when I saw a letter from Indigenous Services or whatever it was called saying she could register me with either Pine Creek or Keeseekoose First Nation.”
This was the first time he had ever seen anything relating to his birth parents, and anything relating to his Indigeneity. From there it was a call to CFS to ask them to unseal his birth records. A month later he had them and was able to see his birth mother and father’s names, and learn that he was one of six kids, but the only child that had been apprehended from his parents.
When he was released from jail he went on Facebook and typed in the names he had seen on his birth records. After a few tries with no results, he typed his mom’s maiden name, and a post came up. He clicked on it, then clicked on a comment that had been left by a woman with the same last name saying “I believe this is my mom. If you have any information, I’d appreciate it." "I got a message an hour and a half later saying “Oh my God, you’re our brother, we’ve been looking for you for our whole lives!””
The next day he walked into the restaurant he and his sister had agreed on, and saw three people sitting there that looked like him.
He learned they had been looking for him for their whole lives, and had been told by a CFS worker that he had died. That didn't deter them though. The Facebook post he clicked on that had his mother's maiden name had been a memorial post, and he learned his birth mother had died five months earlier. She never stopped looking for him, either, and she wrote him a note before she died. His birth father had died years ago.
Since meeting three siblings that first evening , he's met his other two , and all six are in each other's lives. "I feel whole, if that makes sense. They're all amazing people with their own stuff and their own lives , but I know them, which I didn't before."
