Entrepreneur Tammy Maki is on a physical and spiritual journey to discover her roots. She has moved to Saskatchewan from Sudbury to live closer to her Indigenous family.
"I'm going home. I am so excited," Maki announced to the entire country when she was a guest on the June 22 edition of the CTV show, "The Source."
Maki was invited on the afternoon television show to talk about her success as the owner of Raven Rising-Global Indigenous Chocolates. She had recently been named Extraordinary Female Entrepreneur by the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada.
"I really want to connect to who I am as a person. I wished I had done this sooner, but trying to find my blood family almost felt like I was cheating on the family that had adopted me,” Maki said. “They were very important to me and still are."
Maki always knew she was Indigenous — she is a member of White Bear First Nations in Saskatchewan — but she had many questions about her heritage and her birth parents.
Adopted by a Finnish-Canadian family in Sudbury in the mid-1960s, Maki was one of the thousands of First Nation, Métis and Inuit children taken from single mothers without their consent by child welfare authorities and placed in white middle-class homes in the 1960s. The practice was known as the Sixties Scoop.
In August 2020, Sudbury.com interviewed Maki about her career as a pastry chef and her plans to make unique chocolates using Indigenous ingredients.
She was launching Raven Rising, an e-commerce business and later she opened a shop on Cedar Street.
The article was republished in a number of newspapers throughout the county, including Yorkton This Week in Saskatchewan and reposted to a Facebook site for members of the White Bear First Nations.
After the article appeared in the Yorkton newspaper, she started to receive Facebook messages from someone who said he was her brother.
"He said, 'I am your brother, Michael, and I live in Nova Scotia.' When I think about it makes me cry," Maki said.
She learned her birth mother, Verdine, had died and that she had two more brothers who were living in Alabama. She had already connected with a sibling in Calgary.
"I met my aunt and uncle. I drove out to Saskatchewan two years ago and met them, and I fell in love with Saskatchewan … It just feels right to me here. It was a bit of a foregone conclusion that I would be coming back," she said.
"I can't tell you how many cousins I have met."
A year ago, Maki visited White Bear First Nations again following the sudden death of her daughter, Kirsten, 37, in May 2023.
"I brought some of her ashes back here. She had wanted to come to White Bear with me and visit the family,” Maki said. “We put her ashes on my family's land on the reserve."
In August, she closed her shop in Sudbury and now operates an e-commerce business from the White Bear First Nations reserve.
Still, her heart will always be in Sudbury where her six grandchildren and many friends live, but the city is filled with too many memories of her only child.
"I'm turning 60 and I need to think about what is best for my physical and mental health. Coming to Saskatchewan is a less stressful situation," she said.
Following our phone interview, Maki was heading to a meeting with the White Bear council.
She wants to help her First Nations community, which is located near the small town of Carlyle, in the southeastern part of the province.
"We don't have a lot. There is not a lot of infrastructure for employment. First Nations try but there is always a political landscape with the government. The government thinks we need to be babysat, and we don't,” she said.
"There are going to be a lot of challenges, but I have managed to survive all the ones up until now, so I am sure I will be fine with what is presented to me.”
Sudbury fans of Raven Rising products can purchase them at RavenRising.ca.
Vicki Gilhula is a freelance writer. Journeys is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.