SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Theresa Harmon grew up believing she had no living relatives. Now she's discovered more family members than she can count.

Dettah resident Louise Beaulieu, left, with her newfound first cousin Theresa Harmon, who came to Yellowknife from California to reunite with her Crookedhand clan for the first time since she was taken into foster care as a toddler. - Katie May/NNSL photo

The 43-year-old California resident was born in Yellowknife to Mary Crookedhand Thomas and Isodore Gibot Thomas, then put into foster care when she was one year old after her mother fell ill with tuberculosis.

From there, Harmon was moved among various homes in communities including Jean Marie River, Fort Smith, Fort Simpson and Wrigley until she was adopted by a family in St. Thomas, Ont., who told her her parents had died.

"I lived all my life believing I had no family," said Harmon, who found out she's a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. "All my culture was lost."

That changed when she looked over some records from the Ontario Children's Aid Society and told her boyfriend her birth name was Crookedhand. After he web-searched the name, he stumbled across a single NWT telephone listing for Crookedhand - one of Harmon's many maternal cousins, most of whom were in residential schools when she was born.

Her newfound cousins told her that her mother was still alive and in Lutsel K'e. Her mother survived tuberculosis but had slipped into a depression, often mentioning a child known only to other family members as "the lost one."

"It was a shock," Harmon said of finding her family.

"If you know the type of person I am, once I find something I have to follow through with it ... just for my peace of mind."

She knew she needed to meet her long-lost family, so three weeks ago, she and her two teenaged children took a bus and a train from their home in 29 Palms, California to stay for a few weeks in Dettah with their first cousin Louise Beaulieu, who's been trying to put together a family tree.

"I never knew we had a cousin that far out because we were in residential schools," Beaulieu said when the pair visited Yellowknife earlier this week.

"I'm just glad that she found us and that from today on she'll learn more about her culture."

Harmon said meeting her mother was "surreal," though she said Crookedhand seemed to take it all in stride.

"I don't think anything surprises that woman," she laughed. "We definitely come from a line of strong women. We have to, otherwise I wouldn't be here today."

Harmon said she hopes her reunion story will inspire other Northern children who were put into foster care during the '60s swoop" not to be ashamed of what happened to them.

"They think it's their fault, and it's not. We had no choice," she said, comparing the foster care system at the time to residential schooling. She said the government hasn't yet formally acknowledged that many aboriginal children were needlessly taken out of their homes.

"They have not really talked about the '60s and '70s swoop victims," she said. "There's no communication and because of that our people have learned not to communicate with each other."

"Stuff like this needs to stop."