When Karrie Wurmann visited Carcross, Yukon, for the first time in more than two decades earlier this summer, it was a moment that she says filled her with “nervous anticipation.”

The last time she visited the small town about an hour south of Whitehorse was in 1994. That was the first time she visited since she was a child, and also the first time she met her biological family.

Karrie’s biological family is from the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, an inland Tlingit and Tagish community whose traditional territory surrounds the town of Carcross. But she was never raised in Carcross — she was adopted when she was only 10 months old.

Karrie is also my aunt. It was my German-Canadian grandparents who adopted her when they were living in Whitehorse in the 1960s. They lived in the Yukon until Karrie was six years old before moving to Germany and later settling in Alberta.

My aunt has a very close relationship with her adoptive family. In fact, she says she doesn’t even think of herself as being adopted. “I see myself as a member of this family,” she tells me. “The only difference between me and everyone else is that I have brown skin.”

This is why Karrie had a difficult time when she last visited Carcross. “I remember being so stressed and so anxious that I couldn’t eat,” she says, recalling how overwhelming it was to meet her entire biological family.

One moment that stands out in particular is when she met her biological grandfather.

“I remember his first words quite clearly were, ‘You’re home. You’re back home with your family,'" Karrie says. “And I just remember kind of stiffening up a bit and going, ‘I don’t know you, and this isn’t my home.'"