Adoptee Exposes The Dark Side of Adoption: What No One Tells You

Italy’s Baby Scoop Era: My Place at the Table (film)

 

Berks Filmmakers Explore Adoption: Gift and Challenge in New Documentary

From Marabella Enterprises

Marabella Enterprises and Schott Productions are pleased to announce their feature documentary, Il Mio Posto a Tavola (My Place at the Table), has been completed. Produced in collaboration with the Film Commission of Valle d’Aosta and Red Sled Films, the film tells the story of Santo D. Marabella’s adoption from Italy by his American parents, Anna and Sam.  But that’s only part of the story. It introduces the audience to the Baby Scoop Era when un-wed mothers were forced to give up their babies at birth, a practice with many similarities to modern-day child trafficking.

Directed by Tracy Schott and executive produced by Santo D. Marabella, the long-time artistic collaborators have been working on the film since December 2024, when Santo approached Tracy with the idea.  He wanted to share his adoption story and explore some of the aspects which he didn’t completely understand.  “I had been searching for years for a way, the best way, to tell this story,” Marabella noted, “but I couldn’t figure out if it should be a play, book, or a film.”

Then, it hit him.  Schott had recently completed the documentary film, From the River, a short film which looks at the history of Reading and Berks County.  A documentary film made good sense.  Schott and Marabella have collaborated on many theatre and film projects since 2008, including co-founding the ReadingFilmFEST in 2015.  With the creative team in place, the research began!

Marabella was adopted during Italy’s Baby Scoop Era, a period during which unwed mothers were coerced or shamed into giving up their babies by the Catholic Church and facilitated by both the Italian and United States governments. This practice was not confined to Italy – Great Britain, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Australia, and others, were plagued by the same practices from 1950s through the 1970s.  The film tells Santo’s very personal story of adoption, while also looking at the broader impact of government and church control of family life.

This project would present several challenges, not the least of which was the need to travel four thousand miles to Aosta, Italy, where Marabella was born.  The pair assembled an impressive team of film professionals including director of photography, Sebastian Nieves, consulting producer, Tony Gerber, editor, R. Bradley Bass, and composer, Chris Heslop.  In addition, they partnered with the Italy-based production company, Red Sled Films, and their principals, Alessia Gasparella and Giorgio Vigna. After months of research and development, the team shot three days in Pennsylvania and seven days in Italy.  Post-production was completed in April, and film festival submissions have begun.

Director, Tracy Schott, summed up her thoughts on the film’s contribution to the adoption conversation in this way: “Initially, we thought we were making a short film about Santo’s experience as an Italian-American adoptee.  But, as we dug deeper into his story and learned more about the Baby Scoop Era, we realized that Santo’s need to find his ‘place at the table’ was shared by adoptees and their families worldwide. Through Santo’s journey we discover what it means to belong.”

To honor those whose support made this film production possible, a Private Screening, sponsored by Goggleworks Center for the Arts and Lisa Fulmer, is being held in May. Public screenings will be held after distribution planning and film festival submissions are complete sometime later this year.

https://www.bctv.org/2025/05/15/berks-filmmakers-explore-adoption-gift-and-challenge-in-new-documentary/

C&I Presents: The Spirit of the West Podcast Featuring Mo Brings Plenty ...

This Indigenous Author Maps The Pain Of Generational Trauma — And The Journey To Healing

“The core of our culture that existed before colonization is actually the thing that’s allowing us to heal from colonization,” says author Chyana Marie Sage. 

"I believe that in order to process and heal from something, we have to confront the dark thing that haunts us," says author Chyana Marie Sage.

Photo: Anneka Bunnag 

By Rajul Punjabi-Johnson | May 19, 2025

"I needed to understand the good, bad, the complicated, and beautiful of every person in the story,” Indigenous author Chyana Marie Sage says about the family members she wrote about in her memoir. “Because that is the full truth of the human experience.”

“Soft As Bones,” Sage’s debut project that drops on May 27, is a prose-driven exploration of generational trauma that stems from the systemic breakdown of her own family unit largely due to the Sixties Scoop, an era during which Canadian child welfare policies allowed for the forceful removal thousands of Native children from their families (they were rehomed to white households).

Her storytelling, in a format she calls a “braided spiral” because of its interwoven cultural mythology and tendency to loop back to the central plot, is both poignant and whimsical.  It’s with this balance that Sage, who has previously written for HuffPost, is able to confront the agonizing and multilayered betrayal by her father — and create a new space for her family to heal.

Throughout the book, especially in the passages of vibrantly detailed folklore and magic realism, there is a levity of spirit that reflects the type of Indigenous resilience that comes with time and reflection.  Sage’s message, as we come to understand toward the end, is that the wealth of community is powerful enough to rebuild what’s been torn down in the past.  And the concept of “returning home” is more about releasing pain and trusting our agency than anything else.

KEEP READING:  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chyana-marie-sage-memoir-soft-as-bones_n_682b7327e4b095274facef05

Michael Spears Talks Portraying The Famed Sitting Bull In New Documentary

Native ancestors’ return to rest: A paperwork-laden process underway in Illinois

Editor's Note:  My first family in Illinois, my dad's side, probably doesn't even know about this story and the ongoing tragedy, and the required NAGPRA repatriation of bone collections.  

Why would Illinois have so many bones in collections?  Really?  Was it a money-making thing, people digging up my ancestor's graves?  How exactly were these people "caring" for their bones?  By leaving them in boxes?  Charging money to see bones by displaying them?  What kind of morbid sick people would do that?

Many of you who read this blog know terrorized Indigenous people moved and migrated west as more and more people flooded Turtle Island.  When I was in southern Illinois, I was shocked to see so many of Virginia tribal names on various road signs.  It's true Illinois was a landing place for tribes on the run from the growing and murdering colonizers.  Murder?  Oh God, yes.  Read my book Almost Dead Indians and read about the scalp bounties. It's a horror story.

I get sad these looted bones are people who died tragically and now their names are lost.  I get sad reading stories like this about Illinois.  I get sad knowing that the people living there never questioned their own history.  I get sad knowing people "hid" their identity as "Indian" out of fear but spoke about it in whispers to family members who would listen.

I get sad knowing tribes in Illinois also were forced to leave their homelands to escape.

                -Blog Editor Trace L Hentz (adoptee)

 

ProPublica’s series published in that year identified how “America’s museums fail to return Native American human remains,” identifying how Illinois was one of the worst states for repatriation.

Part Two:  https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/native-ancestors-return-to-rest-a-paperwork-laden-process-underway-in-illinois/

 

Hochul to apologize for 'atrocities' at former New York state-run Native American boarding school

Gov. Kathy Hochul will make what is believed to be the first trip by a sitting New York governor to Seneca Nation Territory next week, when she will apologize to the Seneca people and thousands of former Indigenous students and descendants for what she said was New York’s role in separating them from their families and forcing them to assimilate at the Thomas Indian School in Western New York’s Cattaraugus Territory.

Hochul’s Tuesday visit includes meetings with survivors of atrocities committed at the residential boarding school, which the state owned and operated from 1875 to 1957, she and Seneca President J. Conrad Seneca announced Friday morning.

“The atrocities that our children suffered at the Thomas Indian School have remained hidden in the shadows for far too long,” Seneca said in a statement Friday. “At long last, our people will hear, directly from the Governor, the words we have waited lifetimes for the State of New York to say — ‘We’re sorry.’”

The U.S. operated or supported 408 national Native American boarding schools across 37 states between 1819 and 1969, according to a 2022 U.S. Interior Department report, which detailed rampant physical, sexual and emotional abuse at many of the schools.

Native American children who attended the boarding schools were stripped of their cultural identity and suffered abuse, violence, hatred and in at least several hundred cases, death, at the hands of school officials, according to the report.

The school system discouraged American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian languages, religions and cultural practices and used corporal punishment to enforce rules, according to the more than 100-page report, which included information on marked and unmarked burial sites at or near school facilites, the identification of children and investigating abuses.

Seneca’s father attended Thomas Indian School, and his grandmother was removed from her family at the age 11 and forced to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Hochul noted.

“I know the pain and the trauma because I have seen it and felt it in my own family, just as countless families have borne that pain and carried it every day for generations,” Seneca said.

Hochul said her visit will fulfill a pledge she made to Seneca in Albany earlier this year.

“No words or actions will ever be able to undo the pain and suffering of the Seneca people and other Indigenous peoples across the State, but by visiting the Seneca Nation and the site of the Thomas Indian School we will mark a new day in our relations,” Hochul said in a statement.

SOURCE: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/news/2025/05/16/hochul-to-apologize-for-new-york-state-s-actions-at-ex-native-american-school

FBI Director Patel Commits to Working with Senator Murkowski on MMIW

Washington, DC – During a U.S. Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this week, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) secured commitments from the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to work with her on critical public safety issues for Alaska.  As Alaska struggles with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls cases and fentanyl-related deaths, Director Kash Patel pledged to make Alaska a priority as the Bureau addresses these life-and-death matters.   READ:  https://alaska-native-news.com/murkowski-working-with-fbi-director-to-address-mmiwg-and-fentanyl-in-alaska/78708/

 

Our identity has been frozen in time

by Bridgette Fox and Jerry Nowicki, Capitol News Illinois May 12, 2025  

This article is part of the Healing Illinois 2025 Reporting Project, “Healing Through Narrative Change: Untold Stories,” made possible by a grant from Healing Illinois, an initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Field Foundation of Illinois that seeks to advance racial healing through storytelling and community collaborations.

IMAGE:  The Red Horde logo for the former Archbishop Weber High School in Chicago.

 (sorry some of the images could not load)

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capitolnewsillinois.com /news/our-identity-has-been-frozen-in-time-how-native-american-advocates-are-influencing-springfield/

 

SPRINGFIELD — Amid the annual bustle at the Illinois Capitol during the legislative session’s midpoint, a sea of color and singing filled the rotunda on a sunny March day.

Attendees of the 2025 Native American Summit, organized by the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, were draped in regalia and leading a drum ceremony for the first time in an Illinois that was home to a federally recognized tribe.

And it was happening amid a backdrop of Native American groups working to secure passage of a bill that would ban what they say is offensive imagery in Illinois school mascots.

“Our identity has been frozen in time, and it’s going to stay frozen in time as long as we’re portrayed as mascots and things of the past,” said Matt Beaudet, a citizen of the Montauk Tribe of Indians who was in Springfield to advocate for the bill’s passage.

Andrew Johnson, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and executive director of the Native American Chamber of Commerce of Illinois, explained the importance of attire.

“We will refer to the clothes that we wear – the traditional clothes that we wear – as regalia.  It is something that is honored.  It has been passed down,” Johnson said. “There are reasons for wearing the particular items that are there.  So, we have that term, ‘regalia.’  It’s built and has the bedrock of respect and honor.”

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How natives are often portrayed as mascots in school logos throughout the state, however, has a more detrimental effect of “costuming,” he said.

“It really is not a sense of honor there,” he said. “It is not a sense of history. In fact, it’s a perversion of history to think that these mascots are maintaining any kind of that memory of Native people.”

Johnson and Beaudet are part of a working group convened by state Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, that’s at the forefront on Native American issues at the Capitol.

In the past several years, Native American advocacy groups have scored what they call major victories in state government.

The state has agreed to return tribal land in northern Illinois, required schools to teach Native culture, allowed high school students to wear cultural and religious items during graduation, and streamlined the process of repatriation and reburial of Native American remains and artifacts.

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Dozens of Illinois schools could be forced to change mascots that feature Native American imagery or names because of a bill awaiting action in the Senate. From left to right, top to bottom: Logos for the Stockton Blackhawks, Calumet Indians, Altamont Indians, Bremen Braves, Deer Creek Chiefs, Mt. Zion Braves, Annawan Braves, Marengo Indians. (Capitol News Illinois illustration)

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