AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: Press Release: Trace DeMeyer at Pequot Museum

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Press Release: Trace DeMeyer at Pequot Museum

Award-winning Native American journalist Trace A. DeMeyer will read from her book "One Small Sacrifice: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects" at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum on Saturday, March 5, at 1 p.m.

The books combines a fascinating personal memoir with a ground-breaking expose on the systemic removal of American Indian children from their mothers, families and tribes for adoption into non-Indian families. This practice went on for generations and the adoption industry continues this practice today.

Through a sympathetic judge in her hometown of Superior, DeMeyer opened her court-sealed adoption file at age 22. That was in Wisconsin, one of 43 states that require adoption records be permanently sealed. Thought to be a comfort to potentially adoptive parents, sealed records prevent adult adoptees from owning or ever seeing a copy of their own legal birth certificate and adoption files.

She shares her heartbreak and hope in a journey that takes her around the country, finally meeting her birthfather in 1996 and learning about her Shawnee-Cherokee ancestry.

DeMeyer has crafted a book that will surely raise eyebrows and question the validity of sealed records and the billion dollar adoption industry.

As an adoptee right advocate, DeMeyer is in contact with adoptees around the world through her blog: www.splitfeathers.blogspot.com.

DeMeyer is the former editor of tribal newspapers the Pequot Times and Ojibwe Akiing.

Known for her exceptional print interviews with infuential Native American such as Leonard Peltier and Floyd Red Crow Westerman, DeMeyer started extensive research on adoptees in 2004. Her discoveries led to this fact-filled 227-page book that weaves eye-opening congressional testimony and evidence with her own jaw-dropping story of search and reunion.

"One Small Sacrifice" was chosen as Native America Calling's Book of the Month in March 2010. Her interview with Harlan McKosato is archived at http://www.nativeamericacalling.com/nac_past2010.shtml#march (March 26, 2010).

Go to: http://www.pequotmuseum.org/ for more information.

2 comments:

TraceMarch 1, 2011 at 1:02 PM
If you want to read a Q&A about One Small Sacrifice, go to: http://www.amazon.com/Trace-A.-DeMeyer/e/B003RT7HP2/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
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VonMarch 1, 2011 at 8:20 PM
Go Trace!!xx
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Indian Country is under attack. Native tribes and people are fighting hard for justice. There is need for legal assistance across Indian Country, and NARF is doing as much as we can. With your help, we have fought for 48 years and we continue to fight.

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Today, we look at recent effort to undo laws put in place to protect Native American children and families. All children deserve to be raised by loving families and communities. In the 1970s, Congress realized that state agencies and courts were disproportionately removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their families. Often these devastating removals were due to an inability or unwillingness to understand Native cultures, where family is defined broadly and raising children is a shared responsibility. To stop these destructive practices, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

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Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Review: 'Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption,' by Susan Devan Harness https://t.co/aF2s87Wn03
— TraceHentz (@StonePony33) December 19, 2018

Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/Wku2L9hXPv
— Native Life (@_Native_Life) December 5, 2017

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was passed to address America's ugly history with child removals from Native American families. #DefendICWA #UpholdICWA @ChronicleSC https://t.co/hp0GNdIUVN
— NICWA (@NativeChildren) November 8, 2018

MMIWG

Good words

Priscilla Sharp

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

Link: http://adoptionvoicesmagazine.com/adoptee-view/dear-christian-who-is-praying-for-an-infant-to-adopt/